If you are a Social Security disability claimant awaiting a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) at the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review (ODAR) in Denver, Colorado, this article will briefly outline some key information that will help you understand when your hearing may take place and your odds of having your claim approved via a fully favorable ALJ decision.
Because the wait times for Social Security disability hearings vary greatly by ODAR office, it is important to know the most up-to-date wait time average for the office where your hearing will take place. Currently, the Denver ODAR office has an approximate hearing wait time of 17 months, meaning that if you filed your hearing request form in August 2016, your claim will likely not have a scheduled hearing date sooner than October 2018.
In addition to hearing wait times, another critical element that varies by ODAR office is average approval rate. Though the average approval rate of the ALJ deciding your claim is a substantially better indicator than that of the ODAR office as a whole, which includes decisions made by a number of ALJs (in Denver’s case, as many as 18), you may not be assigned an ALJ until months after you have filed your request for hearing. Currently, for the Denver ODAR office, 41 percent of all claims are approved, while 38 percent are denied and 21 percent are dismissed. These statistics are slightly more favorable than those resulting from the Colorado Springs ODAR office, which approved 36 percent of cases decided by a total of eleven ALJs. In addition, like Denver, Colorado Springs produced an average hearing wait time of 17 months.
If you need to file a hearing request for an ALJ hearing at the ODAR in Denver or elsewhere in Colorado or the southwestern United States, Viner Disability Law may be able to represent you in your Social Security disability claim and help prepare you for your hearing. Please do not hesitate to reach out to our office via the contact form on this site or telephone.
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