Member John sends us this delightful tidbit about vA’s law dogs in the early 90’s. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’d say nothing’s changed from my perspective. What is interesting is the comments below the article.

Under guest (six days ago)

The problem is even worse, says attorney Craig Kabatchnick, who was the senior appellate attorney for the VA’s Office of General Counsel from 1990-95.

“Our job was to deny claims,” he says. “We celebrated beating veterans, especially those representing themselves.” There was no official policy, he says, but ranking attorneys instructed staff to fight and deny cases—even though the law mandated that they give veterans the benefit of the doubt. 

Kabatchnick is now the supervising attorney for the Veterans Law Project, a new legal clinic at N.C. Central University, where he and 19 students from NCCU and UNC-Chapel Hill are defending veterans and preparing their claims and appeals for free.

You see the problem ladies and gentlemen? vA portrays itself as a non-adversarial agency to the public (and Veterans). Craig clearly refutes this assumption. He left because his own father, a lawyer himself, asked him how he could sleep at night doing what he did for a living. I might have asked the same thing.