What to look for in SSI lawyer? (FL)

Hello! I'm looking for advice in trying to pick out a disability (SSI) lawyer in Florida. I'll include some more details down below, but in short, I'm okay paying more for those "you don't pay unless you win" type offices, I just want to know what else I should look for in picking out a lawyer. Red flags, green flags, etc.

So I'm a 25 year old diagnosed with autism, anxiety, depression, venous insufficiency, and several other conditions that I don't think are on the list of approved disabilities but the biggest one there is moderate atherosclerosis in my abdominal aorta (anyone who knows anything about heart disease knows that's really bad for my age). I'm still trying to figure out the extent of my conditions and what all I have, but basically I have that really crummy chronic fatigue cluster of disorders that make me unable to hold down a regular job but no one can tell why because they're all invisible. I have tried to do jobs before, but I can't stand for long periods of time without extreme pain, and my brainfog from my mental conditions makes complex desk jobs a problem, and any job I could do requires experience in jobs that I am physically incapable of doing. I've always had pain since I was a kid that nobody took seriously, but during my college years my pain got steadily worse as I walked to and from classes every day (in highschool I was homeschooled so I wasn't having to walk very much back then) to the point where I have pretty bad pain whenever I walk or stand too much in a day. I'm functional in my everyday life, but that's about it. My only real solution is self-employment, which the aforementioned brainfog makes pretty difficult. I was diagnosed with all of these besides venous insufficiency and the atherosclerosis before I was 22 (autism at 18, other mental health conditions I was under 18) and my venous insufficiency definitely started before I was 22 and possibly even before I was 18 as I've had the discoloration all my life, it's just slowly gotten worse. Pushing myself past my limits also seems like a bad thing given my increased risk of heart attack and stroke due to atherosclerosis.

My parents are well enough off that we own our house and they can take care of me, but I would like to have some independence, especially now that they're both retired and on Medicare and I'm not allowed to be on their insurance as a dependent. The bit of extra income would be very nice too, so I don't have to keep mooching off my parents.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you for reading!

Posted Jun 12, 2026, 9:07 PM UTC

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