First-Year Caribbean Medical University Student Retains Admission over Credentials Issues
A first-year medical student at a prominent Caribbean medical university retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team after the university notified the student that it was rescinding his admission. The notice alleged that the student had failed to provide a certified transcript and other necessary documentation for the student's admission file. Our client had indeed had extensive communication with both the medical university and our client's undergraduate school before and after beginning the medical program. The medical university had admitted our client conditionally on our client's assurances that the required documentation was coming. Our Student Defense Team helped our client reach oversight officials at the undergraduate school to speed up the undergraduate school's administrative processes. The undergraduate school had awarded our client the undergraduate degree but not yet updated our client's transcript with course completions technically occurring after the degree ceremony. The undergraduate school had also not removed transcript holds for unpaid library and parking fees that our client had, in fact, paid after receiving notice of the hold. Oversight officials at the undergraduate school admitted that the school was short-staffed in the registrar's office and behind on providing transcripts. The undergraduate school's registrar personally forwarded the certified transcript to the medical university. Our Student Defense Team similarly helped our client resolve two other minor credentials issues while communicating with the medical university's registrar. The registrar reinstated our client's admission. Our client suffered no interruption in medical studies.
Second-Year Student at Private Caribbean Medical School Avoids Academic Progress Dismissal
A student completing the second year of studies at a private Caribbean medical school retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team after the school notified our client of academic probation and impending dismissal. The school had already academically dismissed several of our client's classmates who had already headed home to the U.S. Our client was considering doing likewise. Our Student Defense Team helped our client evaluate options and commitments and develop a retention strategy. With renewed confidence in the career path and his probable success, our client relied on our Defense Team to help prepare grade appeals, negotiate assignment extensions, and obtain a one-term reduced course schedule for academic recovery. The school granted all requested relief, and our client completed the recovery plan with renewed energy and belief in ultimate success. The school removed our client from academic probation after the recovery term and reinstated our client's full schedule, which our client managed without difficulty. Our client required no further services than that one term of counseling, assessment, appeals, and administrative negotiations and assurances. Our strategy of first confirming our client's commitments to ensure our client would vigorously pursue the recovery plan produced its intended positive effect.
Third-Year Caribbean Medical Student Avoids Dismissal on Professionalism Charges
A third-year student at a leading Caribbean medical university retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team to fight professional misconduct charges threatening our client's dismissal from the medical program. The charges arose out of a series of incidents related to group medical student social outings with university staff and faculty. The outings involved the consumption of substantial quantities of intoxicating drinks by all attending the outings, not just our client. Our client, though, had allegedly behaved inappropriately toward students, faculty, staff, and others not connected with the university, including security at the outing location. Our client remembered none of the alleged incidents but maintained that his behavior had likely not differed significantly from the behavior of others at the outings, both associated with the university and not associated with the university. Our Student Defense Team implemented a remedial strategy in which our client submitted to professional substance abuse assessment, training, and education. The assessment did not recommend treatment. Our client further committed to a period of abstinence from intoxicants. Our Team helped our client make that presentation at an informal resolution conference prior to the scheduled formal hearing. The university's director of student discipline recommended conditional dismissal of the charges, which the medical dean approved, removing the need for a formal hearing. Our client continued with their studies without further incident, satisfying all conditions.
Caribbean Medical University Graduate Avoids Residency Dismissal over Competence Issues
The graduate of a Caribbean medical university retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team after our client's residency site director threatened residency dismissal for incompetent clinical performance. Our client had faced difficulties with the residency program director from day one of the residency, learning later that the director had opposed accepting Caribbean medical graduates. The hospital administration had forced the director's hand due to a residency candidate shortage and the hospital's urgent staffing needs. Our client acknowledged a period of adjustment to the residency but maintained that he had performed just as well as the other new residents, all graduates of U.S.-based medical schools. Our Student Defense Team implemented a strategy of first helping our client gain the support of hospital administrators, oversight officials, and supervising physicians without directly challenging the program director's authority. Our client further requested additional training and assignments to develop our client's confidence and the confidence of the hospital staff and supervising physicians. We helped our client negotiate a delay in the director's action on the threat of dismissal while our client implemented the professional development and relationship strategy. The director never renewed the threat or sought to move the incompetence charges forward in any kind of formal proceeding. Our client's prompt retention of our Student Defense Team, and concerted implementation of a discerning strategy, led to our client's successful navigation of a career-threatening situation, not of our client's own making.
Caribbean Medical School Student Clears School Record of Falsified Documents Charges
A student in her final year of a Caribbean medical school program retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team after the school's clinical director entered a reprimand in the student's school record for allegedly falsifying medical and pharmacy records. Our client had legitimate concerns that she would be unable to obtain a critical U.S.-based medical residency match with the reprimand on her school record. Our client maintained that the reprimand, which the clinical director had entered without providing our client with any notice or hearing, was without any basis, that the director had blamed her for misconduct in which others may have engaged, and that the director was jealous of or intimidated by our client's academic success, clinical performance, and warm clinical supervisor relationships. Our Student Defense Team implemented a strategy of relying on procedural irregularity and unfairness rather than challenging the director's clinical judgment. We based our strategy on the insight that the program's administrator was well aware of the director's character and, though committed to supporting the director, would use administrative requirements to correct the worst of the director's offenses against students. We thus appealed the reprimand to the program administrator while involving the school's general counsel. Acting on the general counsel's recommendation, the administrator struck the reprimand from the student's record on procedural grounds. Presumably aware that she could not support the charges in a contested hearing, the clinical director did not renew the charges against our client. Our client proceeded through the program with a clean record, ready to qualify for a U.S.-based residency.
Second-Year Student in a Caribbean Medical Program Defeats Academic Misconduct Charges
A second-year student in a leading Caribbean medical program retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team to defend academic misconduct charges. An instructor in the program maintained that our client had cheated in studies and exam preparation and helped other students cheat. The instructor maintained that our client had gained access to assignment problems and exam questions and prepared and distributed answers for students to use to complete the problems and pass the exams. While the instructor did not lodge charges against any other student, the instructor maintained that our client should suffer dismissal for acting as a cheating ringleader. Our Student Defense Team helped our client prepare a defense showing that our client had not obtained any assignment problems or exams in any unauthorized or surreptitious way. Our client had instead relied on an assignment and exam bank that the program's student organization maintained with instructor support and approval. Our client had only done a far better job of analyzing the problems and exams and outlining the knowledge and skills necessary to perform well than other students had ever done. Our client was just a much better student, not a cheater. We helped our client prepare and document a presentation to that effect, which our client shared in advance of the misconduct hearing with the program's academic support director. The academic support director then testified in our client's support at the hearing, after which the instructor consented to a dismissal of the charges.
First-Year Caribbean Medical University Student Defeats Drug Charges
A first-year student at a smaller, private Caribbean medical university retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team after university disciplinary officials charged our client with drug possession and distribution. The charges resulted from a drug bust by local police on the university's campus. Police had arrested another medical student on drug trafficking charges. That student had fled the Caribbean country for the student's U.S. home. The university had dismissed that student but simultaneously charged the dismissed student's two roommates, one of whom was our client, with drug possession and distribution. The other charged student withdrew from the program and returned to the student's U.S. home. Our client determined to persist in the program, maintaining his innocence. Our Student Defense Team developed a strategy of respecting the police and university interests in deterring illegal drug activity while distancing our client from any such involvement. We retained a private investigator to acquire the statements and documentation necessary to show that our client had not been involved in any way, although aware of rumors of the roommate's alleged drug activities. The investigator, a retired local law enforcement official, identified officers who would testify in support of the investigator's evidence of our client's non-involvement. Our lead attorney then helped our client present that testimony and the supporting documentation at a hearing before the university's disciplinary committee. The committee ruled in our client's favor, recommending to the university's dean that the university dismiss the charges.
Second-Year Caribbean Medical School Student
A second-year student at a large and well-respected Caribbean medical university retained the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team when the university warned the student of impending dismissal for inadequate academic progress. The Caribbean medical university had residency relationships with prominent hospitals in the student's home U.S. region, and the student had strong academic skills and a passionate commitment to medical studies and practice. But the student had suffered a serious illness that local Caribbean medical providers could not diagnose, requiring the student to return to her U.S. home for diagnosis and treatment. The illness involved an inherited genetic condition that the student could manage lifelong with an appropriate medical regimen. But the student had to withdraw from the medical university term and take other courses incompletes while stabilizing her medical condition. Our Student Defense Team helped our client assemble, organize, and present her medical documentation and case for relief from the university's standard curriculum schedule. Our client's presentation showed that she was ready, willing, and able to complete all curriculum requirements once granted medical leave for the term withdrawal and extensions to remedy the course incompletes. The registrar and medical director reviewed and accepted the presentation, granting our client's requested relief. Our client remained in good academic standing and completed the second year of her medical program, advancing to her clinical studies.
