How does ClaimHour handle a 200-case SSD docket where most matters have low individual billing volume?

The key issue in high-volume SSD practice is cross-matter attribution across batched work sessions. An attorney reviewing medical records updates for 15 clients in a single 3-hour session needs to attribute those hours to individual matters, not block-bill 3 hours against an undifferentiated 'records review' entry. ClaimHour captures the 3-hour document-edit session and presents it in the evening digest as one event; you allocate by the per-matter minutes you actually spent. The attribution discipline at review time — rather than during the review session itself — is what makes 200-matter high-volume practice tractable. Attempting to start a per-matter timer at the beginning of each client's records section during a continuous review session fails reliably.

Vertical guide · Updated June 2026

Social security disability attorney time tracking: EAJA fee petitions and high-volume practice records

Q: Why do SSD attorneys need time records if they work on contingency?

Three distinct reasons. First, the Equal Access to Justice Act (28 U.S.C. § 2412) allows a prevailing party to recover attorney fees when the government's position was not substantially justified — and every federal court remand of an ALJ denial is a potential EAJA petition. EAJA fee petitions require Hensley-quality contemporaneous records; the lodestar calculation applies to the administrative and judicial phases separately. Second, the Social Security Act § 206(a) caps the contingency fee at 25% of back pay (maximum $7,200), but if the EAJA hourly rate times your documented hours exceeds that cap, you can receive the higher amount — but only with documented hours. Third, SSA Form 1696 and fee agreement approvals require hour attestations that are far easier to make accurately from contemporaneous records than from reconstruction.

Q: What's the EAJA fee math for a typical SSD remand case?

The EAJA hourly rate for 2026 is approximately $230–$240/hr (cost-of-living adjusted from the $125 base under 28 U.S.C. § 2412(d)(2)(A)). A typical SSD remand case requires 20–40 hours of attorney work: administrative phase (15–25 hours across initial filing, medical development, pre-hearing brief, ALJ hearing), and federal court phase (8–20 hours for the complaint, record review, summary judgment briefing). At $235/hr, a 30-hour case produces a potential EAJA award of $7,050. Against the 25%/max-$7,200 contingency cap, an attorney with documented hours often has an EAJA claim that exceeds or matches the contingency — but only if the hours are documented to Hensley standards. Reconstructed records get cut 20–35% by courts, reducing a $7,050 EAJA claim to $4,600–$5,600.

Q: What work events does ClaimHour capture for ALJ hearing preparation?

ALJ hearing prep in SSD practice has three high-density capture surfaces: (1) medical records review sessions — PDF focus-duration for records from treating physicians, specialists, and SSA's examination consultants, each document-edit burst labeled with the record title and timestamps; (2) treating physician coordination calls — calls to obtain RFC (residual functional capacity) forms and to discuss clinical findings relevant to the hearing, captured as call duration + contact metadata from the iOS companion; (3) pre-hearing brief and position statement drafting — Word or Pages edit-time bursts on the brief document. On hearing day, the ClaimHour iOS app captures the hearing itself (calendar event), the post-hearing call with the client, and any follow-up calls with the hearing office. All appear in the evening digest for one-click attribution.

Social Security disability practice looks like pure contingency — 25% of back pay, capped at $7,200, no hourly clock. But every federal court remand of an ALJ denial is a potential Equal Access to Justice Act fee petition, and EAJA petitions require the same Hensley lodestar records that employment and civil rights solos need for § 1988 cases. With 200+ simultaneous matters at low per-matter billing intensity, the attribution and capture discipline is harder than any other practice area — and the stakes per EAJA petition are $5,000–$10,000 in additional attorney fees per case that go uncaptured when records are reconstructed.

TL;DR

ClaimHour captures medical records review sessions, treating physician calls, ALJ hearing prep document edits, and post-hearing federal court briefing — passively, no timer, no audio, no document contents. It builds the contemporaneous Hensley-quality records that EAJA fee petitions require, across a 200-matter docket where per-matter billing intensity is low. $29–$59/mo. No PMS required.

Why SSD attorneys need time records even on contingency

The EAJA fee-petition opportunity

The Equal Access to Justice Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2412, provides that a party who prevails against the federal government in civil litigation may recover attorney fees if the government's position was not substantially justified. In Social Security disability practice, every federal court remand of an ALJ denial is a potential trigger: if the ALJ erred in evaluating medical evidence, ignored a treating physician's RFC, applied the wrong Grid Rule, or made a credibility finding the district court finds unsupported, the government's position in defending that denial was arguably not substantially justified — and the attorney can petition for fees.

EAJA fee awards for SSD remands range from $3,500 to $12,000 per case depending on the complexity of the federal court phase and the number of documented hours. The critical constraint: EAJA petitions require contemporaneous time records at task-specific granularity, broken down between the administrative phase and the federal court phase, with no block billing. Courts applying Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424 (1983) to EAJA petitions cut reconstructed records by 20–35%. For an SSD solo with 30 federal remands per year, the difference between contemporaneous and reconstructed records is $35,000–$60,000 of annual EAJA fee revenue.

The § 206(a) cap and the EAJA comparison

The Social Security Act caps attorney fees at 25% of the claimant's back pay, with a maximum of $7,200 per case under 42 U.S.C. § 406(b). This cap applies when the attorney is paid from the claimant's award. However, if the case was remanded from federal court and the attorney has a valid EAJA claim, the attorney collects the higher of the EAJA award or the contingency fee — not both, but the higher one. For complex cases where the federal court phase consumed 20+ hours, the EAJA calculation at $235/hr frequently exceeds the $7,200 cap: 31 hours × $235 = $7,285, just above the cap. For cases in the 35–50 hour federal phase range, the EAJA claim can reach $8,000–$12,000, well above the contingency cap.

Without documented hours, the attorney has no EAJA claim that exceeds the cap, regardless of how much work was done. With documented hours, the EAJA calculation is mechanical: hours × EAJA rate = award. The entire incremental EAJA recovery above the cap is contingent on the quality of the hours record.

The high-volume attribution problem

SSD solos routinely carry 150–300 active matters simultaneously. The per-matter billing intensity is low compared to litigation practice — most matters generate 2–5 billable events per month — but the aggregate is substantial: 200 matters × 3 hours/month/matter = 600 billable hours per month, at low per-matter granularity that requires high-fidelity attribution to separate EAJA-eligible federal matters from contingency-only administrative matters.

The attribution failure mode is batched work: an attorney reviewing records updates for 20 clients in a single 4-hour session cannot reconstruct which client's records took how long. Block-billing 4 hours against "medical records review" for 20 matters will not survive an EAJA petition audit. Passive capture — with per-document-session timestamps and a daily per-matter allocation at review time — is the only mechanism that resolves the attribution problem at the scale of a high-volume SSD practice.

What SSD work looks like in the capture log

Medical records development

SSD practice is records-intensive in both directions: obtaining medical evidence for the ALJ and reviewing SSA's examination consultant records to challenge inadequate findings. Each records review session is a focused document-edit event — the attorney opens a PDF, reads, annotates, and closes it. ClaimHour captures the focus duration and document title (never the contents). A 3-hour records development session across six clients' files appears in the digest as six separate events with timestamps; the attorney allocates each to the correct matter at review time.

Treating physician coordination calls

Obtaining a fully favorable RFC (residual functional capacity) form from a treating physician is often the difference between an ALJ award and a denial. The process involves multiple short calls: explaining the form to the physician, following up on completion, discussing specific clinical findings relevant to the Listings or RFC grid. These calls run 8–20 minutes each. In a 200-matter practice, the aggregate physician call volume is 30–60 calls per month — at $200/hr EAJA rate, that is 10–20 hours of EAJA-recoverable time that almost never appears on petition records at its true value.

ALJ hearing preparation

The week before an ALJ hearing is the highest-density work period in SSD practice. Hearing prep involves: reviewing the administrative record (2–4 hours), drafting the pre-hearing brief or position statement (1.5–3 hours), preparing the claimant for testimony (30–60 minute call), reviewing the vocational expert's anticipated testimony (45–90 minutes), and final argument preparation (1–2 hours). Total: 6–10 hours in a compressed week, fragmented across multiple short sessions. Passive capture sees each session independently; reconstruction from memory after the hearing typically produces 3–5 hours.

Federal court briefing phase

When an ALJ denial is appealed to federal district court, the attorney enters the most EAJA-relevant phase of the case. The complaint (1–2 hours), the plaintiff's brief on the merits (8–15 hours), the reply brief if filed (2–4 hours), and client status calls throughout (5–10 hours) make up the federal phase. This is the phase where contemporaneous records are the literal difference between collecting EAJA fees or not. ClaimHour captures each drafting session and client call as they happen; the federal-court phase time log is the EAJA petition exhibit.

The SSA administrative phase: building the record for on-the-record reversals

Some ALJ remands produce an on-the-record reversal before a new hearing — the Appeals Council reviews the federal court's remand order and issues a fully favorable decision without a new hearing. Those matters settle faster, but the hours up to the remand still qualify for EAJA recovery if the government's position was not substantially justified. An attorney who documented 15 hours of administrative-phase work on a matter that resolved via OTR after remand has a $3,525 EAJA claim (at $235/hr) that disappears entirely if the records were not kept contemporaneously. In a 30-remand/year practice with 8–10 OTR resolutions, the undocumented OTR phase represents $28,000–$35,000 of EAJA revenue annually.

We cover the general cost-basis and fee-shifting framework in the contingency-fee solo's leak and the full Hensley petition standard in the lodestar affidavit walkthrough.

How ClaimHour fits SSD practice

If you are an SSD solo with 100+ active matters, regular federal remands, and EAJA petitions that could be filed but aren't because the hours records don't support them — ClaimHour's passive capture layer builds the contemporaneous record across the full case lifecycle without requiring per-matter timer discipline in a high-volume environment. Join the waitlist and we'll email when early access opens.

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