"It's like inviting the wolf into the chicken house," said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Charley Burch, describing the Senate's vote Aug. 3 to allow paid attorneys, for the first time in more than a century, to represent veterans in filing disability claims with the Veterans Affairs.

Burch, 74, spent 18 years after he retired from the military helping veterans in Virginia apply for VA disability benefits. As a veterans' claim agent on state salary, Burch's help was free to any Virginia veteran. He strongly opposes a bill that he says "helps lawyers, not veterans."

Lawyer groups, particularly legal advocates for veterans, did lobby for the change, along with a few retired appellate court judges and some of the smaller veterans groups. But they did so, they said, because veterans deserve the right to hire a lawyer, from the start of the claims process, to deal with increasingly complex laws and regulations and in recognition that valuable assets — tax-free VA disability benefits — are at stake.

"This thing sounds innocuous," Burch countered. "They're saying, 'We are giving veterans a choice. Choice is always good.' Well, choice isn't always good."

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, first became interested in securing paid attorney representation for veterans filing claims after reading a guest editorial in the Washington Post last January written by James C. McKay, an attorney for a Washington, D.C., law firm, said a committee staff member.

Following the Civil War, Congress first imposed a limit of $5 on fees lawyers could charge to assist veterans with their pensions and bonuses. The cap was raised to $10 a short time later but hasn't been raised since. The practical effect, McKay explained, is to bar lawyers from representing veterans until they exhaust a lengthy administrative process of their claims and get an adverse decision from the Board of Veterans' Appeals.

By that time, McKay wrote, "a case has been lost, often because the veteran did not present the correct claim, or properly present available evidence — technicalities that could hurt the case on appeal even after a lawyer is involved."

Veterans groups are divided. Testifying in support of Craig's bill were the Vietnam Veterans of America, the National Veterans Legal Services Program and a few former chief judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Legal counsel at initiation of a claim "would give that claim a legal continuity," said Rick Weidman of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

But Quentin Kinderman, of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said Craig's bill is a "windfall opportunity for lawyers to earn significant fees with little effort."

Joseph Violante, legislative director of the Disabled American Veterans, said the bill "sends the wrong message to our brave troops ... that they need to hire an attorney to obtain the benefits a grateful nation has provided."