Legal Agency: participants’ interactions

10 min read

The Legal Agency works with participants to ensure their businesses are run under the law, coordinates the community’s legal strategy, and is involved in securing the community.

Legal; security; contract

The Legal Agency is part of the Regulatory Bureau. Other agencies in the bureau are Intellectual Property (IP), and Audit. Besides an executive presidency for each agency, the three agencies are served by 12 regulatory presidencies. While the executive presidencies focus on how their agency is working, and implement the necessary adjustments, regulatory presidencies implement the agencies’ strategy, interact with participants and contractors, and report back to executive presidencies on any adjustments that need to be made regarding how the agencies operate, especially concerning their automated systems.

Legal issues in the community

Every limited partner, having invested at least $20,000 and started a successful business, invariably needs to collaborate with other limited partners to successfully deliver goods and services to their customers and to innovate more efficiently. In addition, social interactions between participants are guided by legal agreements between them, which are filed with relevant community agencies to establish responsibilities and ensure their legality.

In modern contract law, a lawful contract must meet six main conditions. There must be an offer, which must be accepted. The parties entering into a contract must be aware of what they are agreeing to, signifying a meeting of the minds. A consideration, usually in the form of financial reward to parties in the contract, must also feature. All things agreed upon must be legal to ensure that the contract is enforceable.

Business agreements in the community follow these requirements. Additionally, they must be scrutinized to ensure that they conform to bylaws. For instance, there is no provision for employment in the community involving two limited partners. Therefore, an employment contract that meets all the conditions listed above is still not enforceable in the community.

The community also provides for social agreements between limited partners. These agreements are meant to determine how social issues such as care for dependents, marriages, and sponsorship of an aspiring participant by an existing limited partner.

In many social contracts, such as a marriage, the consideration is not financial. Instead, the parties in the contract make a specific set of vows to each other, whose breach can be grounds for dissolving the contract.

When two limited partners agree to take care of a dependent, they need clear terms to guide them. In ordinary circumstances, a couple will have joint custody and responsibilities for their children. There is no need to expressly define each party’s responsibilities unless the couple is estranged.

In the community, however, each dependent, regardless of the local arrangements between the limited parties who are presumably responsible for them, must be attached to a single limited partner who is responsible for their welfare. This is especially so when dealing with community agencies. A dependent who has started a business, for instance, and hires equipment from the Business Operations Agency, will need to have a single guardian to pay for them the required lease fees.

Between two or more limited partners, there can be enforceable agreements, which give specific responsibilities and privileges to each party. For instance, if three siblings have decided to take care of their parent who is elderly and can no longer perform normal daily functions properly, they write down an agreement that clearly states the responsibilities of each sibling. However, only one of the three will be responsible for any financial obligations due to the community, such as rent and equipment needed to help them.

The Legal Agency is instrumental in helping community agencies and participants navigate the intricacies involved in drawing up contracts, ensuring that they conform both with the law and with bylaws. The agency also supports legal practitioners to be at the top of their game in providing services and facilitating them to form self-regulatory mechanisms that prevent professional malpractice and promote learning and development.

Security in the community

The community endeavors to provide security in a way that effectively safeguards the welfare of participants and community property, while protecting their right to privacy, and working within the confines of the law. Security is provided by private firms that are accredited and supervised by the Legal Agency and also authorized to provide security services by relevant law enforcement authorities.

The community’s security service providers do not engage in keeping law and order. They cannot carry out arrests, for instance, or engage in criminal investigations. Instead, security services aim to as much as possible, protect people and property, and report breaches of the law to the relevant authorities.

Surveillance

Every corner of the community’s physical plant has surveillance cameras that not only collect footage but also actively look out for inconsistencies. These cameras are for instance able to pick out, using skeletal scans and facial recognition, able to pick out unfamiliar faces, or people who are in places they ought not to be. This approach is fully automated, relying on the extensive data collected by various community agencies and artificial intelligence.

Legal; security; contract

Besides collecting data through surveillance, the system is also able to detect things like falls and accidents and have emergency services respond. Data is continually collected to sharpen security systems’ ability to respond to security and safety needs.

The type of images and data collected by the security services providers is unlike what modern surveillance systems today collect. Cameras are focused on facial bone and skeletal structure and are stripped of all details that could compromise privacy.

As participants join the community, and during their time there, biometric skeletal recognition technologies are used to identify them and keep unique signatures that can be used to identify them accurately, while protecting their privacy. One of the technologies used in this respect is gain recognition. The technology is invasive, with video, images, and other data being collected passively, and being used to construct a complete biometric signature. Besides its non-invasive nature, it is hard to camouflage, especially when cameras and sensors used to detect the signature focus on skeletal structure, rather than outward appearance.

Another form of biometric skeletal recognition is the skeleton and gesture-based authentication. This method collects a person’s bone structure, gesture patterns, and other details to come up with a signature that can be uniquely assigned to that person. These methods will be incorporated into surveillance imaging to help secure and identify participants and visitors. Surveillance will also have the capacity to detect inconsistent movements, and quickly respond to ensure all is well.

Access control

As a gated community, the physical community has various measures designed to restrict access and in so doing, secure people and property. Non-participants can access the village buildings, district buildings as well as facilities in the storehouse. To do so, however, they must be invited by an existing participant, and have reasonable grounds to visit.

Legal; security; contract

Scanning to determine who are not participants, as well as process invites, are all automated processes, though they can at times be augmented by experts to ensure they are working optimally. In some instances, a nonparticipant may have a valid reason to enter the community without prior invitation from a participant. This may include people attending music festivals, and individuals seeking life-saving medical attention, among other specific cases. The community can give them temporary digital passes to be used for the duration of their stay.

When participants leave the physical plant, they furnish the community with details of their itinerary to help coordinate with law enforcement and other partners in securing them. This is however done with utmost care to protect their privacy.

The physical infrastructure that the community uses to secure itself is owned by the Legal Agency. The agency contracts professionals who run security services businesses to manage the system. The system also alternatively contracts professionals to audit security services businesses to ensure they are optimizing the infrastructure, identify areas that can be improved, and ensure compliance with bylaws and the law.

Illustrations

The Legal Agency’s interaction with participants is mainly through contractors engaged either by the agency or by participants, the agency’s automated system, and regulatory presidents. As mentioned earlier, the Regulatory Bureau, of which the Legal Agency is a part, is served by 12 regulatory presidencies of four presidents each. Each presidency serves two districts and agencies which have offices in the corresponding district buildings. For instance, the regulatory presidency serving District 1 will also serve the Human Relations (1), and IP (13) agencies. Here, we illustrate some instances of the interactions with participants.

Illustration 1: legal agreements

Sam recently completed the process of joining the community with his wife, Maureen, also a limited partner, and their two children, aged 7 and 10 years old. As part of the entry process, Sam and Maureen each signed a contract with the community, in which they committed to invest at least $20,000 in the community, through the Capital Bank, to operate their personal and business accounts with the respective community bank, and to abide by community bylaws. For these agreements between the community and the limited partners, the Legal Agency recommends lawyers from an accredited list who can notarize the agreements to give them legal backing.

Sam had already set up a business as an agronomist, helping farmers identify issues with their crops and recommending necessary action. For this business, Sam sometimes needs other participants to help, particularly in collecting samples, research, and carrying out corrective measures to fight plant diseases and pests. However, the community does not permit employment, with every limited partner required to run a successful business before joining.

Legal; security; contract

Sam uses the community database and other means to locate the limited partners he needs to work with. With each person he needs, they draw up a business contract. Each contract specifies the working arrangements and responsibilities. The contract is generated by the Legal Agency’s automated system, which collects information from both limited partners and drafts an agreement that aligns with the law, bylaws, and their needs.

Unlike other contracts, the business contracts that Sam signs with other businesses specify which party is responsible for any payments to the community. For instance, if Sam contracts another business to collect samples from the field, and that business needs some equipment, the agreement needs to specify who will pay for this equipment. It cannot be a joint obligation.

For some of his agreements, Sam and the businesses he intends to contract may find that the contracts the agency drafts are not sufficient to cover all angles of the business relationship. In such instances, and with the help of the regulatory presidency that serves Sam, they can find a contractor who is a professional lawyer and has been vetted by the Legal Agency. The contractor works with the concerned parties to draw up a tailor-made contract that satisfies all parties. In addition, the contractor files a report to the regulatory presidency, advising on any potential shortcomings of the automated system and how they can be addressed.

Sam and Maureen have long taken joint responsibilities for their two children, providing for accommodation, basic needs, education, and recreation without any clear emphasis on who gets to foot the bill. Sam, given that his business is more established, pays for most household expenditures.

In the community, the family accesses a number of social services from community agencies, including housing. For housing, each limited partner leases their own space. They arrange with the host running their village apartment so that they can have adjacent units, which they can combine to form a household module. Each is responsible for their rent. For the children, however, Sam and Maureen have to agree on who between them will be responsible for specific aspects of their children’s lives.

Sam, agrees to cover education, food, and accommodation expenses. Maureen will on the other hand cover recreation costs and other minor expenses. The couple prepares a contract with the Legal Agency’s help, specifying each person’s responsibility, and deposits it with the relevant agencies. In the future, agencies and businesses will refer to the contract when deciding on who to bill for services.

Illustration 2: Security

Wilson, an accountant, has recently joined the community after starting a successful business helping businesses manage their bookkeeping and financial reporting. When he joined, he rented an apartment from his village. He got in touch with the host, who among other things, took him through the the security features of his apartment.

Among other things, the apartment has access control, which uses different biometric recognition tools to allow entry. It has facial and iris recognition, fingerprint recognition, and an access pin. All these features work independently so that other people that Wilson has authorized to access the apartment can do so.

The apartment and all other physical installations within the community and its mirrors are equipped with surveillance cameras and motion sensors. Wilson was informed that these cameras were able to collect every movement in the community, store it, and analyze it. However, the footage does not include actual images, but skeletal structures where people are involved.

Legal; security

The footage is reviewed through AI and other automated tools. Only in instances where the system identifies reasonable grounds to manually review footage is a contractor engaged for the job. Wilson is also trained on how to use emergency systems that alert the system and relevant parties of issues that need their attention and have inadvertently been overlooked by surveillance systems.

Wilson is unmarried and moved alone to the community. His mom, dad, and three brothers live outside the community. Recently, one of his brothers, Jack, requested to visit him, to see how life is in the community and potentially join too. Wilson informed the Legal Agency through its automated system.

The system gave him a link he would share with his brother, to download an authentication app. Through the app, Wilson’s brother scanned his face, fingerprint, and eyes, and sent this information to the agency. After receiving the details, the agency issued him a temporary access pass, which he would use to enter the community’s gate, and once inside, enter common-use facilities such as the stadium, opera houses, and others.

On the day of the visit, however, Jack decides to tag along with another brother, Ronald and uses the temporary pass to gain entry for both of them. Once inside, the system, using gait recognition technology, immediately identifies Ronald as being uninvited, because it has neither his biometrics nor can it recognize his gait. The system automatically informs a business that provides manual patrol services to attend to the issue. Ronald is located, interviewed on his presence, and having satisfied the patrol, with his brothers offering backup, he too is issued with a temporary digital pass.