welcome to another edition of cck's live in under five i'm emma peterson and today
i'm going to be explaining about the direct docket at the board of veterans appeals or bva
so the board of veterans appeals or bva is the appellate body of the united states department of
veterans affairs va meaning it has the ability to overrule a decision made by a va regional office
in february 2019 va officially implemented the appeals modernization act the ama and in
this new appeals system veterans have three lanes for appealing a decision from the regional office
the first option is to file a supplemental claim which is an option to submit new and relevant
evidence and have a new decision come to you from the regional office you can also file for a higher
level review where a claim would be reviewed by a senior va claims adjudicator but no new evidence
could be submitted and that also happens at the regional office the final choice is to file a
notice of disagreement and that would appeal your decision directly to the board of veterans appeals
within that nod that notice disagreement there are three choices you can appeal direct docket
which we're going to talk about today you can also pick the evidence docket or you can pick
the hearing docket so let's get further into the direct docket the direct docket review is the bda
applies to veterans who do not want to submit any additional evidence to the board and do not
want a hearing before a veterans law judge or vlj so let me repeat that again there will be
no new evidence submitted everything that was before the regional office at the time
they made their initial decision that's all that the the board will be able to review
um in this docket the decision will be based on that evidence of record at the time of the
agency of original jurisdiction's decision and in other words the board is only going to look at the
evidence in the claimant's file when the decision was appealed was issued now this is typically the
fastest of the three dockets at the bba since it does not involve the submission of new evidence or
hearing and you can always check out how fast va is moving on average at the bba their website
bva metrics which google search will take you right there publishes how they're doing
and you can see the time difference between the different dockets right now the average
time for the direct docket the fastest docket is just under a year but user experience might vary
if your case has been expedited due to your age or circumstances it might be a little faster
um but for other folks it might be longer than that just shy of one year experience so
do keep that in mind when picking your lane at the board for more information about the
direct docket review or the other two options that i mentioned before the bva or really any
choice under the ama please be sure to visit our blog at cck dash law dot com forward slash blog
check out our longer form youtube videos we have a lot of information there too
and as always don't forget to follow us on social media and subscribe to
our channel for the latest va dep updates and veterans news and thanks for joining me
you