The revenue per case has a hard ceiling
Twenty-five percent of past-due benefits or $9,200, whichever is lower, reviewed annually. Winning a harder case does not pay more, so a file that takes twice the work earns the same and costs double.
Practice Law firms · Social security disability
Your fee is capped. Your costs are not.
Disability work is the one practice where the ceiling on revenue is written into federal law. In 2026 the representative fee is 25 percent of past-due benefits or $9,200, whichever is lower. You cannot price your way out of an inefficient file, so the only lever left is what each one costs to run.
$9,200 2026 fee cap, or 25% of back pay, whichever is lower
$123 2026 service fee, not chargeable to the claimant
Capped revenue per case, by statute
Uncapped cost per case, which is the whole problem
Published figures and statutory rules, not measurements of your practice. We have not audited your files and these are a starting point for a conversation rather than a claim about your numbers.
Where the hours and the money go
The record sets are enormous
Years of treatment across many providers, frequently duplicated, arriving in no order. The evidence that decides the claim is in there, and finding it is most of the work.
Listings analysis is done from memory
Whether the evidence meets or equals a listing, and what is missing if it does not, is a question the file can answer. It is usually answered by whoever has read it most recently.
Hearing preparation compresses into days
The hearing date is fixed. Preparation expands to fill whatever is left, which is generally less than it needed.
What we would build
Record sets reduced to what matters
Duplicates removed, treatment organized chronologically by provider, and the evidence relevant to each alleged impairment pulled out with citations.
Listings analysis against the actual file
What the record supports, what it does not, and precisely which evidence is missing, produced as a checklist rather than a memory exercise.
Hearing briefs drafted from the record
A theory of the case assembled from what is in the file, with citations, so preparation starts from a draft rather than a stack.
Cost per file, visible
When revenue is capped, cost per file is the business. Measured and reported, because you cannot manage what nobody counts.
Listings analysis Claim 7734 · ALJ hearing 12 Nov
Pages after de-duplication 2,140 from 3,806
Treating sources 9
Listing 1.15 criteria met 3 of 4
Missing evidence Imaging, post-Apr
Cost to run this file Tracked
Gap One criterion short on Listing 1.15, and the missing item is named: imaging after April. Requestable now rather than discovered at the hearing.
Brief drafted 14 min from intake
Questions
With fees capped, can we justify a custom build at all?
Only on volume, and the arithmetic is simple enough to do before you call us. Hours saved per file, times files per year, times your loaded hourly cost. If that does not clear the build comfortably inside two years, the answer is no and we will tell you so.
Is any of this going to make representations we cannot stand behind?
No. Everything it produces carries a citation to the page it came from, and anything the system is unsure about is flagged rather than asserted. The output is a draft for a representative to check, not a filing that goes out unread.