Is all this really worth it?

[zero]

OK, I just got a really frustratingly stupid email from somebody in OPM. We've been going back and forth all week and I can't get a straight answer out of her about a simple thing. And it occurred to me, do I really want to win? Am I just laying the bricks for my own jail cell for the rest of my legal career? What does it really mean to be an ALJ in a non-adversarial process? Will I just be an overpaid paper pusher for the rest of my career?

[govtattorney]

that's a great question because becoming a ALJ may be a life changing experience (moving to Montana for example). But please read the other board topics as to why it may be an advantage to trying it out - particularly if you want to one day judge in an adversarial process. BTW - nonadvesarial practice is challenging (and rewarding) as well.

[doctorwho]

"It's the best job in government." That's what all of the ALJs I work with tell me. I do not work for Social Security. I work for one of the many other agencies that work with ALJs. And, I've wanted to be an ALJ since the register was closed, but I didn't have enough work experience to apply back then.

Let's look at some of the positives. 1) You are not responsible for appraising anybody; 2) you are not appraised; 3) if anybody tries to mess with one of your decisions, you can scream judicial independence; 4) you get a reasonable salary, for a reasonable amount of work (and some would say you don't even have to do a reasonable amount of work; 5) you can have as much or as little interaction with your colleagues as you find necessary; 6) you have a lot of discretion in setting up your work rules, hours, and systems; 7) your decisions are yours, within reason, etc.

Is it the perfect job? No. There is no perfect job. Is it a better job than the one I have now? For me, the answer is possibly yes. But, I wont know until and if I'm in it. I applied, like I suspect most of us did, because I'm not thrilled with what I'm doing now. If it doesn't work out, I'll look for something else (as I'm honestly doing anyway).

As for OPM, they are frustratingly annoying -- that will not change -- so accept it; and keep breathing.

[2112]

The first day of law school our dean told us anyone who was only interested in money could make more money than they would make attorney in a lot of ways, and much easier. That was true then, and it is true now. If you are only interested in the ALJ position because of money, just start an internet business on the side in the evenings and weekends. Lots of books can tell you how. "The Four Hour Workweek" is an example. But don't become an ALJ just for the increase in pay. You will be miserable.

[nonamouse]

IMO, it is worth a reasonable amount of frustration and expense to try once. For experienced attorneys, I would consider the ALJ position fairly "low stress" in the non-adversarial hearings.

I don't consider the ALJ job worth moving to the back of beyond in hopes of a transfer that may never come. I've already paid my dues with years of needing an SUV, insulated coveralls and a big shovel to get to court. I don't need a repeat experience at this stage in my life when I already make a decent living.

[chris]

doctorwho said:

"It's the best job in government." That's what all of the ALJs I work with tell me. I do not work for Social Security. I work for one of the many other agencies that work with ALJs. And, I've wanted to be an ALJ since the register was closed, but I didn't have enough work experience to apply back then.

Let's look at some of the positives. 1) You are not responsible for appraising anybody; 2) you are not appraised; 3) if anybody tries to mess with one of your decisions, you can scream judicial independence; 4) you get a reasonable salary, for a reasonable amount of work (and some would say you don't even have to do a reasonable amount of work; 5) you can have as much or as little interaction with your colleagues as you find necessary; 6) you have a lot of discretion in setting up your work rules, hours, and systems; 7) your decisions are yours, within reason, etc.

Is it the perfect job? No. There is no perfect job. Is it a better job than the one I have now? For me, the answer is possibly yes. But, I wont know until and if I'm in it. I applied, like I suspect most of us did, because I'm not thrilled with what I'm doing now. If it doesn't work out, I'll look for something else (as I'm honestly doing anyway).

As for OPM, they are frustratingly annoying -- that will not change -- so accept it; and keep breathing.

Ditto.

Great response doctorwho.

[aljsouth]

Yes there are problems. Mostly because the agency can be such idiots(HPI, refusing to negotiate when new buildings are built, etc). Still, I was a state ALJ with more power, but I would not go back.

You are not chained to the job. Every class will have at least one person decide that don't want to continue as a judge.

[judgegal]

As to what it's like in a non-adversarial setting, it can be frustrating to deal with inarticulate unrepresented claimants, particularly with electronic files. It's not as interesting as hearings with attorneys on both sides. Very repetitious, same set of questions all the time. I suppose state judges in family court, housing court, misdemeanor trials, etc. could say the same thing. I sometimes think the elaborate and long selection process is like an elephant giving birth to a mouse. I definitely don't think it's worth it if you have to move or commute to a place you hate.

[learnedhand]

Zero, OPM is not SSA or any other agency. Granted, agencies are all bureaucracies so there are rules and directives that make no sense at times. However, OPM is different. If you get to the point where SSA wants you, you can be accommodated in many ways and you will be surprised at how quickly obstacles move. That happened for me twice when I moved and I'm only an attorney.

[chieftain]

For me, the possibility of moving someplace completely different is one of the most exciting aspects of this process. I'm fortunate enough that I have a wife in a job that is totally transferable practically anywhere and a child who is not yet in school. Also, after having dealt for ten years with opposing counsel who think shortcuts and sharp tactics are roads to success, the prospect of non adversarial proceedings is fairly attractive. I'm sure there is downside to any job, even ALJ, and the folks in ODAR would certainly know about that than I, but from what I have learned thus far, in large part from this board, being an ALJ is an exciting prospect. I guess that's one of the main reasons we have such an active board.

[chris]

I agree Chieftain. I also am looking forward to moving, just wished I had added a couple more cities that I thought of later. I am also somewhat tired of dealing with dishonest attorneys and lazy/stupid judges in adversarial proceedings. I think I have a feel for what it might be like to be an ALJ at SSA and I can definitely see the potential boredom factor, but it might be awhile before I got bored and by then I might welcome it.

[deltajudge]

Be thankful if you are an ALJ. If you came off the street as a practicing attorney, you are on easy street. No more late nights working on trial briefs, appellate briefs, jury instructions, talking to and instructing witnesses, all that hard stuff. You now got a 9 to 5 job. ODAR doesn't want you to work. They supposedly have people to do your work for you, paralegals, staff attorneys, and a staff under the control of the HOD who is at your beck and call. Of course you have no authority or control beyond the hearing and your decision making, and as long as you mind your p's and q's and do your work and pay attention to time and attendance, no one can lay a hand on you. You can screw up all you want to, and still get that pay check every other week.

[cinderella]

deltajudge said:

Be thankful if you are an ALJ. If you came off the street as a practicing attorney, you are on easy street. No more late nights working on trial briefs, appellate briefs, jury instructions, talking to and instructing witnesses, all that hard stuff. You now got a 9 to 5 job. ODAR doesn't want you to work. They supposedly have people to do your work for you, paralegals, staff attorneys, and a staff under the control of the HOD who is at your beck and call. Of course you have no authority or control beyond the hearing and your decision making, and as long as you mind your p's and q's and do your work and pay attention to time and attendance, no one can lay a hand on you. You can screw up all you want to, and still get that pay check every other week.

With all due respect, Deltajudge, "ODAR doesn't want you to work" (?!). "You can screw up all you want to..." (?!). Surely to goodness, you are speaking tongue in cheek. All I know is in my city and Region, ODAR WANTS you to work- whether you're the receptionist or the HOCALJ. And, quite frankly we do. We work hard and have high productivity and generally high quality. As far as the screwing up- I can't fathom an ALJ really wanting to do that on purpose- because not only do the SAs and AAs, and some of our good paralegal friends have to straighten up the mess, it costs the claimants and taxpayers time and money, too. Surely you jest. Assuming you are kidding, let's watch that kind of rhetoric- it denigrates the basic respectful tone of this board. And, there are enough outsiders reading here who might really misunderstand that kind of comment and run touchdowns with it.

[deltajudge]

Excuse me cinderalla for being a cynic, which I am. Give you a little history. I came on board with this agency in January 1976 when it was known as the Bureau of Hearings and Appeals. Believe it or not, when I got down to being an Administrative Law Judge in Lexington, Ky, I was assigned a staff. Yes, a staff. They worked for me, and I was responsible to them as they were to me. I had a hearing assistant, secretary, clerk and typist. We were called units back then, and we were assigned cases to pull, schedule and hear. I evaulated their performance and was kept up with the status of all I disagreeigned cases. The hearing assistants involved with the preparation of the cases traveled with us and monitored the hearings. I really took pride in what I was doing, and always tried to get out as many cases as I could under the circumstances. I considered myself a professional. That all changed in the early '80s. The agency decided the ALJs were too independent, and to get around that, took our staff from us and went to what they called "reconfiguration." Basically an office pool of emplyees under an office manager. They came up with this great idea of making hearing assistants into hearing anaylists, i.e., decision writers. Surprisingly this worked out fairly well, as a lot of hearing assistants were already doing this. I forgot to mention, even though we had staff attorneys, we mostly wrote our own decisions. Things went from bad to worse, they hired more staff attorneys to write our decisions and give us more time to hold hearings. No support staff. They gave the analysts a new name, paralegal. They had to prove their writing ability to acheive their new status. Most did, then the agency decided to automatically upgrade all hearing assistants to paralegals, a disaster.

I do want you to know in spite of my cynicism, I remained a proffesional. When I took myself out of rotation in assignment of cases about 2 months before my retirement, I had my group supervisor to assign me raw cases for review for OTRs, my production for those last two months was above my average. Don't get me wrong, just don't depend on this agency appreciating you. They don't, and don't cheat on the sign-in sheet, and watch how long you take for lunch. That is what they are really interested in.

[chris]

Deltajudge: "They don't, and don't cheat on the sign-in sheet, and watch how long you take for lunch. That is what they are really interested in."

Hi Deltajudge,

I used to work for the feds, not SSA and not OPM, as an attorney and they were absolutely fixated on the sign in sheet and such minutiae, because they can quantify it. They really have a hard time evaluating work quality of attorneys, but they know if you took 65 minutes for lunch rather than 60. They also were rigid in their refusal to allow anyone to use the fax machine for personal purposes, and that included faxes made TO a local phone number. It was considered theft of government resources and they would fire you. I am not sure what a fax to a local number was stealing since we could make phone calls to local numbers, but that was the rule.

Those who have never worked for the federal government are in for a surprise.

Chris

[southerner]

Re deltajudge comments, I go back 20 years of OHA/ODAR and agree that the unit system was better for me. The consistentcy was better and we had a group that knew what was expected and what was needed. The group dynamic worked out quite well. I miss that aspect. However, since reconfiguration, that consistency has faded.

In my office, the decisions drafted by judges was and is virtually zero. Only 1 judge wrote any of her own decisions and that was limited to 3-4 a month. None of the judges in my office have written any other decisions, but for the the initial required ones as a new judge. The SA's draft more complex cases and ones they develop as part of the screening process. The AA's and paras draft the others. As an SA and on average, I draft more decisions than any of the AA's or paras in spite of at least half of my time allocated to screening and other SA-specific duties.

[aljsouth]

The agency is mostly clueless. Numbers and the sign in sheet are all that matters. Staff retire and FTE's are taken by region, then the agency ups the "benchmarks." Make more bricks without straw!

Still it is a great job. You just have to come to expect nothing from Falls church or Region except interference and unreasonable demands.

[deltajudge]

Well Chris, thank you. I also apologize for the typos and misspellings in my post. The problem with all federal agencies came with the unions. Like you said, the only thing they can pin anyone down on is time and attendance. They watch it like a hawk. Because of no production standards, they have no way of knowing what you are doing, but by God if you screw up and sign in a minute or two earlier than when you actually arrived, you in deep doo-doo. We had an office manager who redlined the sheet. Degrading, and ridiculous. OHA/ODAR has been in decline for many years, and will continue until they realize they are a quasi-judicial organization, based on professionalism and not bureaucrats.

[doctorwho]

deltajudge said:

Well Chris, thank you. I also apologize for the typos and misspellings in my post. The problem with all federal agencies came with the unions. Like you said, the only thing they can pin anyone down on is time and attendance. They watch it like a hawk. Because of no production standards, they have no way of knowing what you are doing, but by God if you screw up and sign in a minute or two earlier than when you actually arrived, you in deep doo-doo. We had an office manager who redlined the sheet. Degrading, and ridiculous. OHA/ODAR has been in decline for many years, and will continue until they realize they are a quasi-judicial organization, based on professionalism and not bureaucrats.

You know judge, what you describe isn't much different than what happens to most of the lawyers that work for the government -- at least in the sign-in/sign-out scenario. Back when I worked at an Agency that required that procedure, I remember the timekeepers (GS-7s and 8s) would comb over the logs to ensure that everybody had signed-in correctly -- partly because they were told to by management (as I told them when I was a manager over there) and partly because that was the only "power" they had over the lawyers (the reality of life). Generally, it is very difficult to rate the performance of any legal professional (not to mention, one that can't be rated like an ALJ), unless you bite the bullet and document unclear writing, poor analysis and the like -- something managers are loathe to do, especially when it comes to lawyers, who will argue every point of a performance review. With or without a Union present (I've worked under both environments in supervisory positions), the situations presented are simply too difficult for the mid level manager to take action unless he or she is backed up by top level management -- that's why, in most cases, managers rely on "ridiculous" things like time and attendance.

[kingfisher]

Dear Zero, Hang in there. It is a great job and worth it. Good Luck!