A defined co-representation path for SSDI claims.

The client relationship stays with your firm. There’s no handoff and no hoping a stranger returns their calls. Adam handles the SSA administrative claim as the claimant’s primary SSA contact; your firm remains counsel on the related matter, with a defined coordination role and visibility into a claim that bears on your own case.

Your case file does double duty. With the claimant’s authorization, the records your file already holds — medical records, injury documentation, treatment chronology, wage-loss information, employer records — can give the SSA claim a substantial head start. It begins developed instead of beginning from zero.

The proceedings stop working against each other. With a defined coordination role, the firm and the SSA representative can identify conflicting onset dates, work-capacity statements, settlement language, and earnings information before they damage either matter. Quietly, this is one of the most valuable features of the arrangement — for the claim, and for your firm.

The SSA side gets read the way SSA reads it. Adam adjudicated these claims from the inside for eleven years. Technical problems — insured status, date last insured, offsets, substantial gainful activity — can be spotted at intake rather than at the hearing. Why Adam’s background matters →

1. The claimant decides. Co-representation exists only with the claimant’s knowing, documented authorization. Before anything is filed, the claimant understands who would be appointed, what each representative would do, and that they may choose Adam, your firm, both, another representative, or no representative at all.

2. Each appointment is separate and direct. The claimant appoints Adam, and appoints an attorney at your firm, each through SSA’s own representative-appointment process (Form SSA-1696 or any successor SSA-prescribed process). Neither appointment runs through the other, and nothing about the structure is private between the firm and Adam.

3. Roles are defined before anything is filed. Adam handles the day-to-day SSA representative work — case development, SSA communications, claimant preparation, hearings. The appointed attorney performs a real, documented, SSA-related coordination or legal-context role tied to the firm’s separate representation. What qualifies — and what happens when no such role exists — is spelled out on the Law Firm Role page.

4. Any fee is one SSA-authorized fee. A representative fee in an SSA matter is a single fee — authorized by SSA, subject to SSA’s caps, and handled under SSA’s fee-agreement or fee-petition process. Co-representation does not create a second fee. Where more than one appointed representative seeks a fee for representative services actually performed, SSA — not the parties — decides whether a fee is authorized and how it is allocated. And nothing passes between your firm and Adam for referring, sending, or naming a claimant.

Co-representation does not create additional fee revenue. Any representative fee is a single SSA-authorized fee under SSA’s rules and limits; an appointed attorney who performs compensable representative services may seek a fee only through that same SSA process, and SSA decides authorization and allocation. Structuring a matter this way is about the client and the case — the fee mechanics simply stay where they belong, with SSA.

If the firm can’t identify and document a real SSA-related role in a particular matter, the attorney isn’t appointed — and nothing stalls. The claimant can appoint Adam alone for the SSA matter while your firm continues its separate representation, or you can simply refer. The structure never depends on an appointment that wouldn’t hold up.

Contract support. Your firm engages Adam directly for the SSA administrative work on a matter — case review, evidence development, hearing preparation, claimant preparation, drafting support — under a separate written scope of work, reviewed under applicable rules.

Referral. You send the claimant to Adam, nothing changes hands in either direction, and your client receives experienced SSA representation without your firm taking on a practice area it doesn’t handle.

Adam Whalan, EDPNA is a non-attorney representative eligible for direct payment by SSA. His role is limited to Social Security administrative representation: initial applications, reconsideration, ALJ hearings, and Appeals Council review. He is not an attorney and does not provide court representation or legal services outside that scope.

Depending on the matter, his work includes case review, evidence development, medical and vocational issue review, claimant preparation, hearing preparation, SSA communications, hearing representation, and post-hearing administrative work. The scope of each representative’s role and any information-sharing arrangements are disclosed to and authorized by the claimant before representation begins.

For the complete fee mechanics and boundaries — including, precisely, what this arrangement is not — see Fees & Engagement.