Our political leaders and prominent public personalities should serve as examples of good morality, public and private. A corrupt polity leads to a morally weak and corrupt society and thence to corruption-prone citizenry. It’s a truly sad state of affairs when the citizen views unjust gain and abuse of power as inherent perks of public office. It’s made worst by lawyers, who, coming out of law school knew only how to get around the law and with an ethics-be-damned mentality. Not surprising because ethics and professionalism are observed more in breach in the real world. And so, our leaders have much to do in shaping the ethical inclinations of our law students and lawyers.

But law curriculum has also an equally important role to play. It is not enough for law schools to tell their students its wrong to be greedy. Law students should be taught every single day, from their first day in law school through the last day just before they graduate, that it is wrong to be greedy. I mean, law school should place prominent emphasis on legal ethics and professional responsibility and public interest law. They should produce graduates who are professionally and ethically competent and with correct appreciation of public service.

As to the matter of only the best and the brightest joining the legal profession law schools and the legal community including the Supreme Court have such an important role to play. First off, law schools should ensure they have highly competent faculty. (They could set an objective standard for “high competence.”) Case analyzes and case briefings should be a daily feature and take major time in all law subjects. Passing standards for students should be made higher. The Supreme Court must enlist as bar examiners only those with excellent track record in practice and specialization and ensure that the confidentiality of bar exam questions is failsafe.

As for quality of law practice, I think the mandatory continuing legal education requirement is an important first step in refreshing and upgrading the knowlege and skills of our lawyers.

Is the bar exam still necessary? Oh yes! But it should be made tougher for examinees to hurdle. This should not be viewed as a pitch for elitism because I would also advocate for the popularization of the law. Our people must be knowlegeable at least of their basic legal rights in different areas of law. As to the media of popularization, well, all forms of media.

The best, brightest, ethical and professional attorney and a knowlegeable client, hey, that’s qualty.

You are right. Until there comes along a more rigid, equitable and “scientific” method to determining a candidate’s mettle for practicing the profession, the bar exams, imperfect though it may be, will have to stay.

be that as it may, in this day and age of mass education, i don’t know of any other workable measure of a person’s competence to represent another and his knowledge of the law, than an all-encompassing bar examination. it is a test in which the candidate is called upon to summon all the knowledge and wisdom he has so far attained in life, including that which he gained in 8 years of undergraduate and graduate studies.

through the bar exam preparation, a student of the law is compelled to wrap-up all that he learned about the law, careful not to take for granted anything that could come up in the examinations. the one who decides for himself that he has learned “enough”, or that he has studied everything that is “necessary”, is usually the one who fails.

i believe i learned more about law in my 6-month or so bar preparation than in my entire 4-year program in law school. then again, that’s only me.

Anyway, it’s only a matter of time before your can affix “Atty.” to your name. It’s pompous, I know, but there it is. It took me awhile to get used to being addressed as “attorney” and I still cringe sometimes when I hear it. For some reason I can’t explain even up to now.

Congratulations for having made it through the most grueling four consecutive Sundays of your life.

I am not some elitist snob,but one thing I do agree with is the “prestige” attached to passing the bar and becoming a lawyer.Many will never admit it outright but deep down inside,one of the reasons why one wishes to be lawyer is that a lawyer is deemed “above” everyone else.Yes,it smacks of elitism but human nature has seldom yielded to rationality in matters involving heirarchy in society.I have observed,much to my amusement, that people who openly despise and hate lawyers are intimidated by them,or are secretly envious of them.But ofcourse,no one in his right mind will admit that.

I may or may not pass the recent bar,but that is done and over with.It was difficult,gruelling and mind numbing,but I have no complaints.Every lawyer had to go through that.That is the way it has been,and the way it is.Reforming the Bar to modernnize it would in the end not produce better lawyers because there is no tests in any field of human endeavor that will unfalliably determine who will become a good lawyer,or a mediocre doctor, or an excellent nurse.A person’s level of intellectual capacity is seldom at par with his character and capacity to do good or evil,and character ( which is the foundation of a man’s greatness or infamy ) can not be measured by any tests.Even an in-depth psychoanalytical test can never precisely and definitively predict or determine who will shine and who will cause shame.

I hope and pray your generation can do something to rectify this sad situation.

All the best.

the reforms will never happen soon. Prof. Domondon once told that the Bar exam is becoming elitist. There’s truth in it. The preparation is too costly,i.e., fees for the review and application, lodging, food, materials, fare for those in the south, etc. etc.

He aptly noted that reforms in the bar should start with the legal education board that was constituted which was sadly taken for granted. That the present bar examination is not a scientific gauge for an “entry-level” competence in the bar has long been a factoid. That the judiciary has been mum about it for decades is quite disturbing.

I don’t know but I myself can’t impose the scrapping of such test now and in the future so as to let future takers to experience an unexplainable toil. If they call on tradition let them eat it. The upholding of tradition to justify things have seen the production of disastrous consequences.

The speech of Tony Meloto I have read is very instructive. Why close the doors of the judiciary for thousands who could otherwise deliver justice to many who seek it but fail to get because there aren’t many ministers?

“I strongly disagree with the statement I read in the papers today that there is an oversupply of lawyers in the Philippines. On the contrary, we need more of them. Lawyers are as important as scientists, engineers, and economists in a developing country like the Philippines; only we do not have enough of them in the right places. Where there is grave social inequity in wealth and opportunity, we need more lawyers in the alternative field.”

btw, I want to be a warrior lawyer too