The direct review docket, or direct docket, at the Board of Veterans’ Appeals applies to claimants who do not want to submit additional evidence to the Board, and do not want a hearing before a Veterans Law Judge.  In this docket, the Board’s decision will be based on a review of the evidence of record at the time of the agency's original jurisdiction decision on the issue(s) on appeal.  In other words, the Board will only look at the evidence that was in the claimant’s file when the decision on appeal was issued.

VA has set a 365-day goal for issuing decisions in the direct review docket, which is projected to be the fastest among all three Board lanes as it does not involve the submission of new evidence or a hearing.  VA acknowledges that direct docket cases must be distributed at a rate that allows the Board to meet this goal.  For this reason, each case on the direct review docket will have a “target distribution date”.  The target distribution date will take into account both the date by which the case must be decided in order to meet the timeliness goal and the average amount of time it takes to issue a decision from the date the case is assigned to a Veterans Law Judge.  The volume of cases in the direct docket will also impact the distribution date because a high number of cases without enough Veterans Law Judges to review them could create a backlog.

The greatest benefit of the direct review docket is that it allows claimants to appeal directly to the Board, bypassing the second round of Regional Office adjudication that currently exists in the Legacy appeals system. This is all part of the goal of speeding things along while also ensuring your case is heard at the Board level.