Army scales back legal services for soldiers in disability evaluation process

The Army is pulling back the legal resources offered to soldiers going through the disability evaluation process, limiting the support they’ll receive as review boards determine whether they are fit to serve or should receive medical retirement benefits.

The Office of Soldiers’ Counsel, which provided the services, “has experienced dramatic cuts to authorized positions over the past 12 months,” according to a memo released May 27 announcing the cuts.

The office’s lawyers, mostly civilians, previously provided support at three different stages of the process to soldiers in the active Army, National Guard and Reserve. Now they will only offer services one time for one stage of evaluations — the physical evaluation board — and only to active-duty soldiers and part-time soldiers with orders greater than 30 days.

The Air Force and Navy confirmed that neither service is making any changes to their programs for service members.

Soldiers are on their own or must hire private attorneys for help on the paperwork for the medical evaluation board, when they are called to be reevaluated while on the temporary disability retirement list, and for any appeals, clarifications or help understanding paperwork.

National Guard and Reserve soldiers not on active duty must go to attorneys in their component, which two civilian lawyers who previously did this work said is worrisome because of the nuanced nature of disability boards.

“It’s not something that anybody can do on a part-time basis unless they’ve already done it full time in the past,” said Ronda Sutton, a retired colonel who spent 13 years working disability boards, first in uniform and then as a civilian. She left a regional supervisor position last year for private practice.

The Army declined Friday to release the office’s current authorized staffing levels, though the service said in 2014 that 200 lawyers and paralegals worked these cases for soldiers at 30 locations.

The disability evaluation process, which determines whether sick or injured soldiers can continue to serve or should receive medical retirement benefits, is complicated and involves the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs. It requires an understanding of medical paperwork and where to find evidence tying a medical condition to a soldier’s time in service, said Steven Hess, a retired Army attorney who worked on disability cases for the Army for 17 years. He is now in private practice.

“It’s the young soldiers who will get screwed in this because they’re not going to be able to come up with the money to retain counsel,” Hess said.

He has seen soldiers pay private attorneys between $15,000 and $35,000, he said. For those able to afford a private attorney, the quick turnaround required in the disability system adds to the challenge.

“Everything is a short suspense date. When the soldier gets his medical evaluation packet, he has five days to make his elections. When they get that back, they have seven days to make an appeal,” Hess said. “It flows really quick.”

The cuts to staffing began last year under DOGE, Sutton said. Then came a push from the Defense Department to pull money from non-warfighting activities. All the services being cut were not mandated by law. They had been expanded by policy during the fallout of a scandal at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., which began in 2007 and exposed the moldy, dangerous conditions that soldiers recovering from wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan were living in. Deep dives into the recovery and medical retirement process overhauled systems to better support soldiers.

“This wasn’t an historical priority. They only stood this up because they had to because Congress was not happy in the wake of Walter Reed,” Sutton said. “It’s actually worse now than it was before Walter Reed.”

The Navy has about 45 attorneys working its Disability Evaluation System Counseling Program to support sailors and Marines, the service said in a statement. It offers legal help at nearly all stages of the process, including assistance with rebuttal statements, personal statements and requests for clarification.

A website for the Navy’s program encourages all service members to “consult a disability attorney before making any decision or signing any document.”

An Air Force spokesperson did not provide how many attorneys support its Office of Disability Counsel but said it “has offered the same broad scope of legal services for many years and will continue to support our wounded, ill and injured warfighters through the process, in accordance with Secretary of the Air Force policy.”

The Army began phasing the cuts in about a year prior to releasing the memo formalizing them, said Heather Hagan, spokeswoman for the Army. Meanwhile, the service has trained about 250 Reserve component attorneys to support non-active-duty soldiers.

That training is the same length as the certification training the Office of Soldiers’ Counsel used to bring new attorneys to the mission, she said. It includes formal classroom training, observation time and serving as co-counsel alongside experienced attorneys prior to independently representing soldiers at hearings.

“The Army remains deeply committed to supporting every soldier through their transition in the Army Disability Evaluation System,” Hagan said.