Entering Unfamiliar Territory to Access a Client's Lifeline

May 01, 2026

Washington Lawyer May/June 2026
By John Murph

For the past five years, Brooklyn Arbona-Rodriguez has struggled to keep a regular job because of her disability. She last worked at a grocery store in Falls Church, Virginia, beginning in 2021 at 30 hours a week, which eventually dropped to only four hours a week. "Recently, I just stopped altogether because it was too much of a challenge," Arbona-Rodriguez said in early February.

Arbona-Rodriguez, 43, lives with schizoaffective disorder, diagnosed when she was 18 years old. Her medication for the disorder causes chronic fatigue. She also has trouble sleeping at night. "Getting out of my building is an enormous challenge for me," she said. "I get to bed late at night, then I sleep through the afternoon. When I wake up, it's hard for me just to get the mental motivation to get out of bed. I'm always exhausted."

To help pay her bills, Arbona-Rodriguez sought Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), which provides monthly benefits to people whose disabilities stop or limit their ability to work. As of 2025, the U.S. federal government pays a maximum of $4,018 per month to eligible individuals; the average monthly benefit is $1,580, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA).

Arbona-Rodriguez's application was initially denied, prompting her to seek assistance from Whitman-Walker Health Legal Services, which in turn referred her to the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center. With the help of attorney volunteers from Bass, Berry & Sims PLC — Maleaka Guice, Dee Harleston, and Gabrielle Degelia — Arbona-Rodriguez succeeded in securing SSDI payments, ending a three-year wait.

Coping With Mental Illness

Arbona-Rodriguez first received SSDI in her mid-20s. Eventually, her symptoms became manageable enough that she no longer needed the benefits. She said that she felt "very strong" around 2019. "I was working at The Occidental restaurant in Washington, D.C., and was a music director at Clarendon Presbyterian Church," she said. "I think I made about $50,000 that year. I was doing quite well."

Today, when she manages to leave home, Arbona-Rodriguez contends with disorientation and has difficulty navigating large gatherings of people. "I get very worried walking to the Metro, [thinking] that somebody is going to abduct me or something," she said. "I have that recurring fear all the time."

While working at the grocery store, Arbona-Rodriguez often had to ask other employees for help because she found it difficult to memorize tasks. "I needed like a five-to-seven-minute break once every hour just to collect myself mentally," she said. "It became hard for them to keep me. They were very nice, but it became too hard for me all around. I ended up leaving."

Music plays an essential part in her well-being. An accomplished pianist and singer, Arbona-Rodriguez described music as "a safe haven and a refuge." "When I'm playing the piano … my mind feels at rest. I don't feel anxious and worried, and I don't have disturbing thoughts," she said.

But not even music could help her ease the symptoms that were beginning to reemerge. "All of the old delusions started coming back around 2022. I started getting afraid of being around people; it became harder to leave my house; my memory [became] more challenging," Arbona-Rodriguez said.

Many Apply, Most Are Denied

Arbona-Rodriguez connected with the volunteer attorneys through the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center's Advocacy & Justice Clinic in June 2024. Guice, an associate at Bass, Berry & Sims, reviewed Arbona-Rodriguez's application for SSDI, noting that she was initially denied because her disabilities were not up to the standards to receive benefits.

"Typically, the SSA looks at the record and sees a disability, but they will say there is available work [for the applicant]," Guice explained. "They believed that there was employment out there that she would be able to do. We ended up presenting additional evidence to show that just was not the case."

The SSA Office of Decision Support and Strategic Information reported in January 2025 that 62 percent of SSDI applications in 2024 were denied in the initial stage. Of the more than 2 million claims filed that year, only 38 percent received approval.

Janice K. Johnson Hunter, the Pro Bono Center's support attorney for public benefits, said that because the process of applying for SSDI is bogged down with so much procedural work and long time frames, most applicants don't appeal after being denied.

"The time between filing the application and receiving the initial determination — and, if you're denied, filing an appeal — is generally at least six months," Hunter said. "The District of Columbia is running between six to eight months . . . before you get any kind of determination. And then if you file an appeal, that may take another six to eight months. It's a very slow process."

After a denial, applicants have 60 days to file their first appeal, which is a "request for reconsideration," Hunter said. "Most people do not file those appeals — particularly people who are managing mental impairments," she added. "It's just too hard. It's overwhelming [with] the paperwork, the phone calls. And currently … you can't even call a Social Security office and actually speak with someone. The phones ring and ring and ring. Then when the phone is answered, you're put on hold between 15 minutes to sometimes hours. It becomes almost impossible to deal with."

Many applicants are denied because of unclear medical documentation, improper explanation of how their conditions limit their ability to work, technical errors on the application, misunderstandings of the specific criteria the SSA uses to evaluate disabilities, missed deadlines, or failure to follow up properly.

Hunter said that Arbona-Rodriguez's appeal was particularly challenging because of her age and the fact that she had earned both a bachelor's and a master's degree. In short, she did not fit SSA's profile of someone needing SSDI.

Guice also pointed out that a nonblind applicant can't earn more than $1,690 a month (after a nine-month trial work period) to receive SSDI benefits. "So, you can have some employment, but you can't make more than that," she said. "If you're employed and making under that threshold, you argue you're doing as much as you can tolerate with your disability."

What It Takes to Win

Over the span of three years, Arbona-Rodriguez navigated seemingly endless administrative loops, completing and compiling loads of paperwork, gathering testimonies from former colleagues and friends about her disability, taking a consultative exam with a psychiatrist, and obtaining written evaluations from doctors.

Guice and her former Bass, Berry & Sims colleagues, Harleston and Degelia, worked with Arbona-Rodriguez for nearly a year to help strengthen her case, which included tracking daily activities, gathering paperwork for her case to be presented to an administrative law judge evaluator, and accompanying her when she had to speak about her disabilities. "Brooklyn was the type of client who went to the doctor monthly," Guice said. "So, every time she would go to a doctor's appointment, we would say, 'We need those records.'"

The team waited several months before receiving a hearing date and complied with more requests for supporting documentation. In March 2025, Arbona-Rodriguez had a hearing before Judge M. Krasnow of the Office of Hearing Operations, and six months later, she received an approval for SSDI benefits.

Hunter applauded the pro bono attorneys for their tenacity, especially since they all leaped into unfamiliar legal territory. "The majority of volunteer attorneys do transactional work, so this very client-based, administrative, in-the-trenches kind of work is not what they generally do," Hunter said.

Before even delving into Arbona-Rodriguez's case, Guice, Harleston, and Degelia had to obtain a representative ID number to work on a Social Security case and then fill out a Claimant's Appointment of a Representative form.

"I explained to the volunteers what they needed to do," Hunter said. "I also gave them tips on how to interact with the Social Security offices and information about the difference between calling the local field office [and] the hearings office. I want to make sure that we're giving the pro bono attorneys the best opportunity to provide competent representation and to enjoy what they're doing."

Guice admits that helping Arbona-Rodriguez was a learning curve. "I really had to learn from scratch what the standards are for Social Security benefits and how to pull together the information from medical records and sources that the [SSA] is looking for," Guice said. "Even though I am a health care attorney, I don't read medical records on a daily basis, so I can't decipher immediately what the practitioner is trying to convey."

But the Pro Bono Center equipped her and her colleagues with great resources, Guice said. "They provided videos walking you through different things and lots of material to read," she added.

For Arbona-Rodriguez, the experience working with the volunteer attorneys was positive all around. "They really wanted to help me. That was the first thing I felt when I was with them," she said. "They had a spark. They were committed to seeing me successfully appeal my case."

Arbona-Rodriguez was expecting to receive $1,500 a month in SSDI benefits beginning in March. "That's an enormous amount of money for me," she said. "I will be able to find a room to rent. I'm thinking about finding another room closer to my best friend. Again, I was very fortunate to find people to help me."

D.C. Bar staff writer John Murph has received three Luminary Awards from the National Association for Bar Professionals for his feature articles. Reach him at [email protected].