A 9th subject in bar exams?

I am dead sure that the Supreme Court is within its authority to do it, but I still cannot understand why every time bar exam results reflect an exceptionally low passing rate, the customary (in fact, legally provided) passing grade of 75 percent is adjusted downward.

Which of the two, anyway, is the real purpose of our bar exams: to determine who truly deserves admission to the practice of law; or to announce to the four winds that our law schools continue to produce a fairly good number of qualified lawyers every year? In either case,  why must the Supreme Court unnecessarily reveal that an adjustment or “doctoring” of the passing grade has taken place?

For example, it was announced that had not the passing grade in the 2012 bar exams been lowered from 75 percent to 70 percent, only 361 or 6.76 percent of the 5,343 who took it —instead of the relatively less alarming 946 or 17.71 percent—would have been admitted to the bar. Supreme Court Associate Justice Martin Villarama Jr., chair of the 2012 bar exams committee, was quoted as saying that the court decided to lower the passing grade following a yearly tradition, and that such liberality was in the spirit of Lent (Inquirer, 3/23/13).

Alas, with due respect, the good justice was either less than truthful, or he might have just been misquoted.  If I recall correctly, the last time the high court lowered the passing grade was in 2007, truly far from traditional. Then, only 300 of the 5,626 total examinees got at least 75 percent and the usual rate of disqualification in three subjects (criminal, labor and civil laws) had to be lowered from 50 percent to 45 percent.   And so, 1,289 or 22.91 percent came out as having “passed” that year’s bar exams.

On the other hand, most of us know that our bar exams are generally held in September each year,  so much so that the results are, more often than not, announced towards or during the Lenten season. Yet, this is probably the first time we ever hear of “bar exam Lenten liberality.”  If at all, methinks it is misplaced and might do more harm than good to the legal profession.

I regret that I may be writing with a bit of sarcasm.  With all honesty and candor, this is not essentially meant to criticize anyone; merely to give way to that which my plain common sense keeps asking me in this connection.  Well, I may have found an answer to my last question.  Perhaps, in occasionally revealing that the passing grade for this or that bar exam has been reduced, the justices might merely be wanting us, the people, to make some due allowance for the rather sad likelihood that every now and then we might come across lawyer-prepared affidavits or notarized documents that make us either laugh or knit our brows in utter frustration.  If that is the case, then maybe, just maybe, it is high time they added a ninth subject in the bar exams: English Composition and Grammar.

—RUDY L. CORONEL,

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