May 14, 2026, 2:00-3:30 PM ET: The Battle of the Medical Experts

What happens when a veteran submits a medical opinion supporting a claim for VA disability benefits, but then the VA obtains an unfavorable medical opinion? Under the VA’s pro-claimant benefit-of-the-doubt rule, the VA should grant the claim, right? Unfortunately, the answer is “not necessarily.” Time and again, the VA relies on its own negative medical opinion to deny the claim.

In this webinar, we will give advocates advice about how to handle this common scenario in the VA claim process. We will explain reasons why a VA medical opinion might be inadequate or should be assigned less probative value than a favorable private medical opinion. We will provide tips for obtaining a persuasive private medical opinion and legal arguments that will help the veteran win “the battle of the medical experts.”

This webinar will cover the following and more:

• How to ensure that a private medical opinion is legally sufficient, highly probative, and persuasive to VA adjudicators
• Arguments to raise when submitting a favorable medical opinion that can dissuade the VA from obtaining its own, potentially negative, medical opinion
• The presumption of competency of VA examiners and when advocates should challenge that presumption
• How to best argue that the VA should assign more probative value to a favorable medical opinion than an unfavorable medical opinion
• A discussion of why examinations may be inadequate, supported by case law