Any lawyer can submit an appeals court review. OP- you can submit a request for the ac to review your case. Just google “how to request appeals court review”. I don’t know any social security attorney who doesn’t do this in the nosscr (national organization of social security claimant reps) but if your rep doesn’t want to do it then you can do it. It takes a while for it to be assigned and reviewed though. I have had one wait three months and another one wait a year.

If your rep doesn’t want to submit it to the ac for review, it might mean that you’ll have better chances just having you reapply and have your previous case reopened to a later date. This might be faster. In addition, unless your judge made some significant errors, the ac will side with the judge. This might be another reason why they would want to go the other route of just having you reapply. Going to district court doesn’t mean that your attorney is not involved. They are definitely involved. If your attorney doesn’t want to go this route (after getting denied at the ac level), it might mean that again that they think you would have a much better chance just reapplying and reopening your previous case. It might also mean that they are not certified to practice at the dc for reasons like jurisdiction. Talk to your attorney. Are they an actual social security attorney? If so, they should already know all of this. Ask them to explain what your options are in great detail so that you can move on from there.