Hello and thank you for looking into my app. My name is Hudson Ellis and I am a disability claimant’s attorney in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Of course, how I got here is a bit longer story, and, in case you are interested, below is a summarized version of it:
I have wanted to be an attorney since highschool; To a degree because I knew it would provide a stable prosperous career (… ok, while this is clearly not true, it’s what I thought, and I’ve been lucky so far), but also because I have always loved helping people. That may sound cheesy, but wanting to help people kept me on target through my four years at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, where I majored in History (and Rook), played baseball, and graduated summa cum laude in 2006.
From there, I was happy to have the chance to go to law school at the University of Tennessee College of Law – partly because it is a great institution to graduate from, but largely because it was near a girl I thought was extremely attractive and wanted to date and ultimately marry. Fortunately, I was successful in both of these pursuits, marrying in 2007, and graduating in 2009.
My first legal job was as a law clerk at Eric Buchanan & Associates, the summer after my first year of law school, where I learned the ins-and-outs of ERISA and social security disability litigation from a true master. After my second year, I took a clerk’s position at Stokes, Williams, Sharp & Davies, a general civil litigation firm in Knoxville, Tennessee. They liked me enough to hire me after I graduated, and I spent the next four years happily suing and defending people and companies in all manner of litigation – in front of juries, judges, and even the Tennessee Claims Commission. Despite loving the work and the people there, my wife and I decided her hometown was where we wanted to raise our brand-new daughter. By coincidence, Eric Buchanan was looking for another attorney!
I re-joined Eric’s firm in May of 2013 and the first thing he did was to shuttle me off the NOSSCR (National Organization of Social Security Claimant’s Representatives) conference in Washington, DC. During a session on using the Dictionary of Occupational Titles effectively in your practice, I looked around on my iPad for an app that would give me access to this important data and was surprised to find none existed. This got me thinking there should be one, and that got me thinking I could do it.
The problem was that, though I am admittedly a nerd, I had never tried to write an app before, and I had no idea how any programming language worked or even looked like. Also, what if no one bought it? Still, I thought of how useful it would be in my own practice even if no-one sprung for it, and decided I’d give it a shot.
I got books about iPhone development from the library, bought a set of tutorials from Ray Wenderlich’s amazing site, and relied heavily on Google searches and stackoverflow.com. After about six months of spending most of my free time glued to a computer screen (my wife has since forgiven me), the first version of the app was complete.
Since that time, I have worked to keep making Job Sleuth better and more useful to disability practitioners and plan to continue until I can’t think of anything else to do.
I hope that you enjoy the app as much as I have enjoyed making it (ok, well there were some frustrating times sprinkled in there too, but overall, it was a blast).
Job Sleuth: The DOT on your iPhone 