Don’t Look Back in Anger: Leveraging Prior Claims to Your Client’s Benefit – NOSSCR 2026 Fall National Conference – Track I (Presented by National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives)

Prior claims are treated as dead weight — a closed file, a denial to explain away, an abandonment to move past. This session flips that posture. Every prior claim, whether approved, denied, terminated, or abandoned, carries material a practitioner can put to work.

The doctrines cut both ways. Reopen the right claim and benefits expand; overlook the opportunity and it is lost. Res judicata can bar a new claim — or be turned to your client’s advantage. Collateral estoppel can lock in findings your client already won or resurface ones you’d rather leave behind.

You walk out with concrete strategies for tapping into prior claims in every posture: a framework for spotting reopening candidates, deciding when preclusion doctrines help or hurt, and breathing new life into a claim to maximize benefits for your client.