There are two main ways to know if you have won your Social Security Disability hearing. The first way to know if you have won your Social Security disability hearing is if the vocational witness that is present testifies that there are no jobs available that a hypothetical individual can do.
The second way you may know if you won your Social Security disability hearing is if a judge issues of bench decision and tells you during hearing that they are going to find favorably.
It is important to note that with the first way, which is that the vocational witness who is present testifies that there is no jobs available, you do wanna be careful with, oftentimes, judges will give several different hypothetical questions. Some of the hypothetical questions might result in jobs being available and some might result in no jobs being available. The difficulty is if you had that type of situation where there are some hypotheticals where there are jobs available and then some where they aren’t.
It’s hard to tell without knowing the judge which of the hypotheticals the judge is going to use to base their decision on, so you’ve gotta be careful. Just because the vocational witness testifies that there are no jobs available, if there is at least one hypothetical asked of the vocational witness by the judge that results in jobs being available, a denial is still possible.
However, if a judge issues a bench decision and says in the hearing that they are going to find you disabled as of a certain date, and sometimes they’ll tell you kind of what their rationale is, you can often expect a decision that’s a little bit more concrete.
If you’ve got an attorney who is present with you in the hearing, he or she might be able to shed some guidance on what to expect. This can be especially helpful if you’ve got some conflicting vocational witness testimony, your attorney might ask him or her some questions. Your attorney may also have an inclination about where the judge might be leaning. Ultimately, though, you won’t necessarily know the judges decision until you actually get the decision in the mail.
