Veterans Appeals Board: New Rule Prioritizes Lawyers with 3+ Years Experience for Judge Roles

The Veterans Law Judge Experience Act of 2025 is short, but it makes a significant change to who gets to decide veterans’ claims appeals. Specifically, it tackles appointments to the Board of Veterans Appeals (BVA).

The New Mandate: Lawyers First

This bill inserts a new requirement into the process for appointing judges to the BVA. When the Chairman of the Board recommends candidates to the Secretary, they must now give priority to individuals who have at least three years of professional legal experience. This experience must be directly related to the laws the Secretary enforces—meaning veterans’ benefits law. Essentially, if you’re applying to be a BVA judge, having three years of relevant legal work now moves you to the front of the line.

What Does This Mean for Veterans’ Claims?

The BVA is the final step in the administrative process for veterans appealing denied benefits claims. The judges there need to be experts in complex medical, military, and legal issues. The clear benefit here is that prioritizing lawyers with specific experience in veterans law should, theoretically, lead to a more legally rigorous and consistent decision-making process. Better legal expertise could mean fewer decisions that get overturned later in court, which is good for everyone.

The Trade-Off: Expertise vs. Credentials

Here’s where the policy gets tricky. While more legal expertise sounds great, the BVA currently benefits from a variety of backgrounds. Many highly effective BVA judges and decision-makers come from non-legal fields—they might be former service officers, medical professionals, or vocational rehabilitation experts who have spent decades immersed in the administrative side of veterans benefits. They know the system inside and out, even if they don't have a law degree.

By mandating priority for candidates with a legal background (Section 2), this bill risks putting these non-lawyer experts at a distinct disadvantage. It’s a classic credentials-versus-experience dilemma. You could have a non-lawyer who has handled thousands of complex claims and knows the rules better than most attorneys, but they would be passed over in favor of a lawyer with three years of experience, simply because of the professional legal designation. This could inadvertently limit the pool of candidates, potentially sacrificing practical, real-world knowledge for formal legal training. The real-world impact is that the BVA might lose out on some of the most knowledgeable people in the field.