An Appeal To Vermont

Honoring Armed Forces Month With An Appeal To Vermont

This memorial weekend I am compelled to write a letter to Vermont's Office of Attorney Licensing Foreign Education Equivalency begging for a chance to take your bar exam. The legal system across the globe has redesigned 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 practicing powers across the pond, to The United Kingdom or 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 Solicitor Qualifying Exam 2021 transmutation. 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 - BLIP ? 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.?

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 nor support, while living homeless and out of my Jeep - I was unable to pursue my dream of becoming a Juris Doctor and law practitioner. An overwhelming sense of responsibility to rectify the shortcomings in our veteran affairs medical benefit system emerged out of this lonely decade in my life. I desired a new purpose 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 novice law 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.

In our modern and progressive country, many schools and jurisdictions will allow students 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 through diploma privilege. Additional locations have sworn in attorneys without an exam because coronavirus has shut down all test-taking centers. In the fall of 2021, Saint Mary’s Law School in Texas became the first ABA-approved fully online JD to earn acquiescence. 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.

Reiterating that the legal system across the globe just reengineered 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 test, nor holding a first law degree in the attorney’s homeland and extends practitioner powers across the pond, to The United Kingdom, European Union then transatlantically to US and Canada. Now that the UK Solicitor Regulation Authority qualification process does not require a law degree, only a bachelors or equivalent work experience, many of the US state bar exam education requirements will be in eternal entanglement. If the United Kingdom’s English common law system birthed the United States judiciary, then a strong argument can be made that no first degree in law is required to bar as an attorney in the United States, since it is no longer required in England to practice as a solicitor.

This international extension of jurisdictional power, for future international attorneys, is critical in the intellectual property area because of Brexit. I own trademarks in the US and EU, which have to be filed in the UK as separate marks. Enforcing the rights through online marketplaces in the entertainment world where music is sold, plus in parent countries, becomes a complex new law field. The reality of the future is here: organizations across our world must adapt, in order to keep up with the admission, barring, reciprocity, and limited practice model demands.

Diagram of 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 exemplarily 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 a global pandemic 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, Oxford Alumni, 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 as the First West Point Graduate, and Asian-American immigrant: 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. Could this be age bias?

It is not evidently possible that anyone in the class has more experience and diversity because no one is from 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.

All U.S. jurisdictions should reciprocate and lower with the goal of eliminating their entrance barriers, thus tangibly 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 a practicing license 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." In what ways 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 outweigh the tax of barriers to admittance. The argument to maintain barriers to entrance can never be won with 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 significantly have to input more into the legal system, like hours in a library - only to get barred as a starting point. The same data ascension can be observed of any type of education where the research aspects have been digitized. Then, if an ESQ’s return on investment isn’t vocationally 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 sunk costs, are 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 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. Currently armed with a bachelor’s degree and two years of legal work experience, non-citizens can at least test through the 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 lawyers 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, then later 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 era, 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. 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 inherent 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?

Personally, I am actively retired... so I get paid a pension whether I do any of this research; I'm not motivated by the need for money from a legal career to justify myself. My entire goal for entering the advocacy realm is to help veterans in a pro-bono or very low income amount, and I am certified with the state of Nevada as Veterans Advocate until 2023. To be honest, I'm losing massive motivational steam and the back and forth into programs like the JD/LLB/PGDL has consumed valuable time and energy needlessly. I don't need to take the Post Graduate Diploma in Law course to pass the United Kingdom Solicitor Qualification Exam, but did so, in an attempt to earn a "first law degree" to then bar in Vermont or similar. I paid $2,500 for the November 2021 SQE FLK1&2 tests through the Solicitor Regulation Authority this year. Due to the second part of the test being in-person only and in England, coronavirus vaccine and visa requirements make the cost and travel extremely burdensome for a totally disabled adult. I am in arbitration with the SRA accommodations team now, to see what facilities can be opened in America to actually give the opportunity to enter the profession equally. Initially, a mediation over the ethics of not planning to keep US test centers open for the even the SQE1 portion was sustained in my favor by a credit card company litigator. I did score very high in the University of Law test quizzes, in the 98% percentile. In general, it feels like UK law makes more sense than the US due to parliamentary supremacy. On this path, the earliest I could possibly attempt to bar in the US with this PGDL route would be Feb or July '23 in Vermont,?plus requiring an ABA LL.M. on top for other states like New York or California (which doesn't have JD ABA requirements)!

Applying again to the Juris Doctor program at University of Miami, Florida in early 2020, I learned no applications were being taken due to the pandemic. To reiterate the example in Nevada: another law school admission dean last year sent me on a LSAT fool’s errand for one year. Dr. Wall coerced me into retaking the law school entrance exam test because he wrote: my 2013 test was American Bar Association invalid, when I corresponded with the ABA director about this: I learned no such rule exists. Inevitably, the legal credentialing system from start to finish is attempting to process their backlog by delaying access to apply on all levels. Taking the LSAT-flex in 2021 and passing at 140 shows that I am capable of passing any bar. Yet, the Boyd Law agent told me that even as a second year Ph.D. student I was not competitive enough for admission, so Dr. Wall illogically denied my accessibility after meeting his invented prerequisites. Each American state has crafted their own version of the credentialing process, so the requirements and overlapping precedent is mind boggling. In Washington (2020) and Michigan, diploma privilege means that thousands of lawyers swear in without ever taking the bar - hundreds due solely to covid-19 restrictions. Funding a degree from a private university in modern times can be likened to navigating a bureaucracy more than implied commitment to rigid learning.? Perspicaciously this juxtaposition of admittance requirements defies reason as a credentialing process: to maliciously preclude the qualified and worthy whilst indoctrinating the untested.??

In Vermont, which is very close to my alma mater of West Point, New York: United States Military Academy - the Northeast region has hundreds of thousands of veterans that are in dire need of legal benefit help right now. Still the barriers to entrance intentionally created would take years to hurdle for someone like me: who can pass the bar exam and induction criteria today. Twenty two (22) soldiers take their own lives daily due to lack of care and 2021 saw the highest percentage mortality rate annually since tracked post 9/11. Doesn’t the society the veterans fought to defend care about their lives we will lose between now and then?

As of writing this letter which was 02/11/2022 through 07/25/2023 which is the first available VT bar exam based on rules of English law degree possible acceptance, there are 529 days. At 22 soldier suicides per day equals 11,638 Veterans America has collectively condemned through inaction and prejudicial preclusion of competent advocates. We owe our citizens a duty of care to help more.

I prayerfully implore the Vermont Office of Attorney Licensing to reconsider my application for foreign degree equivalency. I am formally begging the counsel to allow me to attempt the 2022 exam. There are American soldiers and lives at stake: From The Bottom Of My Heart - I need this credential to help my fellow comrades and citizens before their timelines and statutes of limitation extinguish.?

Thank you again sincerely for freedom of our nation and earnest consideration for approval.

?Most Respectfully,?

Captain Grant Mitchell Saxena, U.S.A., Retired

The United States Military Academy at West Point - Class of 9/11

Bachelor of Science: Leadership & Computer Science Engineering 2005

Infantry Commander, Airborne Ranger, Bronze Star, Purple Heart

100% Permanent & Totally Service-Disabled Veteran

"All Gave Some, Some Gave All"

Acknowledgments:

Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References:?

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