1. Failure to develop a theory of the case.
2. Failure to fully develop the record.
3. Failure to prepare the claimant for the hearing.
4. Failure to solicit testimony regarding all the claimant’s impairments at the hearing.
5. Failure to develop all the mental and physical duties of claimant’s relevant past work at the hearing.
6. Failure to develop the claimant’s educational background and/or illiteracy at the hearing.
7. Failure to ask about side effects of medications.
8. Failure to bring a witness to the hearing when corroboration is essential.
9. Inadequate cross examination of medical experts.
10. Inadequate cross examination of vocational experts.

When the administrative law judge rules against your client, you have three choices: accept the decision, try to reopen the decision, or appeal the decision. Reopening the decision can be faster and involve less work than an appeal, but to reopen a decision you need to identify an adequate reason to invoke the reopening regulations, to file a timely request for reopening, to satisfy a good cause standard in most cases, to avoid the res judicicata bar of the regulations, and to persuade the Social Security Administration to exercises its administrative discretion in favor of reopening. Still, if turning the unfavorable decision around depends on new evidence, and you can clear the other hurdles, this may be the way to go, since the federal district court will not consider evidence which SSA has not evaluated. On the other hand, if the ALJ decision contains reversible error and new evidence is not available or not strong, appeal offers several advantages, not the least of which is that it makes determination of your client’s rights turn on legal precedent and your advocacy skills rather than on an exercise of administrative discretion. Appeal from an unfavorable or only partially favorable ALJ decision lies first to the SSA’s Appeals Council, which will most often declare that there is no cause for review and that the ALJ’s decision stands as the final decision of the Commissioner of the SSA. With the exception of Constitutional claims, a “final” decision is a prerequisite to the federal district court having subject matter jurisdiction.