I am glad for you that you prevailed in your getting benefits. It was rotten that it took so long and was so complicated. And in that process you developed a fair amount of skill in reading unemployment statutes and figuring out how to self represent in unemployment situations. Most of the advice and guidance you provide to people on these sites is quite sound.
But I have seen many people scared off. I honestly think we should encourage everyone to try it, and not make it sound overly complicated and difficult and convoluted to file an unemployment claim. Likewise, I make very few promises that anyone either has no chance of approval or will have a slam dunk guaranteed claim.
Every situation, as well as each state and each person who takes claims and every claimant who files a claim has a slightly situation and a slightly different take on everything. I think it's pretty easy to discourage people, and many who've tried to do too much research prior to filing a claim have ended up not filing or making the assumption that it requires legal assistance to do so.
We always in training people to work in the unemployment system in the mostly southeastern areas where I have been involved, have always strongly discouraged our people from ever giving opinions to anyone, claimant or employer about how the system will look at it or how their situation will work out.
But thinking they have to have every legal argument ready to make, and waiting to get "so much documentation so I can just go in there and nail them to the wall!" is a pretty common mistake people make, almost as common as waiting to file the claim till they really need it. I have known of people who delayed filing their claim eight or ten weeks while trying to get the employer to provide them a separation notice so they'd have more documentation.
From your perception and your experience, it seems there are people in the claims system who will really be ready to come down on the side of the employer. Of course, if everyone in the system did this, there'd never be any unemployment paid, as most employers are very unwilling to pay taxes in the first place, and doubly unwilling for anyone to receive benefits. Ideally the system works in neutrality.
Just the other day I was talking to a very irate employer friend of mind who'd just lost in an appeal who said "I might as well have my wife and kids call in and sign up, since those people approve every darn person who bothers to hold the phone long enough to sign up!" It's all in your point of view.
That said, I do agree with you, it'd be nice if she can get paperwork to back up this bogus job offer. Didn't mean to be unfair.

