To be the best advocate for your veterans, it is important to understand the recent court decisions this webinar will cover.

In the past few months, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have issued groundbreaking holdings about VA benefits. Without an understanding of these recent changes to veterans law, advocates will be less effective in developing strategies and arguments to help veterans with their claims.

By staying up-to-date with recent court decisions that are binding on the VA, you will be better able to answer questions from your veterans and advise them about important issues from challenging the competency of VA medical examiners to whether your veterans qualify for reimbursement of emergency medical expenses.

Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit is being requested from the Commonwealth of Virginia. If granted, this credit will count (in part) toward satisfying the VA’s accreditation requirements.

The purpose of this recorded webinar is to help you understand and provide you advocacy advice regarding recent Court decisions addressing:

• Whether National Academies reports on veterans and Agent Orange are constructively before the VA, and therefore trigger the VA’s duty to obtain a medical opinion addressing whether certain diseases are directly linked to a veteran’s Agent Orange exposure.
• The validity of the VA’s regulation preventing reimbursement of emergency medical expenses for deductibles and co-insurance, and the VA’s denial of claims for reimbursement of these emergency medical expenses.
• The scope of the VA’s duty to address the competence of a VA examiner when a veteran does not specifically contest the examiner’s competence.
• Whether the presumption that VA examiners are competent is consistent with the VA’s duty to assist and the benefit of the doubt rule; and if so, the extent of that presumption.
• Whether the probative value of a medical opinion may be affected by the qualifying or contradictory aspects of a medical text upon which the examiner relied.
• The VA’s duty to maximize benefits and its need to exhaust all schedular alternatives for rating a disability before addressing an extraschedular rating.
• And other important issues you need to know about!