Separation Board Lawyers
The Final Fight to Save Your Career
This is the moment of truth — a few senior military members will decide whether your military career continues or ends. You’ve worked too hard to lose it all. You need experienced professionals by your side.
An administrative separation board, discharge board, or adsep board has tremendous power. They can end a military member’s lengthy career with a single vote. It is imperative that, when you are facing a board, you have a skilled military law attorney standing at your side. This will likely be the last chance you get to convince an impartial group of military members that you should be allowed to continue to serve. Be sure that you have a dedicated, experienced, and professional team fighting for you.
Don’t wait until it’s too late. If you are facing a military discharge, and you have served in the military for a long time, you have so much to lose. Not only is your career on the line, a military separation can also terminate your retirement pay, GI Bill education benefits, and other support you may receive from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Now is the time to fight for yourself, and we are the team to provide the legal representation you need.
Our Process
1. Robust Investigation
We start any discharge or separation board with a complete review of any command investigation and the allegations against you, including complex misconduct, NJP or Article 15 actions, a GOMOR, a pattern of misconduct, DUI, larceny, or drug abuse claims. We interview witnesses, review evidence—such as in a positive urinalysis case—and develop matters to present in your defense.
2. Prepare Board Package
As expert military defense attorneys, we have the experience of hundreds of military boards. We know how to prepare a defense package, complete with character letters, evidence in defense, and other mitigating materials, to give you the best chance of success.
3. World Class Advocacy
We attend the board with you and can even team up with your free military defense counsel. We cross-examine witnesses and present persuasive arguments for why you should be retained. We bring world-class advocacy skills to your separation board, fighting for you and your career.
4. Appeal / Upgrade Application
If the board goes against you, we can help you with a written appeal or a discharge upgrade application to the service board for a change to your characterization, such as upgrading a general discharge or an other than honorable discharge to an honorable discharge.
Separation Board Procedures
A military separation board is generally made up of three senior military officers or non-commissioned officers, each of whom is appointed to decide your case. There is a prosecutor, often a JAG officer known as a “Government Counsel,” who presents witnesses and evidence in order to try and get you discharged, alongside your detailed military legal counsel. You may also have a defense team, including an experienced civilian attorney, to present witnesses and evidence on your behalf.
The board reviews your entire military record, to include all evidence presented by the government and defense. They then vote on whether you should be involuntarily separated or retained, and if separation, they vote on the type of discharge you should receive. Their decision must be made by a “majority vote,” and the board’s “findings and recommendations” are forwarded to a separation authority for final action.
Entitlement to a Board
Military members facing involuntary administrative separation are entitled to a separation or discharge board when they have more than six years of service or face the possibility of receiving an Other than Honorable (OTH) discharge.
Burden of Proof
At a separation board, it is only necessary that the government prove its case against you by a “preponderance of the evidence.” That’s a legal phrase meaning “more likely than not.” So, the evidence against you must prove that it is “more likely than not” that you committed the allegations and should be discharged.
Given this burden of proof, it’s imperative that you have an experienced team of military law, UCMJ, and justice professionals representing you at a separation board.
Consequences of a Board
A separation board makes “findings and recommendations” in your case. If the board recommends you be involuntarily separated, it is very likely that the separation authority will agree and terminate your career. This will cause you to lose all years of service, all retirement pay, your security clearance, and access to VA healthcare alongside other potential benefits. The stakes are extremely high.
A Board may recommend an Honorable discharge, a General (Under Honorable Conditions) discharge, or an Under Other Than Honorable Conditions discharge. Each discharge characterization involves the maintenance or loss of certain veterans’ benefits.
Frequently Asked Questions
Am I entitled to a separation board?
Generally, yes, if you have more than six years of total service or if your command is seeking a characterization of Under Other Than Honorable Conditions. Officers facing elimination have parallel rights through a Board of Inquiry. If you do not meet either threshold, your command can separate you on the paperwork alone, without a hearing — which is exactly why the entitlement question needs to be answered first. A separation board lawyer will confirm your rights during the separation process, whether facing claims of misconduct or substandard performance, before responding in these administrative proceedings, because a member who waives a board they were entitled to has given away the only hearing they were going to get.
What does the government have to prove at a separation board?
Far less than at a court-martial. The standard is a preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not. There is no requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the rules of evidence are relaxed, and hearsay that would never survive at trial routinely comes in. This is why service members who were acquitted, or never charged, still lose separation boards. The low burden also shapes the defense: the case is rarely won by attacking a single piece of evidence and is usually won by giving the board an affirmative reason to retain you.
Who sits on the board and who makes the final decision?
A separation board is typically composed of at least three senior officers or noncommissioned officers appointed to hear your case, with a government counsel presenting evidence for separation and your defense team presenting evidence for retention. The board reviews your full military record and votes by majority. But the board does not have the last word — it issues findings and recommendations, which go to a separation authority for final action. In practice, a recommendation to separate is very likely to be approved, which is why the board itself is the fight.
Can a separation board take away my retirement?
It can. If the board recommends separation and the separation authority approves, a career short of twenty years ends without retired pay, without lifetime TRICARE, and potentially without significant VA benefits depending on your characterization of service. For a senior noncommissioned officer or a field grade officer, the lifetime value at stake in a single afternoon hearing regularly exceeds a million dollars. That arithmetic is the reason a separation board deserves dedicated legal services and the preparation of a trial, not the preparation of an administrative meeting.
What happens if the board votes against me?
The fight continues, on a different footing. You may submit a written appeal or rebuttal to the separation authority before final action, and after discharge you can apply to a Discharge Review Board or a Board for Correction of Military Records (BCMR) to seek an upgrade to your discharge characterization. Those later applications draw heavily on the record built at the board — the evidence presented, the objections preserved, and the procedural defects documented. A separation board lawyer builds that record with the appeal in mind, not only the hearing. A separation board is usually your last chance to save your career — call 833-231-8633 for a free consultation.