THE LEGAL FRONT

Three factors led me to the topic of this column.  First is our K-12 system of education that the country has been implementing since 2012. The system covers kindergarten, six years of primary education, four years of junior high school, and two years of senior high school, to prepare graduates for tertiary education, middle-level skills development, employment, and entrepreneurship. As its name denotes, K-12 involves studies for 12 years before a student can begin his college education. Thus, a student starting at six years old, cannot enter college until he is 18.  Given the required four years of law preparatory education and four years of law school, he cannot take the Bar exam till he is 26 years old and cannot practice law till he is 27 years old. Age and length of study are factors in people’s career decisions,and could have an impact on legal education and, ultimately, on the administration of justice. Even if only from this perspective, I venture to raise the question: from the time that K-12 was implemented, have the CHED (the agency with authority over college education) and the LEB (which oversees legal education) ever given thought to these considerations and to the possibility of adjusting our legal education program? If so, what are these?  How I wish we, the public, would know and can react. The second magnet attracting me is the Bar exam passing record – 59 percent in 2016; 25.55 percent in 2017; 22.07 percent in 2018; 27.36 percent in 2018; and 72.28 percent during the 2020/21 pandemic years.  Except for the 59 percent passing rate in 2016 (an outlier that historically happens in the Bar exams due to existing peculiar circumstances in some years) and the understandably outlier rates during the pandemic years, the average passing rate from 1998 has been about 25 percent. What can possibly be done to improve these passing rates? Continuing low rates cannot but imply a major disconnect in our system that the proper authorities should address. Have the LEB, as the authority over legal education, and the Supreme Court as the Bar Admission authority, exchanged views on what can be done to improve legal education and enhance Bar admission numbers, to make legal education truly responsive to the demands of the administration of justice, among them our need for a steady supply of new lawyers? The third notable legal education aspect I saw came from my law school teaching experience – the lack of preparation for law school of an increasing number of law students.  Some students take their studies lightly and give greater emphasis to their outside work activities.  This may be a matter of personal choice and priorities, but should not the LEB intervene by limiting the allowable law school load for working students, to help them help themselves? To cite an example, lack of preparation is evident when law students cannot at all articulate their thoughts on materials they have read, or express these thoughts in understandable English – the medium of communication in school, in the Bar exam, and in law and court practice. Will this inability eventually affect our administration of justice and should thus be a government (and, specifically, a Supreme Court) concern?  And isn’t the lack of needed preparation for law school and for law/court practice unfair to clients and litigants who rely on lawyers for their legal concerns and whose lives and properties could be at risk if they do not get proper legal advice or representation? An immediate thought when I meet unprepared law students is the possibility of law school admission laxities or the lack of proper admission standards, after the Supreme Court recognized that admission is wholly a law school responsibility falling within the academic freedom of law schools and students. Is this freedom an absolute right that must be recognized regardless of consequences to society? I have been wondering about admission laxity as I have seen no significant lack of preparation from the general run of students in law schools noted for their strict admission requirements. In blunter terms, it could be that in a choice – between the revenue that greater enrollment brings, and the quality of students and education – some law schools could be giving greater weight to revenue and not to the quality of education they are mandated to deliver. Should the LEB allow this kind of choice in the name of academic freedom? Shouldn’t the proper authorities now take a second look at properly supervised Law school admission tests to ensure that students entering law school are the qualified ones who would not simply waste scarce legal education resources or end up as half-baked lawyers when they somehow eventually manage to pass the Bar?  Will the K-12 curriculum make any difference at all and positively affect these concerns? We – as citizens and as parents – hope we can hear from the proper authorities on these points. ([[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])) *(The author was a former Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court and of the Court of Appeals.  In the Executive Branch, he served as undersecretary and later, secretary, of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).  For a time, he was Foreign Affairs undersecretary; chancellor of the Philippine Judicial Academy (Philja), and a partner at the Siguion Reyna, Montecillo & Ongsiako Law Offices.  He taught law at the Ateneo de Manila University, the University of Asia and the Pacific, and was dean of the San Sebastian College of Law.  He still teaches law at the San Pablo Colleges in San Pablo City where he currently resides. )*