THE results of the 2017 Bar Examination have been released. Many had been anticipating the release of the results because the yearly examination has been considered for years as the most prestigious one.
The bar examination has been considered as one of the most prestigious licensure examination in the country because being a lawyer is a stepping stone to be a leader of this country, no wonder majority of our presidents in history including the current Rodrigo Duterte have had been lawyers.
To be lawyer will eventually earn you opportunities beyond legal profession like being a CEO of a large corporation like Felipe Gozon of GMA Network or to be an owner like Nickel Asia’s Manuel Zamora Jr. Those opportunities are possible for lawyers that cannot be for in other professions like medical doctors.
But I have an apprehension about the existence of bar examinations in the first place for years because many lawyers I have met are not that knowledgeable about the intricacies of our legal system, no wonder some of them are already contented of being a notary public instead of defending the rights of individuals against criminals or government actors.
Many of these lawyers too were not wanted to be lawyers in the first place but had to be for reasons like inheriting political legacies from their politician parents and others.
Because our political bureaucracy has been run by lawyers, the perception of the people is that to be a politician to be a lawyer that is hogwash, because you don’t need to be a lawyer in order to penetrate yourself in the political bureaucracy and this obsession with bar examination should be stopped once and for all.
In 2005, late Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, a near-flanker herself, proposed to consider the abolition of the bar examination at all and of course, it didn’t prosper.
But the whole issue of overhauling or abolishing bar examination has not been in the agenda in the Supreme Court because the legal system in our country, especially in recruiting aspiring individuals to be lawyers, has been patterned after the American system.
And to be precise, the Philippines is only of the few countries in the world that categorizes Bachelor of Law degree as a graduate instead of a bachelor one like in British Commonwealth or European countries.
Thus the categorization of LLB into a graduate degree created a perception among Filipino masses that to be a lawyer, you need to be an intellectual and it is impossible for a mere high school graduate to be a lawyer right away.
Therefore, this unfair premium for legal profession in our country while lawyers underperforming their profession ought to be removed through abolishing bar examination and harmonizing legal education with the rest of the world. - Joseph Solis Alcayde