This year alone the Social Security Administration (SSA) is expected to receive millions of applications for disability benefits. What many applicants don’t realize is that the majority of these claims will be denied during the initial stage of the application process. In the State of North Dakota, approximately 58.2 percent of the applicants who file disability claims with the SSA are denied during the initial stage of the application process.
If you file a disability claim in the State of North Dakota and are denied during the initial stage of the application process, your best chance of receiving benefits will be when you have your disability hearing. This hearing will be processed by an SSA ODAR office and will be heard by an Administrative Law Judge. In the State of North Dakota there is only one ODAR office to process the hearings for all of the disability applicants in the state. This office is located in the City of Fargo. Because this city must handle all of North Dakota’s disability hearings, the waiting period to obtain such a hearing is quite lengthy. The average processing time to schedule a hearing for a disability applicant in North Dakota is 334 days – nearly one year.
The table below outlines the approval rates and processing times for the ODAR office in the State of North Dakota versus the national average.
| Hearing Office | Approval Rate | Processing Time in Days |
| Fargo | 52.4% | 334 |
In the entire state of North Dakota there are only 9 Administrative Law Judges who hear disability cases for the SSA. These judges vary quite significantly in their award ratios and in the way in which they handle the cases they hear. Winning your disability case depends quite a bit upon understanding the specific preferences of the Administrative Law Judge that your case is assigned to.
North Dakota Social Security Disability lawyers are familiar with the Administrative Law Judges who handle the disability hearings for the Fargo ODAR office. When you work with an attorney, your attorney will know which judge your case has been assigned to and how to best prepare your case for that particular Administrative Law Judge.
If you would like a free consultation with a disability attorney in North Dakota, please fill out the free evaluation form provided for you on this site. The initial consultation with a SSDI or SSI attorney is always free and North Dakota Social Security attorneys work on a contingency basis, collecting only 25 percent of the back pay that you are awarded by the SSA. If you do not win your case, your attorney does not collect a fee.
