Administrative Military Boards

Aggressive, dedicated, and experienced military defense team fighting for Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, Sailors, and Coast Guardsmen all over the world.

Our law firm is veteran owned and veteran operated, and our attorneys have over 200 years of collective military service and legal experience.  We know how important it is for your characterization of service to truly represent your honorable sacrifice to our country.

All five branches of the Armed Forces have a variety of administrative boards designed to address error by the military or to exercise fairness and justice in the review of military records. These boards are very similar across all five branches. While these actions can be diverse in scope and disposition, they typically include everything from punitive discharges at court-martial, medical retirement eligibility, non-judicial punishment, administrative discharges, letters for reprimand, referred evaluation reports, and relief for cause evaluation reports.

Based on recent studies, nearly 900,000 veterans have received a discharge under Other Than Honorable Conditions since the World War II era.  Another 700,000 veterans have received a General Under Honorable Conditions Discharge during that same time period.  Such characterizations of service may prevent you from receiving VA benefits, health care, and will certainly hurt your employment opportunities in the civilian world.

In addition, in recent years the military has begun more aggressively reducing retired officers’ rank based upon alleged misconduct (i.e. Grade Determination Review Boards). In other cases, when a service member is accused of wrongdoing he may have his security clearance reviewed by an administrative board. Finally, each service has its own Board for Correction of Military Records. These boards are given vast power to make all manner of record corrections. How much power? In one well-known case, a military board for corrections – in order to provide death benefits to a surviving spouse – actually “backdated” a service member’s death to allow his spouse to qualify for benefits.

Our Military Law Attorneys at Shewmaker and Shewmaker provide eligible veterans representation before Military Discharge Review Boards,Boards for Correction of Military records and other boards.  Our plan of action includes collection of all the evidence in your case, a thorough evaluation of your entire record, review by a team of experienced attorneys, a legal brief in support of your application, and appearing before the board to present your case at a live hearing if necessary.

Whether you face difficulty with  a retirement issue, a military discharge upgrade, or another military administrative matter, Shewmaker and Shewmaker has a team of experienced military attorneys to ensure that your rights are being upheld and that you are get all the benefits you deserve.

What the Board of Corrections of Military Records (BCMR) has the authority due:

• Change your discharge to or from military retirement or medical discharge
• Change reenlistment codes
• Review a Discharge Review Board decision
• Reinstate a veteran into the military
• Basically, a BCMR can do anything to alter your records except overturn a courts-martial conviction.

What a Military Discharge Upgrade Board has the authority to due:

• Upgrade general discharges, other than honorable discharges, and special court-martial bad conduct discharges.
• One example of a discharge that qualifies for an upgrade may be that a combat veteran who served honorably had a single bad incident such as drug or alcohol abuse as a means of self-medicating post-traumatic stress disorder and was administratively discharged from the service.
• Change the reason for the discharge.