  We study next-to-leading order contributions to the soft static fermion
dispersion relation in hot QED. We derive an expression for the complete
next-to-leading order contribution to the retarded fermion self-energy. The
real and imaginary parts of this expression give the next-to-leading order
contributions to the mass and damping rate of the fermionic quasi-particle.
Many of the terms that are expected to contribute according to the traditional
power counting argument are actually subleading. We explain why the power
counting method over estimates the contribution from these terms. For the
electron damping rate in QED we obtain: $\gamma_{QED} = \frac{e^2
T}{4\pi}(2.70)$. We check our method by calculating the next-to-leading order
contribution to the damping rate for the case of QCD with two flavours and
three coulours. Our result agrees with the result obtained previously in the
literature. The numerical evaluation of the nlo contribution to the mass is
left to a future publication.
