Higher-Level Review, Supplemental Claims, and appeals to the Board of Veterans' Appeals — handled by a Kentucky attorney accredited by the VA Office of General Counsel to represent claimants before VA. Retired U.S. Army Judge Advocate. Combat-deployment veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Two of the three ways to challenge a VA decision have a hard deadline: a Higher-Level Review and a Board appeal must be filed within one year of the date on your decision notice. Miss it and that door closes.
The third way, a Supplemental Claim, has no such bar. You can file one at any time. That sounds like the safe option, and it's where the expensive mistake lives.
File your Supplemental Claim within that same one year and your effective date reaches back to your original claim, or to the date your entitlement arose if that's later. File it after the year runs and the effective date resets to the later of the date entitlement arose or the day VA receives the new claim. Same evidence. Same grant. But the retroactive pay in between is simply gone. That stretch is often years.
Two narrow exceptions, because they invert the rule. If yours is a simultaneously contested claim — two claimants competing for the same benefit, or an apportionment dispute — the window is 60 days, not a year, and a Board appeal is the only route open to you. And a Supplemental Claim is not available after a denial of a request to revise a decision for clear and unmistakable error. If either might describe your case, do not rely on the one-year rule.
If there is a decision letter sitting on your kitchen table with a date on it, the date is the thing to look at right now.
A more experienced adjudicator takes a fresh look at exactly what was already in your file. You cannot submit new evidence. This is the right door when the evidence was already there and the decision misread it, misapplied the rating criteria, or missed something in the record. It is the wrong door when what you actually need is a doctor's opinion nobody has written yet. VA Form 20-0996.
For evidence VA did not have when it decided: a new nexus opinion, a diagnosis, service records, a buddy statement. No filing deadline. But the one-year effective-date rule above is what decides how much back pay a grant is worth. VA Form 20-0995.
Out of the regional office and to the Board of Veterans' Appeals, on one of three dockets you choose when you file: Direct Review (no new evidence, no hearing — the fastest), Evidence Submission (new evidence, no hearing), or Hearing (before a judge, with or without new evidence — the slowest by a wide margin). The docket you pick changes both what you may submit and how long you wait. VA Form 10182.
Which door is right depends on why you were denied, and the denial letter usually doesn't say so in plain terms. Choosing the wrong one can burn the year you had. That's the conversation worth having before you file anything. And before the VA's first decision, it's a conversation no attorney or claims agent may lawfully charge you for.
Federal law forbids any attorney or claims agent from charging a veteran for help preparing and filing an initial claim. VA's own guidance is explicit that this covers even gathering the necessary documents and filling out the forms. Charging for it violates the standards of conduct for accredited representatives and is grounds for canceling accreditation.
So if someone is charging you a fee, or taking a cut, to file your first claim — that by itself tells you something about who you are dealing with.
Once VA has issued its initial decision, an accredited attorney may charge for representation on review. My fee is contingent: a share of any past-due benefits actually awarded, and nothing at all if the appeal wins nothing. It never touches the monthly compensation you receive going forward — only the retroactive amount, and only if there is one.
The exact figure goes in your written fee agreement before any work starts, so you see it and agree to it in advance. Federal law also requires any fee I charge to be reasonable, and VA can review it and order it reduced — no matter what the agreement says.
My fee pays for representation. Case expenses are a different category: a private medical opinion, records from a private provider, travel to a hearing. Federal regulation treats them separately from fees, and VA does not pay them out of your back pay.
So you buy those directly from whoever provides them. The physician who writes an opinion is your doctor, and the opinion is yours whatever happens with the appeal. I don't front expenses, and I don't take them off the top of an award. You'll know what something costs before it's incurred, and nothing gets spent without your say-so.
And not every appeal needs one. A Higher-Level Review is decided on the record VA already has, so there's nothing to buy.
The fee agreement is written, names the terms, and is filed with VA within 30 days of signing. You keep the right to discharge me at any time, and the right to challenge whether a fee is reasonable: you can ask VA to review it, and VA can order the fee reduced if it finds it excessive or unreasonable. No agreement I ask you to sign will restrict VA from contacting you, or penalize you for firing me.
I don't quote a flat price for a VA appeal, and I don't promise a rating, a percentage, or a timeline. Nobody can — the evidence and the adjudicator decide that, not your lawyer. What I will tell you on the first call is what I think your realistic options are, and whether you need a lawyer at all.
VA recognizes only one representative at a time on a claim. So if a Veterans Service Organization (the VFW, the American Legion, DAV, or your county Veterans Service Officer) currently holds your power of attorney, appointing a new representative automatically revokes that appointment unless you specifically indicate otherwise. It happens by operation of the regulation, the moment VA receives the new form. Nobody has to tell you it happened.
VSOs are free, many of them are very good, and if yours is moving your claim and communicating with you, stay where you are. There's no reason to give up a share of your back pay for work someone competent is already doing for nothing.
Call me when that isn't the situation: when the appeal needs a legal theory rather than another form, when the record has to be built for the Board, or when you can't get anyone to return your calls.
And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. On VA Form 21-22a the scope of my representation can be limited in writing to a single claim. A limited appointment revokes a general power of attorney only as to that claim, while it's pending. Once it's finally decided, your VSO's general appointment is back in place for anything new. You can bring me in for the appeal without giving up the people who have been helping you.
VA publishes every accredited attorney, claims agent, and VSO representative in a public database. Look me up by name, Durward Elton Johnson, before you sign anything:
VA accredited representative search →
Use that same database on anyone who contacts you about your benefits. If they're not in it, they aren't accredited to represent you before VA.
And be clear about what accreditation is.It's federal permission to represent claimants before VA. It's not a certification of skill, it's not a specialty, and VA doesn't endorse anyone who holds it. The rest of the record is separate: twenty years as a uniformed attorney in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps, combat deployments to Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and an active Kentucky law license, KY Bar #101547.
