Point to me a lawyer who says he knows everything about the law, and I’ll point to you a liar.
A lawyer may strive for perfection, but he can never fully attain it. He may have memorized all the statutes and jurisprudence, but he can never achieve full mastery. Anyone who says otherwise is a deceitful pretender.
It does not matter whether one is a veteran or a rookie. The only difference between them, says a reminder that I was served more than five decades ago, is that the old lawyer is supposed to have already filled his quota of mistakes while the younger one is still beginning to count his.
Even the judges are not immune to committing mistakes. That is why we have the appeals system, a hierarchy of courts where the higher one corrects the errors of the lower one.
The law is vast and unpredictable because it continues to evolve. The doctrine of stare decisis, which is designed to promote consistency and predictability in the law enjoins the judiciary and the bar to adhere to precedents, but many have been the cases where the application of the law to a certain set of facts today was no longer the same in later cases with similar sets of facts.
Besides, and more importantly, lawyers are human beings, not machines. No matter how diligently we prepare, there is always a chance that we have overlooked a detail that has far-reaching implications to our case and our image.
There are those who argue that a former senatorial candidate’s blooper on television can be viewed through this lens.
There are legal principles that are considered “must know” for all lawyers. Missing them is almost unforgivable.
For example, as early as in their sophomore year (freshman, second semester in some law schools) students are taught that a warrant of arrest is served on the person to be arrested, not on or through, his lawyer.
The senator wannabe, who is on the legal team of an accused wanted by the International Criminal Court, however, insisted that the warrant should have been served through them instead of on the accused himself who stumbled and fell while being chased by National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) agents.
Such fealty to the client is rare and admirable. Ces Drilon should have asked him if he was willing to go to jail, too in place of his client who has disappeared again to demonstrate his undying loyalty.