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welcome to the veterans legal Lowdown I'm Robert Chisholm a founding partner with
Chisholm Chisholm and Kilpatrick joining me today is Brad Hennings also a partner with CCK
today we are looking back at the board of veterans appeals and their disappointing
statistics from 2022. in 2022 veterans saw a worsening of the immense backlog at the
board of veterans appeals the board only decided 95,294 appeals in total and the board had a total
of 209,535 appeals pending. According to the VA around 40 percent of all cases decided in fiscal
year 22 had a previous board decision on the same issue or issues and 30 percent of all cases were
Advanced on the docket due to age illness or other qualifying circumstances what this means is that
the majority of cases being decided have already either one been before the board before or qualify
for expedited decisions at the board the cost per case at the board during fiscal year 2022
was 2 311 which is 36 percent higher than the one thousand six hundred ninety five dollar per
case cost in fiscal year 2020. the board's budget numbers show that the BVA is doing fewer cases at
a considerably higher cost that's disappointing so Brad this raises the case of how long it's taking
the board to make decisions in both Legacy and the AMA what do we know about that now well over
the past several years the board of veterans appeals has significantly changed its goals in
terms of the number of days it says veterans must wait for a decision in each of the AMA or appeals
modernization act dockets so you've got the direct review docket where the board is estimating it's
less than 356 days to meet the goal the evidence docket Which is less than 550 days and the hearing
docket Which is less than 730 days however these average days are highly misleading and only apply
to cases that have been Advanced on the board's docket or otherwise expedited our experience is
much different our experience for regular direct review docket cases is that they are taking 912
days on average to resolve evident stock in cases We Believe will take between four to six years to
resolve in addition given the frequency with the board issues remands many veterans may experience
far longer weights if they were forced to repeat the appeal process in the AMA remanded cases must
be reappealed to the board if they are denied at the RO what this means is that these veterans are
forced to go to the back of the line at the board of veterans appeals all right I want to pause
here for a minute Brad because I think this is an important point in Legacy if a case was remanded
from the board back to the regional office the case went back to its original docket number
now in the AMA where most of the cases are at the board if a case gets remanded it comes back up at
the back of the line and only if the veteran appeals that's correct you go to the back of
the line once you've been remanded so Brad what do we know so far about what's happened in fiscal
year 2023 which began in October on October 1st 2022. well the question is you know will
BVA's production increase this year and I believe the time will tell we believe they will announce
a decision goal of 103 000 based upon our sources which is almost the same number that were decided
in fiscal year 2020. however the board's budget has increased 63 percent since 2020 meaning the
same number of decisions now cost the taxpayers 63 percent more with that kind of funding cck
thinks it's reasonable for the board to increase its decision output at least 20 percent from 2020
when it did 102 663. therefore the board should issue at least 123 195 decisions this fiscal
year but the board currently has 214 588 appeals pending across Legacy and AMA since the start of
this fiscal year the board has made a total of 22 265 decisions approximately 73 percent of the
decisions made are Legacy appeals while only 27 percent of the decisions made are AMA decisions
so what that means is if your case is in the AMA um it's likely that the board is only
deciding expedited cases at this point in the AMA as they work their way through the Legacy
docket that's correct okay so I want to go back and point out two things the promise of the AMA
was that it wouldn't be backlogs the reality is we have backlogs in every single Lane at
the board presently moreover it's not just the AMA we were also promised that the Legacy case
backlog would be done that Legacy cases would be done so they haven't made two promises they
haven't finished out the Legacy cases and there's a backlog in the AMA so it's kind of the worst of
all possible worlds and the last point I want to make is what can veterans do to expedite the
process as we have mentioned in the past videos veterans have little to no control during this
process and most claims cannot be expedited however we continue to recommend working with
an experienced and accredited Advocate on your appeal to minimize potential delays and receive
a favorable decision the first time around we will continue to monitor the situation at the board and
provide updates accordingly to learn more about the legal action CCK is taking to approve the
process for veterans check out this video below and follow our gray versus McDonough petition
for writ of mandamus here at this link thanks for joining us and we look forward to seeing you again
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