I had an in-person hearing at the Portland Hearing office last week, on September 10th. When I signed in, I noticed that no one had signed in to the hearing office since August 22nd, 3 weeks before. Sign-ins before that were similarly sparse.
The hearing offices used to have busy public spaces. Back in the day, there would be a full waiting room of people waiting for their hearings. Sometimes all four hearing rooms were occupied with judges holding hearings in disability cases. Today, the hearing offices are like ghost towns, and usually the only hearing room in use is the one for your hearing.
This is not because there are fewer hearings. Rather, video hearings (and to a lesser extent, telephone hearings) have taken over. Claimants and their Representatives do not need to travel to the hearing office for their hearing. They can stay at home and have the hearing on their laptop via Microsoft Teams, which operates like a Zoom call. The technology works great. Video hearings are a great benefit to claimants, to Representatives, and to ALJs.
When video hearings started years ago, I was skeptical due to a perceived “empathy gap.” I felt that there was a benefit for the client to be in person, in front of the judge, to give testimony. I was getting better outcomes with in-person hearings. But now that the judges are holding most of their hearings this way, I am no longer seeing the empathy gap. Everyone has gotten used to the technology.
Sometimes my client wants to go in person, and that is always fine. But I no longer tell my clients that an in-person hearing is strongly preferred. The video hearings get the same results.
There is one drawback. Once a claimant opts in for a video or telephone hearing, that hearing can then be conducted by a judge in an out-of-state hearing office. I have had video hearings assigned to judges in New Hampshire, upstate New York, and most recently, Rhode Island. Now all these hearings had great outcomes. But I know the judges here at home pretty well, and having the case heard by a new judge adds additional uncertainty to the hearing process.