Comment by MWil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MWil | Hacker News Reader

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Seeking motivated cofounder(s) interested in legaltech/edtech/govtech.

I am a domain expert in Veterans Disability law, 1.7mil in revenue (me and 3 paralegals) in 2020, formed Veteran Disability boutique firm in 2021.

Looking to build the "Clio for Veterans Disability Claims." Although this is a single, niche area of administrative law, there are more than enough customers on an individual (veterans with claims, accredited agents, accredited attorneys [solos and firms] and an institutional basis (veteran service organizations, law school clinics, non-profits).

The Clio-and-all-others approach of building out generic "law practice" software that you modify for your practice area does not work well for this area of the law IMO. This will not have features that would not serve this area well and thus will not charge per user accordingly.

I routinely have to maintain a legal strategy going back 50-60 years for a single claim. Clients routinely have 2-3 claims active at any given time. Claims routinely include 8-11 different medical conditions, each of which having to meet their own pre-requisites and burdens. Claims routinely branch onto different "paths" within the administrative scheme.

I want to empower veterans and advocates against the kafka-esque system of the VA.

I can tell you from my own experience that one of the biggest hurdles was obtaining accurate medical records from hospitals and clinics outside of the DoD (for those times when on-base providers were insufficient). Every VSO I tried to work with seemed overly burdened and unfamiliar with how to communicate with systems outside of the state they lived in, and definitely useless in trying to get info from private hospitals overseas.

The second biggest hurdle was (and still is) tying those records, however complete they may be, to a legitimate claim. Lots of barriers there, including personal "nah that's no big deal don't bother complaining about it" type things. On the other hand and simultaneously, it feels to me like I am missing several things I should be claiming but can't find the right terms to use (both for claims and for care, tbh).

Not sure if that's even remotely relevant to your project, but I figure it couldn't hurt to share some potential user pain points.

It is definitely relevant because again, at a fundamental level, the mainstay Clio-and-others don't have a great way to track what are essentially staging vs. production of the evidence in the claims file.

Getting medical records from private provider X is really: - Should they exist because treatment was provided in the past? - Do they still exist in reality (some private providers have very harsh retention policies - shred after 7-10 years) - Did they get the request? - Did they respond correctly to the request? - Does the response contain helpful information for any claim? - Has it been submitted? - Has it been submitted but not acknowledged? - Has it been acknowledged but not for the probative value we judged it internally?

Like - that's just a very SMALL part of the daily process of tracking that goes on everyday for every client.

The claims file contains some n# of pdfs when I become rep. I do work in the background to review those explicit contents, make implicit judgments, and work further in the background on the creation/requesting of evidence to be staged for possible inclusion/submission to the VA. In the meantime, VA is further adding to the claims file with every letter/memo/exam/set of VA medical records.

VSOs are overly burdened and sometimes ill-fit for certain parts of the process, but they have always only truly excelled at filing new, initial claims or new claims for increases - not appeals or anything requiring nuance. Attorneys have really only been involved in the process in a major way for less than 15 years versus over generations of the VSOs but attorneys assisting veterans now outnumbers help from VSOs for the first time within the last year. Our average odds are also higher for success - it's something like 12% do it yourself, 22% VSO, 32% with help from an attorney. I can't recall exactly but it's in the annual reports of the VBA and BVA.

That's one of the most helpful HN comments ever posted by someone whose user name sounds like a Sopranos character

Hi, current Vet with disability here, I would like to work with you on this project if possible. Medically retired from US Army as well (blue card).

My domain is cybersecurity and IT management, actually in last year of BS for cybersecurity and IT management. Worked as PM for a different software company for payment processing, had to quit due to real life. I would like to help myself along with other vets with VA system, hell, maybe improve VA as well.

My email is in my profile. Feel free to reach out!

That sounds pretty interesting! I am definitely interested in following along.

Do you think you will opensource any of it? I am always interested in workflow tools for various domains.

I would defer entirely to the main contributor/team on that.

I support open source and one of the things I truly hate is that several case management products don’t even offer open APIs. A few of them have closed them after initially opening them. Or just generally learning they can massively up charge for the “luxury.”

Feel free to reach out!

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