BVA.
Board of Veterans' Appeals (VA). No published AI policy for representative practice as of May 2026.
BVA AI policy status. #
The Board of Veterans' Appeals (BVA), within the Department of Veterans Affairs, hears appeals of regional-office benefits decisions. Representative practice is governed by VA accreditation under 38 CFR Part 14, available to attorneys, claims agents, and accredited Veteran Service Officers (VSOs). The BVA has not published an AI policy for representative practice as of May 2026. The Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC) — the Article I appellate court reviewing BVA decisions, with further appeal to the Federal Circuit — also has no published AI standing rule, though individual CAVC judges may issue orders. The VA Office of General Counsel has internal AI guidance for VA attorneys handling benefits matters, but that does not reach representative practice.
Authoritative source: https://www.bva.va.gov/
Last verified: . If this row text disagrees with the linked source, the source controls.
Why BVA matters. #
VA benefits adjudication is one of the highest-volume practice areas in federal administrative law: approximately 100,000+ BVA appeals decided per year, fed by millions of regional-office decisions and the complex interplay between the legacy appeals system and the AMA (Appeals Modernization Act) lanes (higher-level review, supplemental claims, direct BVA appeal). The Appeals Modernization Act (effective February 2019) replaced the legacy notice-of-disagreement system with three independent review lanes. Veterans depend heavily on representative assistance — VSOs handle the largest share of representations, with attorneys and claims agents covering the higher-stakes / more complex cases. AI-assisted preparation of statements of the case, medical-nexus arguments, PTSD-stressor documentation, and analysis of C-files (claims files often running thousands of pages) is now common. The body of VA benefits law presents a specific AI-verification challenge: it spans 38 USC, 38 CFR, the M21-1 Adjudication Procedures Manual (the operational manual VA adjudicators use), VA Office of General Counsel precedent opinions, and CAVC / Federal Circuit precedent. AI tools frequently confuse M21-1 provisions (operational, not precedential) with binding regulatory text.
Practice implications. #
VA accredited representatives should: (1) default to ABA Op. 512 principles (for attorneys) or the comparable supervisory framework (for non-attorney accredited representatives); the verification duty applies regardless of representative type; (2) verify AI-generated VA benefits precedent with particular attention to source hierarchy — 38 CFR > CAVC / Federal Circuit precedent > VA OGC precedent opinions > M21-1 manual provisions (operational, not binding) > VA training letters and fast letters; (3) be especially careful with AI-generated medical-nexus arguments — the body of CAVC case law on what constitutes adequate medical opinion is large, and AI hallucination of Nieves-Rodriguez / Stefl / Barr chains is a recurring problem; (4) VA accreditation can be revoked for misconduct including the submission of false or fabricated material — AI-generated hallucinated content is at risk of falling within that prohibition even absent specific AI guidance, and accreditation revocation has significantly more career consequence for VSOs than for attorneys (VSOs typically cannot practice federal benefits law in any forum without accreditation).