Malilong: Holding the bar exams in Cebu City
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MY father had to retire so he could raise enough money to allow me to take the bar examinations in Manila. From the P15,000 that the Government Service Insurance System paid him, he set aside P10,000 to sustain me during my eight-month stay in the capital. That was 35 years ago.
I have been told that the cost of reviewing for and taking the bar examinations in Manila has gone up to at least P100,000. (And clients still insist that the P10,000 monthly retainer they’re paying their lawyer is overly generous!)
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But as equally as the enormous cost of staying in Manila, bar candidates from the provinces also have to bear the burden of being separated from their families and either resigning or taking a leave of absence from their jobs during the review and the four weeks of examination.
Law graduates outside of Metro Manila, especially those coming from the Visayas and Mindanao, are already disadvantaged by their lack of access “to the best services, study programs, law professors and reviewers that a Manila law school can offer,” the University of Cebu (UC) College of Law observed in a letter addressed to the Supreme Court and signed by at least 89 students.
And still “they are doubly pressed by the fact that they also have to spend more due to the higher cost of living in Metro Manila.”
The cost is staggering, the UC law students said, especially for those who have limited resources. The situation becomes worse when the examinees have to extend their stay in Manila, such as what happened last year because of typhoon Ondoy. While some Cebu law schools went to their students’ assistance, “the others might not have been that privileged,” they said.
The students thus requested the Supreme Court to transfer the venue of the bar examinations to Cebu City starting this year in order to spare the candidates, especially those coming from the Visayas and Mindanao, the agony of having to spend more.
They said Cebu City is a suitable venue because not only does it have more than enough hotels and lodging houses, its strategic location, international airport and harbor facilities make it easily accessible to bar examinees from all over the country.
They likewise cited Cebu’s mostly fair weather throughout the year as an advantage. The city is also not as polluted as Manila, they claimed.
Seeking to allay concerns on the effect on the integrity of the examinations if they were to be held here, the students said that “it is now possible to electronically transmit confidential documents with the use of safety features.”
They also said that their school is offering, “at no cost to the Supreme Court, the use of any of its campuses as venue for the bar examinations,” adding that UC has “the proven experience, integrity and the capacity in hosting board examinations.”
The Supreme Court does not even have to bring the usual number of personnel to help administer the examination, the letter stated, “because the local court personnel, supervised by trusted Supreme Court staff, can very well perform the task usually performed by their counterparts in Manila.”
“The transfer of the venue of the bar examinations to Cebu will provide an opportunity to the Honorable Supreme Court to help thousands of bar candidates from the Visayas and Mindanao and even those from Southern Luzon to take the bar examinations and join the legal profession at a much lesser cost.
“And for those in Metro Manila and Northern Luzon, if there would only be one venue, (they will have) the opportunity to see and experience staying even for a brief period in their lifetime in the premier city in Central Visayas.”
Indeed, as the letter averred, there are “sound and cogent reasons” why the bar examinations should be held in Cebu City instead of in Manila. Other Visayan law schools and the local bar should rally behind UC’s petition.
