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Post by leprechaun on Dec 11, 2014 9:34:38 GMT -5
I am a quiet and unassuming ALJ who has met the goal/quota/target every year. I am also a union member. Some judges say they meet the goal/quote/target easily; while I wouldn't characterize it as 'easy', it is certainly possible.
I know that it isn't true for some of the more seasoned judges, but I was specifically asked in my interview if I could do 500-700 cases a year and I answered in the affirmative. I am paid handsomely for a job that has wonderful perks such as credit hours, teleworking, and compensatory time for travel. I do not feel the sweatshop mentality that others have complained of. Some of this could be due to my luck in working so far in high-functioning offices. However, I have noticed a definite shift in job duties and general tone from upper management, which from my observation point (mushroom) certainly feels like it is driven in part by exasperation with the Union.
I have wanted this lawsuit to go away ever since we learned of it. Despite outcry from union membership, the Union top leadership spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (and I have no idea of how much time) fighting a losing battle. By far the wiser choice would have been to drop the suit after it was dismissed and focus on improving relations with the Acting Commissioner.
The lawsuit, and the strident tone of the union leadership in general, make close to 1500 hardworking judges look like lazy, prima-donna hacks. Quite frankly, I'm fed up. If I quit the union, the leadership will continue to sink the ship through their stubbornness and misguided efforts. If I stay with the union, then I am funding this madness. We need new leadership, but I despair of any positive changes.
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Post by philliesfan on Dec 11, 2014 10:06:44 GMT -5
Leprechaun:
I agree with you 200%. I also have the same question as Witty. There are other Circuits that look on SSA ALJs more favorably than Posner's Court.
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Post by Missundaztood on Dec 11, 2014 11:01:17 GMT -5
I am a quiet and unassuming ALJ who has met the goal/quota/target every year. I am also a union member. Some judges say they meet the goal/quote/target easily; while I wouldn't characterize it as 'easy', it is certainly possible. I know that it isn't true for some of the more seasoned judges, but I was specifically asked in my interview if I could do 500-700 cases a year and I answered in the affirmative. I am paid handsomely for a job that has wonderful perks such as credit hours, teleworking, and compensatory time for travel. I do not feel the sweatshop mentality that others have complained of. Some of this could be due to my luck in working so far in high-functioning offices. However, I have noticed a definite shift in job duties and general tone from upper management, which from my observation point (mushroom) certainly feels like it is driven in part by exasperation with the Union. I have wanted this lawsuit to go away ever since we learned of it. Despite outcry from union membership, the Union top leadership spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (and I have no idea of how much time) fighting a losing battle. By far the wiser choice would have been to drop the suit after it was dismissed and focus on improving relations with the Acting Commissioner. The lawsuit, and the strident tone of the union leadership in general, make close to 1500 hardworking judges look like lazy, prima-donna hacks. Quite frankly, I'm fed up. If I quit the union, the leadership will continue to sink the ship through their stubbornness and misguided efforts. If I stay with the union, then I am funding this madness. We need new leadership, but I despair of any positive changes. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.  |
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Post by bartleby on Dec 11, 2014 11:59:10 GMT -5
While I disagree with leprechaun and philliesfan, I do find the work ornerous and the Agency has no intention of working with the Union. It may be the office I am in, but that is what my experience with the Agency is, yours may vary. With that said, my wife and I discussed to selection of forum as witty mentioned. What in God's Green Earth were they thinking when they selected a forum that had the most anti-ALJ judge in it? Posner is a known hater. I am perplexed..
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Post by Loopstok on Dec 11, 2014 12:03:42 GMT -5
Reading between the lines, and making several possibly unwarranted assumptions, I see it this way.
A) Judge Posner only reads ALJ denials, as FFs don't make their way to the Circuit.
B) Posner's 7th Circuit opinions on disability appeals show, to use a polite word, disdain, for the quality of logic and writing style in ALJ denials
C) The union argues that the quota rules will unfairly require ALJs to pay more cases (or "pay down the backlog", as it used to be said)
D) Posner's response to point C) is essentially, "Good!" -- he even called the agency "cheap" in the above-quoted excerpt.
E) Conclusion One, Posner is critical of ALJ denials and does not think that giving the ALJs more time & resources would result in more legally defensible denials (I've read an opinion of his where he criticized the ALJ for holding a "langorous" hearing that resulted in a denial).
F) Conclusion Two, Posner is thus in favor of an ALJ quota system, because he believes that it would get the ALJs to pay more and deny less.
G) Personal observation, Point F) is in complete conflict with what the next Congress is likely to want from the ALJ corps in terms of grant rates.
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Post by thankful1 on Dec 11, 2014 12:06:10 GMT -5
I am a quiet and unassuming ALJ who has met the goal/quota/target every year. I am also a union member. Some judges say they meet the goal/quote/target easily; while I wouldn't characterize it as 'easy', it is certainly possible. I know that it isn't true for some of the more seasoned judges, but I was specifically asked in my interview if I could do 500-700 cases a year and I answered in the affirmative. I am paid handsomely for a job that has wonderful perks such as credit hours, teleworking, and compensatory time for travel. I do not feel the sweatshop mentality that others have complained of. Some of this could be due to my luck in working so far in high-functioning offices. However, I have noticed a definite shift in job duties and general tone from upper management, which from my observation point (mushroom) certainly feels like it is driven in part by exasperation with the Union. I have wanted this lawsuit to go away ever since we learned of it. Despite outcry from union membership, the Union top leadership spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (and I have no idea of how much time) fighting a losing battle. By far the wiser choice would have been to drop the suit after it was dismissed and focus on improving relations with the Acting Commissioner. The lawsuit, and the strident tone of the union leadership in general, make close to 1500 hardworking judges look like lazy, prima-donna hacks. Quite frankly, I'm fed up. If I quit the union, the leadership will continue to sink the ship through their stubbornness and misguided efforts. If I stay with the union, then I am funding this madness. We need new leadership, but I despair of any positive changes. Thank you for sharing your perspective on this. Every time I hear that an ALJ has 2.5 hours to review a case, hold a hearing and make a determination, it scares the crap out of me, and makes me question why I would want to do this job. Its nice to hear from someone who doesn't think the goal is unreasonable. I understand, and generally agree with, the argument that a hard quota infringes on judicial independence. But its a hard argument to prove such that you could win a case on it. There is a number out there that would be so ludicrous that reasonable minds would agree that having to attain that number, under threat of dismissal, would severely compromise judicial independence and integrity. That is the issue you would want to go to trial on. But I'm not sure Judge Zahm articulated that argument. And I think I would have hired a lawyer to make my argument, rather than try to make it myself. |
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Post by owl on Dec 11, 2014 12:26:20 GMT -5
Posner slays me. He has repeatedly and with great pompous derision criticized the quality of alj decisions. Well guess what? When the Agency is hammering you (and the writers) for more and more cases, the quality necessarily goes down. What did Judge Bice say? That the average case can be done in something like 2.5 hours. If we gave him type of decision he wants, we could get out 12 a year. Absent law clerks a la the circuit court. . . This very issue was brought up to him at a meeting earlier this year (I think it was this year - the months all run together, sigh) with Chicago-area ALJs and ODAR & OGC attorneys. He said that the needed remedy is simply for SSA to hire vastly (like, thousands) more ALJs - a solution all of us wannabes would certainly get behind, haha, but one that also, of course, has zero chance of happening for the foreseeable future due to political and budget realities. And he really had no other solutions. My impression of Posner from that meeting is that he believes claimants are too often being denied justice (as he sees it) in the disability adjudicatory system as presently constituted, and that he'll keep on dispensing justice (as he sees it) in the cases that make it to him, and leave it to others to sort out the consequences, or fix the system (or not). He's just simply (and, admittedly, often maddeningly) a purist. He believes that disability claimants are entitled to the same degree of justice as every other litigant, and he has no patience for the view that the realities of ~1,000,000 pending claims and ~1,500 judges requires accepting something short of perfection. So if anything, he's probably, in a way, potentially quite sympathetic to the argument that ALJs should not be subject to a decisional quota (perhaps part of why the AALJ filed their suit in the 7th Circuit?). He won't ignore the law just to rule in the AALJ's favor, though, and he didn't sound too sympathetic at oral argument. But as we all know, appellate judges are often tougher at oral argument on the side they're favoring... |
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Post by gary on Dec 11, 2014 12:35:35 GMT -5
Posner slays me. He has repeatedly and with great pompous derision criticized the quality of alj decisions. Well guess what? When the Agency is hammering you (and the writers) for more and more cases, the quality necessarily goes down. What did Judge Bice say? That the average case can be done in something like 2.5 hours. If we gave him type of decision he wants, we could get out 12 a year. Absent law clerks a la the circuit court. . . This very issue was brought up to him at a meeting earlier this year (I think it was this year - the months all run together, sigh) with Chicago-area ALJs and ODAR & OGC attorneys. He said that the needed remedy is simply for SSA to hire vastly (like, thousands) more ALJs - a solution all of us wannabes would certainly get behind, haha, but one that also, of course, has zero chance of happening for the foreseeable future due to political and budget realities. And he really had no other solutions. My impression of Posner from that meeting is that he believes claimants are too often being denied justice (as he sees it) in the disability adjudicatory system as presently constituted, and that he'll keep on dispensing justice (as he sees it) in the cases that make it to him, and leave it to others to sort out the consequences, or fix the system (or not). He's just simply (and, admittedly, often maddeningly) a purist. He believes that disability claimants are entitled to the same degree of justice as every other litigant, and he has no patience for the view that the realities of ~1,000,000 pending claims and ~1,500 judges requires accepting something short of perfection. So if anything, he's probably, in a way, potentially quite sympathetic to the argument that ALJs should not be subject to a decisional quota (perhaps part of why the AALJ filed their suit in the 7th Circuit?). He won't ignore the law just to rule in the AALJ's favor, though, and he didn't sound too sympathetic at oral argument. But as we all know, appellate judges are often tougher at oral argument on the side they're favoring... As I recall from the report I read of the meeting of ALJs with J Posner, he also thought: 1) having an agency representative at hearings before ALJs would be a good idea; and 2) ALJs being in a separate office handling all cases heard by ALJs from all agencies (SSA, MSPB, NLRB, etc.) is the way ALJ work should be distributed rather than having ALJs just hear the cases of a single agency.. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2014 12:43:58 GMT -5
Wondering if there is a long term game here? What do the Supremes think of Posner? If he barks out an anti-ALJ screed, could the Union get the higher court decision it wants? Given the small percentage of cases the Supremes hear, that would be a long gamble.
It has to be that they think a majority of 7th court justices will fall on the judicial independence side. How many justices besides Posner heard the appeal? It wasn't a three judge panel was it? According to Wiki: the court has 4 Reagan appointees, 3 Bush, 2 Clintons, and 1 Obama. Will the seven conservative appointees be more likely to turn on the Agency or the Union?
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Post by sealaw90 on Dec 11, 2014 12:46:30 GMT -5
"And I think I would have hired a lawyer to make my argument, rather than try to make it myself. "
There's the old adage that "anyone who represents himself in court has a fool for a client " I am NOT calling anyone a fool, I understand the temptation, but when you are too close to the argument, when the outcome of the case directly impacts your employment, you need to hand the reigns over to a neutral and detached pit bull litigator.
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Post by christina on Dec 11, 2014 13:08:51 GMT -5
yes, the why file a case that will end up in 7th circuit logic is beyond me too.
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Post by aljwatch on Dec 11, 2014 13:30:40 GMT -5
In response to the question robg poses about whether the union is likely to get the answer it wants from the Supremes: it appears that is extremely unlikely given that they denied Cert in the Mahoney v. Donovan case, which involved somewhat similar claims that the DC Circuit found were "working conditions." Mahoney v. Donovan, 721 F.3d 633 (D.C. Cir. 2013), cert. denied 134 S.Ct. 2724 (2014). Although that case involved claimed "selective assignment of cases" and advance notice to DOJ on fair housing cases, among other things, the Circuit Court found all of the management actions complained of were working conditions. If the Seventh Circuit finds that the quotas are "working conditions," (as the tone of some of their questions seems to indicate), that will probably be the end.
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Post by sealaw90 on Dec 11, 2014 14:42:47 GMT -5
That was my recollection of this case from the outset - it really will just boil down to working conditions, so they will lose at the circuit too.
When I consider 500 cases, I consider the perspective of the person: depending upon which direction you are looking at the glass, 500 cases per year can seem to be easily doable or truly insurmountable. Some folks take their time being a lawyer, some folks plow through, as long as both are effective. Unfortunately, the slower ALJs won't get to telecommute apparently...
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Post by happy on Dec 11, 2014 15:28:24 GMT -5
The target is not unreasonable, especially when you consider that a portion of the dispositions are dismissals. I have disposed of at least 500 every year since becoming an ALJ in 2008 (except for the first, when I was hired mid-year and on the learning curve). I have not ever gone much beyond 600, so I'm not one of the "let's ignore due process and do a 15-minute hearing" people, either. It is, in fact, a "target," and not a quota. If you do 450, they will just urge you to try to do a bit more, maybe offer to help identify any inefficiencies in your case-processing. At 400, they might be looking at you a little harder. Below that, one might wonder how you are spending your time -- get off Facebook on your smartphone, stop reading the newspaper at work, and don't check your stocks every hour! I make goal, but I struggle with ALPO benchmarks, so I am always cognizant of the possibility of getting pulled off Telework, which I adore. I put my head down and grind it out to catch up, perhaps spending a little less time socializing with folks in the office or putting in a few credit hours. It can be done and it's not slave-driving or compromising my judicial independence. I have never, ever, ever, been asked to pay down the backlog or issue a decision that is not ready to be issued, though I have been asked to prioritize certain workloads at certain times. I have never felt that my integrity was in jeopardy and I take my job very seriously. I wish that the AALJ would spend its time and vast resources on things that they might actually be able to change -- like establishing Rules of Procedure (which I know they are asking for), articulating specific decision writing standards that will offer the opportunity for dialogue when an ALJ's needs are not being met, figuring out how we are going to deal with the ever-increasing centralization of the decision writing resources, and improving training for medical and vocational experts.
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Post by bartleby on Dec 11, 2014 16:23:59 GMT -5
After research, it appears that the Union felt Posner had strong dislike for the Agency and that would be good for the Union, however, he obviously has strong disdain for everything but himself..
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Post by bartleby on Dec 11, 2014 16:28:30 GMT -5
Happy, I agree with you somewhat, but, I doubt if anyone is developing the record like it should be developed. Are you asking for any CE's prior to the hearing? Are you looking at the record far enough ahead to establish if there are possibly any more medical records out there? To do the job as requested by the reg's 2 1/2 hours is no enough... JMHO.
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Post by christina on Dec 11, 2014 16:50:59 GMT -5
seelaw raises a good point. if an ALJ disposes of less than 500 cases, they may still be an effective judge. i could not agree more. in fact, they may be a great judge.
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Post by maquereau on Dec 11, 2014 17:41:27 GMT -5
The target is not unreasonable, especially when you consider that a portion of the dispositions are dismissals. I have disposed of at least 500 every year since becoming an ALJ in 2008 (except for the first, when I was hired mid-year and on the learning curve). I have not ever gone much beyond 600, so I'm not one of the "let's ignore due process and do a 15-minute hearing" people, either. It is, in fact, a "target," and not a quota. If you do 450, they will just urge you to try to do a bit more, maybe offer to help identify any inefficiencies in your case-processing. At 400, they might be looking at you a little harder. Below that, one might wonder how you are spending your time -- get off Facebook on your smartphone, stop reading the newspaper at work, and don't check your stocks every hour! I make goal, but I struggle with ALPO benchmarks, so I am always cognizant of the possibility of getting pulled off Telework, which I adore. I put my head down and grind it out to catch up, perhaps spending a little less time socializing with folks in the office or putting in a few credit hours. It can be done and it's not slave-driving or compromising my judicial independence. I have never, ever, ever, been asked to pay down the backlog or issue a decision that is not ready to be issued, though I have been asked to prioritize certain workloads at certain times. I have never felt that my integrity was in jeopardy and I take my job very seriously. I wish that the AALJ would spend its time and vast resources on things that they might actually be able to change -- like establishing Rules of Procedure (which I know they are asking for), articulating specific decision writing standards that will offer the opportunity for dialogue when an ALJ's needs are not being met, figuring out how we are going to deal with the ever-increasing centralization of the decision writing resources, and improving training for medical and vocational experts. Everyone's mileage varies. I have, in fact, met the quota since I've been working. However, it appears that I will no longer be able to meet it. In the past, I had a moderate (love the B Criteria terms) degree of writing and staff support. In the current office, I do not. The files are an unholy mess. The writing is, to a considerable degree, the worst I have seen in this agency - having worked in several offices. In fact, I haven't seen writing like this since grade school. You can complain all you want to management, but they do not have a magic wand that will turn bad writers into good ones. They tell you they will work with the writers, but that avails nothing. They promote clerks into "paralegals" - I guess maybe they do have magic wands - who have no idea how to write a decision. They don't have the training, nor do they have the background to perform the writing tasks they are assigned. With some of them, the issue is simply one of cognitive ability. When you are in an office where the vast majority of the writers are actually these so-called paralegals, you will begin to appreciate some of the problems associated with the imposition of a quota. I work "overtime" nearly every day and am in the office nearly every weekend. With these extra work hours, I was able, previously, to perform to the quota. However, without any reasonable writing support, I don't see how they/management can expect me to meet their goals. Yes, I am afraid I will have to fault them for not giving me the support. I further fault them for not demanding that the writers turn in work product that meets the criteria set forth in various Chief Judge memoranda with respect to writing standards. How many of you can prepare for, listen to, decide, and instruct 500+ cases - - - - - and then turn around and write them also? Wonder what that might do to a person's "pay rate" if that were a further requirement of this job? |
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Post by hopefalj on Dec 11, 2014 17:48:32 GMT -5
There are good judges and bad judges. There are good judges that clear 500 dispositions a year. There are bad judges that clear 500 dispositions a year. There are good judges that can't hit that mark. There are bad judges that can't hit that mark. There are myriad reasons for the disparity between production levels as well as with the quality of the decision making.
Obviously a good judge pumping out 500+ decisions a year is optimal for everyone involved. However, bad judges doing 500+ are more harmful to the program and/or cause a bigger workload in the long term than good judges doing 350 or 400 a year, IMHO.
There is no real way to determine whether you can do 500+ per year until you've got the gig. Even insiders like myself can't definitively say that. I have a pretty good idea of whether I can, but I can't say I can until I actually do it.
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Post by JudgeRatty on Dec 11, 2014 18:13:49 GMT -5
I think the whole pay rate argument in terms of fully favorable decisions being "faster" to move along is flawed. Our new guidance is that fully favorable decisions need just as much support as we put into the unfavorable decisions. In the past, this may not have been the case. But with the impending CDR workload coming to us, there is more emphasis on writing favorable decisions in the same detail as the unfavorable ones. I also do not see how a goal or quota or whatever you want to call it of 500 dispositions a year has anything to do with judicial independence. I have never heard anyone say what the outcome of any case should be, and I have never seen an email directing any such outcome. Arguing that the pressure or stress of the workload may make an ALJ make improper decisions disturbs me. Public servants have a duty to the public regardless of the "stress" of the job. If an ALJ is willing to sacrifice his/her ethical duties by "paying" more cases than he/she would have without a "quota" tells me there may be an issue with that ALJ and nothing more. I think if I get into a situation where I am not able handle the workload, it may be time to consider another career path. I would have to ask myself, if 90% of the ALJs are able to handle it, what am I doing differently? A little self reflection may be in order. As with everything, there are always exceptions, but generally speaking aren't most of the ALJs meeting this number now? What sets apart the ones who are not? |
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