Broken Legal International Paradigm
Broken Legal International Paradigm - B.L.I.P. Theory
An International Practitioners Guide
Manuscript
Grant Saxena
Abstract:
Currently, the legal system across the globe has re-designed itself such that one could eventually practice in a jurisdiction through reciprocity that has requirements the attorney never had to meet. This phenomenon could exist as far back as not taking an entrance exam for admission, in the attorney’s originating jurisdiction and extend legal powers across the pond, to The United Kingdom and European Union, and vice-versa. This extension of jurisdictional power, for future international attorneys, will be most powerful in the intellectual property realms, after the UK SQE September 2021 transition. The reality of modern times is upon us: institutions and nations worldwide must eventually adapt, in order to fulfill the demand of the admission, barring, reciprocity, and limited practice or Broken Legal International Paradigm (B.L.I.P.©) model I present.
My scientific experience, both quantitative and qualitatively: detailing the nearly one-decade academic experiment, begins from the perspective of a rejected graduate student of American law schools, who then writes a Memorandum of Admittance.
Part 1.
To NATO & Worldwide Jurisdictions:
Based on a 141 LSAT, I was provisionally accepted and invited to apply to the following Juris Doctor programs in 2014. All offers were initiated by schools reaching out, there were no law school solicitations on my part.
• Thomas Jefferson Law School *Guaranteed Scholarship (CA)
• University of Colorado Law School (CO)
• University of Miami Law (FL)
• Florida Coastal Law School
• FIU College of Law
• St. Thomas Law School (Virgin Islands)
• Suffolk Law School (Boston, MA)
• Tulsa Law (OK)
• Wayne Law (Michigan)
• Michigan State Law
• Valparaiso Law (IN)
• William & Mary Law School (VA)
• Capital University Law School (OH)
• University of Iowa College of Law
• Cincinnati Law
• Mississippi College School Of Law
Due to an eight (8) year processing time for veterans affairs and social security multiple permanent and total disability cases, with no family support, while living homeless and out of my Jeep, I was unable to pursue my dream of becoming a Juris Doctor and law practitioner. As a means to an end, and perhaps one day: an end to another's means of suffering.
Recently trying to reapply at The University of Nevada Law School in 2020, I was denied for a peculiar requirement. A professor of law and admissions director Dr. Wall told me that this “old” LSAT (which was only 1 year past the deadline criteria) score would no longer be accepted because it was more than 5 years old from the original October 2013 test date. Wall stated, in writing: This policy is an American Bar Association requirement for certified program admissions. However, history demonstrates that various legislation has been enacted by entities over time, serving little purpose other than to implement barriers to the entrance by those in positions of power with agendas.
Yet in our modern and progressive era, many schools and jurisdictions will allow you to admit to a JD program without requiring any admissions tests like the LSAT, or GMAT, or GRE. In California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington for example, where they have no ABA requirements for law school admission, one could graduate law school online and be eligible to sit for the respective state bar. To take this concept one step further, D.C., Oregon, Washington State, Utah, and Louisiana are the other jurisdictions that already offered a full bar exam waiver. JD students are able to practice law now without taking the bar in Wisconsin, as long as they have attended in-state law school, and additionally in other states because coronavirus has shut down all test-taking centers. After a certain variable by-state period of time, regardless of how or where one obtained a bar license: reciprocity and limited practice laws initiate.
Right now, the legal system across the country has re-designed itself such that one could eventually practice in a jurisdiction through reciprocity that has requirements the attorney never had to meet. This phenomenon could exist as far back as not taking an LSAT for admission, in the attorney’s originating jurisdiction and extend legal powers across the pond, to The United Kingdom and European Union. This international extension of jurisdictional power, for future international attorneys, will be most powerful in the intellectual property realm. The reality of the future is here to stay: organizations across our worldwide must adapt, in order to keep up with the admission, barring, reciprocity, and limited practice model demands.
Diagram of the B.L.I.P. Model:
The reasoning behind the amendment to policy is that: a citizen’s freedom in the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness through education - shall not be hindered due to an administrative requirement, according to our Constitution and liberties vested within.
Throughout my extensive research, I have been unable to deduce what purpose this 5-year LSAT policy serves. Why does this archaic requirement remain in effect more as an
administrative obstacle than realistically serving any utilitarian system? My conclusion is drawn from a recent audit of the test itself: the LSAT has not changed in any drastic ways for more than 10 years. The time constraints, testing procedure, and environment, categories of questions, and overall grading rubric to evaluate a student’s logical, deductive, reading, writing, mathematical skills, and general fitness for law school admission remain the same.
Clearly, the barriers to entrance intentionally and maliciously created by the American Bar Association as a systematic means to preclude any citizen (including protected categories such as disabled Americans) from practicing law, is a form of constitutional rights violation. This constitutional violation of civil rights exists because a barred attorney is considered a public position. Creating systematic barriers to the entrance for a public position, which is unique to the law profession amongst many other professions required to certify at the federal and state levels, is unconstitutional specifically in our contemporary world: several jurisdictions have lowered and eliminated their barrier to entrance requirements with continued success in terms of accessibility.
Particular prejudice and discrimination are shown in my case because I am a Veteran Affairs and Social Security rated 200% combined, permanent, and totally disabled combat veteran: due to my inability to work, I can never fully utilize the degree beyond the joy education brings. This form of abusive institutional behavior is discrimination against a disabled person when my sole purpose for seeking the degree is the pursuit of a dream that enriches my extremely diminished quality of daily life. As a VA loan homeowner, I am medically unable to move or physically pursue my law school dream anywhere other than Nevada, which only has one law school for the entire state.
Since multiple disabilities are the direct result of 12.5 years of federal service in the United States Department of Defense, including 15 months in a Warzone; the protections granted to accommodate a disabled person must extend to any public or private institution. University programs operating within, while representing degrees and access to the same parent jurisdiction state / federal public positions are: constitutionally required to make reasonable accommodation of admission, for a disabled combat veteran.
The final piece of this discrimination deals with COVID. When the pandemic hit, universities stopped accepting students and applications. This type of freezing of the higher education system dictates the implementation of some type of toll: meaning that my LSAT cannot logically continue to extinguish, while the parent organizations are unable to fulfill the application request due to pandemics. Once schools opened back up, they glossed over this situation and tried to force another test on unwitting students, rather than doing the right thing: which is to honor the previously valid tests. As admitted verbally by the director of Boyd Law
admission, I am the sole proprietor of this situation: which makes the argument for granting a reasonable exception due to covid all that more tangible and available to a single person.
So, to show good faith in the higher education system - I took the LSAT-Flex, an online covid-inspired version - eight (8) years later this June 2021 - and passed with the same score of 140.
I notified Dr. Wall immediately about this updated LSAT; Wall then invited me to apply for this year, reassuring me that there were a few spots left for the fall semester. Now that Dr. Wall has succeeded in sending me on a ten (10) month easter-egg-hunt, for an American Bar Association requirement, he fabricated about UNLV needing and existing at the LSAC, ABA, and state bar level - Wall personally sent me a denial letter stating only that: as a second-year Ph.D. Student, 100% disabled veteran from West Point: USMA with a top 15% Bachelors of Science in Leadership Management / Computer Science Engineering, who passed the LSAT twice, a first-generation, Denver Public High- Schools Honorary Alumni, Asian-American immigrant who is also in summer school at Oxford University:
I failed to meet the standards of competition, and somehow 2 out of 3 undergraduate students were simply better than me. Or deserved to be included based on a broader range of diversity?
It is not quantifiably possible that anyone in the class has more experience and diversity because, no one is from the West Point: USMA Class of 9/11, or any other class from West Point seeking a J.D. at UNLV this 2021 year. After completing the requirements of UNLV, having no other options as a disabled person to study Law; legally UNLV should have included me solely due to background, resume, and diversity requirements.
In conclusion, all U.S. jurisdictions should reciprocate and lower with the goal of eliminating their entrance barriers, thus quantifiably increasing each citizen’s ability to gain a publicly taxed and resourced license. It is constitutionally illegal to prohibit a 100% P&T disabled veteran, who has met all of the academic admission requirements, from obtaining a law school diploma, and eventually barring certificate - in a state with only one law school and elsewhere across the country.
Beyond the hard data, the culture of the law profession - in part because of the office of the court oath - is such that, by allowing the barriers of the entrance to "lower" maybe we are allowing a layperson who has, in the minds of those already barred, enter their profession with a "lower qualification." However this consequential effect of society is tested - psychologically, observations would be: the old school law culture will resist the lowering of barriers, due to a perception that degradation of the overall integrity of the global law system is proportionate to allowing lesser degree persons to pay $1,000 to take an extremely difficult test.
Realize also, one only obtains a bar credential, which must be used to procure more work and business, at additional costs. The willingness to help others, by virtue of position and dedication through continuous humility of public-servitude, is hereby declared to weigh heavier on the tax of barriers to admittance, than can never be outweighed, by a flawed fear, manifested in deeply rooted/sunken costs embedded in our nation's honorable lineage to law.
Before the internet revolution, all law was secretly bound in hardcover books. And rightfully so, because a thief in the night could as easily cripple an empire like Rome, in the same way that Watergate propagated, via advanced mediums of publications.
The prior generations of law professionals, did quantifiably have to input more into the legal system, like hours in a library - only to get barred as a starting point. Then, if an ESQ’s return on investment isn’t professionally or personally enough to outweigh the cost of student loan debt or other forms of purpose fulfillment past financial numbers aren’t met - more so, due to The Hidden Traps in Decision Making Theory by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa, Harvard Business Review (1998) - humans are hardwired to protect our decisions, even if they are bad or less than ideal. No one wants to basically admit fault, in life, or business when they wasted their own time, or take accountability for a decision about something they agreed to do; when maybe the choice ended up not working out. Innately as a form of defense, people will not criticize their own choices.
Relatively speaking to the point: all previous generations of lawyers, with a much higher level of sunken costs, is allowing an irrational psychological fear about overwhelming technological advances and the availability of information for education. Knowledge is meant to be shared, not hidden. The title of best state that has probably made the biggest leap forward, in its progressive approach to state bar licensing, is yet. to be determined. The UK updated Sep 2021 SQE standards are the most honorable in terms of accessibility; all nations should strive to emulate this progression. Essentially, in a few months: armed with a bachelor’s degree and two years of legal work experience, a citizen can at least test through UK’s Solicitor Regulation Authority. The qualitative enhancements, made possible through the diversity of applicants, will surely propel the law profession to a more mature and balanced system for professionals and laypersons. The system serves the commoners and should be not commodified to totalitarianism.
Perchance we have collectively slid too far down the slippery slope: of the privatization of freedom through the commercialization of law. Why is there a character and fitness requirement to join the bar, yet no community service, pro-bono, military enlistment or other forms of selfless service required to maintain ESQ / SQE active status? If years of public service were mandated and baked into the attorney credential, or credit was given for other areas of government or
non-profit service for a professional requirement - many of the professionals motivated by money vs ethics would naturally be weeded out. Think about what it takes to become a Commissioned Military Officer - one must sacrifice countless years of their life: solely to the 24/7 control of superior commander orders. This lengthy process of servitude and dedication to grander authority embeds a deep sense of ethical responsibility; that is lost in the legal universe; due to missing professional requirements in an office, which requires an ethical oath - another paradox is uncovered.
Whenever a radical change in a system takes place, especially in a digital area, the front runners are left holding the bag on adaptation costs. In a relative example, think of all the 90's DJs who bought thousands of vinyl records, only to be able to log into a cell phone and stream all of the same music today - with much less apartment storage space. Yet both mediums contain the same works of music, which is listened to, and brought forth into the world for the same purposes. The transition from vinyl to streaming is akin to the transformation of the "value" of
J.D. & L.L.B. degrees mutating in 2021.
On the other hand, theoretically speaking: would supporting more freedoms and types of opinions, over time, ultimately lead to an enriched and more robust profession? The true power
of progress lies in the strength of diversity, assimilated and enacted on all organization levels of philosophical, strategic, operational, and tactical. Diversity and progress usually go hand in hand, while primitively upholding societal norms: yields ignorance and regression - regardless of culture.
In other words, does the value of vinyl records go down due to MP3s and streaming popularity, or is it fundamentally more prolific that a greater amount of music is accessible to future generations?
Part 2:
Why The United States Is Becoming A 21st Century Judicial Oligarchy:
America is no longer a democracy because elected local dictators, like commissioners and mayors, have highjacked our due process by appointing all the judges within their jurisdiction.
Ponder critically that a democracy works against oppression through majority vote and laws to benefit society. Yet at the US state levels, the people hire a ruler who creates mini-dictators, whose true role is to favor the voter constituency to keep their leaders in power for as long as possible. To me, it is clearly inconceivable that a local official would appoint his own litigator, selecting from a vast pool, who would then believe or act in any capacity contradictory to the city's endgame. The longer a certain faction has possession of our government, their livelihood and job security increases. So the self fulfilling prophecy begins and it's more likely the political ideologies of the majority will come to bear full fruition through extended monopolizing. In several rural counties, some Magistrates are not even attorneys but have been on the bench for decades. These unqualified laypersons order irreparable legal damage to the population without ever obtaining a basic education in jurisprudence. The monetary policy from contributors has no regulation and boils down a pristine ideology into a popularity contest fueled by marketing propaganda.
How does the USA justify this blatant hypocrisy and contradiction, a deliberate perpetuation of inundation, to our Constitution originally created of, by and for the people? To an extent, the fundamental separation of them versus us in the context of how an average American views their position in society towards the government is illustrated and initiates Oligarchical separation. As a people, we have become complacent and accepting of income taxes upwards of 50% in New York, which is ironic when you consider that pilgrims revolted over much pettier percentages. Leveraging of appointed positions would have then taken centuries to get where we are: an unprecedented level of lack of rule of law. For example, in 2021 all small claims cases in California were scrubbed and then procured by daytime television producers for sitcoms like Judge Judy and Hot Bench. Rather than giving the citizens a fair shake in actual courtrooms, SF judges spend time campaigning for donations.
The real kicker is: citizens are working to fund the very tax paying dollars at the higher percentages, which pay for the legal system as a whole, thus inflation rises. The cycle of lack of due process and violations of rule of law equity is corroborated with the rise in popularity of arbitration. Mainly, the courts have turned the small claims platform into a guised form of extorting cash for a chance to get dismissed without being heard. The system needs to create more tribunals. Diagram Available Soon.
:: Financial Access Court Conundrum Theory (FACCT) ::
As promised, proudly presenting my latest diagram sketch:
If you've been following my Ph.D. research, including B.L.I.P. model, then the Financial Access Court Conundrum Theory (FACCT) will make sense as the second concept bridging from earlier idea Why The United States Is Becoming A 21st Century Judicial Oligarchy.
Yesterday, I chunked out the unabridged dissertation for this sub-topic through a speech to text app. Soon I will refine this semi-conclusion to the follow on book with the results of my 2022 United Kingdom Solicitors Regulation Authority: Qualifying Exam (Nov-SQE1) & United States Vermont Judiciary: Foreign Degree Equivalency Admission By Examination (Jul-VTBar).
To conceal conclusions, I won't give away any real spoilers: but I will tell you that along the way - certain arbitrations have been sustained in my favor. Yet there's still no way I will be able to predict how things will turn out or what the ending will be.
Because no matter how masterfully a project is designed, anom may still cause a deviation. As eloquently expressed by poet Robert Burns in "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785" as a Scots-language aphorism:
“But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e.
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see, I guess an' fear!”
Captain Grant Mitchell Saxena, U.S.A., Retired
West Point: United States Military Academy (Class of 9/11)
Airborne Ranger, Purple Heart, Bronze Star Veteran
100% Permanent & Totally Disabled from War
Acknowledgments:
Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors
References:
- Burns, Robert (1786). Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect. Kilmarnock: John Wilson. p. 138. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
- Clark, J.R (2020). Director, Accreditation Administration Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. American Bar Association. https://www.americanbar.org
- Hammond, J., Keeney, R., and Raiffa, H. (1998). The Hidden Traps in Decision Making Theory Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/product/hbr-s-10-must-reads-2021-paperback-ebook/1110BN?sku=1110BN-BUN-ENG
- Law School Admission Council (2021). Law School Admission Test (Online-Flex). https://lsac.com
- United Kingdom (2021). Solicitors Qualifying Exam. Solicitors Regulation Authority. https://www.sra.org.uk
