The Roundtable of All Roundtables: What You Should Be Appealing to Federal Court and How to Develop It – NOSSCR 2026 Fall National Conference – Track I (Presented by National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives)

Kevin S. Kerr, Senior Partner | Kerr Robichaux & Carroll

Kevin S. Kerr has practiced Social Security Disability law since 2009.

• Education & Credentials

He earned his law degree from Lewis & Clark Law School and is a member of the Oregon State Bar.

• Recognition & Leadership

He is accredited by the Department of Veterans Affairs to represent veterans on claims for compensation and pension benefits and is a member of the National Organization of Veterans’ Advocates.

• Professional Involvement

He has presented at NOSSCR national conferences, including sessions on overcoming res judicata, Step Four practice, and Appeals Council strategy.

• Experience

He is a circuit representative for NOSSCR and has appeared in over 3,000 Social Security Administrative Law Judge hearings and has handled hundreds of Federal Court appeals in Oregon, Washington, and Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sara Rose Carroll, Managing Partner | Kerr Robichaux & Carroll

Sara has been a managing partner at Kerr Robichaux & Carroll since 2018.

• Education & Credentials

She earned her B.A. in English and Professional Writing from Appalachian State University in 2006 and her Juris Doctor from the Charleston School of Law in 2011 and was admitted to the Oregon State Bar in 2014. She is a member of the Multnomah County Bar Association and Oregon Women Lawyers.

• Recognition & Leadership

She holds accreditation from the Department of Veterans Affairs to represent veterans on claims for compensation and pension benefits.

• Professional Involvement

She’s enjoyed presenting at many NOSSCR presentations over the last several years. She hopes you will gather a lot of practical information from this session that you can incorporate into your everyday practice.

• Experience

She represents disability claimants at Social Security hearings, where she questions the agency’s vocational and medical experts and holds their testimony to her clients’ documented medical histories.

David Chermol, Founding and Lead Partner | Chermol & Fishman, LLC

David Chermol is a former OGC attorney with a national litigation practice in SSA cases, representing thousands of claimants before the agency and federal courts.

• Recognition & Leadership

During his decade at SSA, he served as the Commissioner’s senior disability litigator for Mid-Atlantic Region III at the GS-15 level and received two Excellence in Service Awards and a General Counsel’s citation.

• Professional Involvement

He has provided national and regional training to SSA’s administrative law judges on issuing legally defensible decisions and, in coordination with the Department of Justice, trained SSA attorneys on effective appellate advocacy. He served as SSA’s lead author, presenter, and editor for the 2006 and 2007 Pennsylvania continuing legal education courses on disability appeals in the federal courts, and he is a member of NOSSCR and the National Association of Disability Representatives.

• Experience

From 1997 to 2007, he was an Assistant Regional Counsel for the Social Security Administration’s Office of the General Counsel in Philadelphia, serving as a Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Commissioner of Social Security in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the District of Delaware. He personally litigated or developed litigation strategy in most of the major disability cases resulting in published Third and Fourth Circuit decisions during that period.

Meredith Marcus, Partner | Osterhout Berger Daley

Meredith is an attorney with over sixteen years of experience in disability law.

• Education & Credentials

She earned her J.D., cum laude, in 2010 and holds a B.A. from Connecticut College (2004). She is admitted in Illinois (2010) and Michigan (2020) and before the U.S. Supreme Court (2018), among other federal courts.

• Recognition & Leadership

Marcus is also the present editor of the textbook, Social Security Disability Practice by James Publishing.

• Professional Involvement

She is the prior Director at Large for the National Association of Disability Representatives (NADR), the past chair for the Social Security Chicago Bar Association and has participated in multiple speaking engagements on Social Security for the Chicago Bar Association, Michigan Bar Association, American Bar Association, National Business Institute, NOSSCR and NADR.

• Experience

She has represented claimants at their administrative and remand hearings and has represented well over 400 claimants in the federal courts. She has also litigated cases, in both the U.S. District and the Sixth and Seventh Circuit U.S. Courts of Appeals, including Biestek v. Berryhill, 880 F. 3d 778 (2018) in the Sixth Circuit and consultied for the Supreme Court on Biestek v. Berryhill, 139 S. Ct. 1148, 1153, 203 L. Ed. 2d 504 (2019).

SESSION 1 – The Roundtable of All Roundtables: What You Should Be Appealing to Federal Court and How to Develop It | 12:15pm – 1:15pm

In the Circuit Roundtables, we often focus on the issues that people are litigating in the circuit and the useful existing precedential cases, but what if you want to make new law in your circuit and bring a novel issue? We will focus on the issues that are winning in various circuits and the ways you can develop the issues for appeal so that you can be the attorney to win, for example, the first case on reasoning level in your circuit. We will also examine what wins in Federal Court on vocational issues and job number issues.