Bar exam and legal education (3)

The Bar Exam assesses the students’ knowledge of basic laws. Beyond the basics is the responsibility of law schools. By conducting the bar exam, the Supreme Court does not and cannot guarantee the applicants’ fitness and readiness to take on specialized fields, like law-of-the-sea, patent, or securities cases.

Old ways to learn law. The top 10 passers gain enormous advantage because the doors to the top law firms, best corporations and finest government offices are immediately opened to them. In fact, topnotchers (and honor students with decent bar exam grades) have a choice of which doors to enter, unlike ordinary passers who must fall in line for professional and employment opportunities.

I was lucky to have been both an honor graduate and a bar placer in 1960. Our dean, Jovito R. Salonga, invited me to join his prestigious law firm (which, pursuant to his high ethical standards, was dissolved much later on when he joined the Cabinet of President Cory Aquino).

In his law firm, I was immediately assigned over a hundred cases to study and to litigate. In addition, I stayed late evenings researching for his big, high-profile cases and accompanied him during his litigation combats with the best advocates of his time. He said that the best way to learn how to swim is to be thrown into the water. He threw me not just into the water, but into the middle of the ocean where I had to struggle mostly on my own lest I drown.

I must admit that what I picked up from law school did not prepare me for such near-drowning experiences, because I was taught only the basics, and by strict professors who used the old recitation, and question-and-answer methods. One professor, a learned judge and textbook author, demanded that we memorize his opus and graded us according to how we repeated every line of his book to answer his questions.

New ways to learn law. Fast-forward 50 years, I find that most law schools still teach only the basics and use the old teaching methods (lectures, recitations, questions and answers) of my time. However, the leading law colleges, especially Ateneo de Manila and the University of the Philippines, have introduced new teaching methods and expanded their curricula.

They pioneered in the case method developed by Dean Christopher Langdell of Harvard, in which Supreme Court decisions are analyzed and debated, thereby enabling students to understand how theoretical principles are applied in real-life cases. They also established legal aid clinics where students, under the guidance of their mentors, rendered assistance to indigents.

Since UP has its own charter, it enjoys autonomy in crafting its curricula. This autonomy extended to its College of Law, which thus flexed its curriculum beyond the basics and instituted elective subjects like indigenous law, human rights, law and poverty, and law and population.

Ateneo expanded its course even more and conferred the degree of juris doctor (JD), no longer bachelor of laws (LLB). It enriched its curriculum with new subjects like social philosophy, arbitration law, clinical legal education, collective bargaining, environmental law, information technology, securities law, etc. Lately, I am glad Dean Sedfrey Candelaria is planning a subject on liberty and prosperity, my legal philosophy.

Ateneo students are also required to use their summer breaks to serve as apprentices in law firms, government offices and courts. Equally important, senior students must prepare and defend a thesis on a novel subject, thereby making them truly deserving of their doctoral degrees.

Despite their heavier loads, Ateneo and UP graduates manage to cop the top places in the bar exam, negating the theory that concentrating on the basics prepares best for the bar exam. Many schools, like Far Eastern University (my alma mater), De La Salle, and University of Asia and the Pacific, are following the Ateneo lead to expand their curricula and grant JD degrees. They want to teach not only legal knowledge but also the skills to convert that knowledge into practice.

Proposals to upgrade. Comes now Justin D.J. Sucgang, a member of the Legal Education Board representing the student sector, raring to upgrade further the standards of legal education. In his 288-page seminal thesis, he envisions an ideal legal education that:

1. “Ensures that only students with the aptitude for legal studies and practice of law will be accepted (by passing [a] mandatory national aptitude test for entry to law school…”

2. Allows law schools “to draw their own curriculum … determine their specialization … and have [their] own unique market…”

3. Considers law not as an “end-all-be-all discipline but rather a tool, a powerful one, that effects social change … and integrates practice-oriented courses such as the Art and Theatrics of Legal Advocacy…”

4. Allows “most law professors to choose their own teaching methods because they will not be bothered by the need to have their students pass the bar exam…”

5. Respects students “not only [for] their dignity as human beings but also [for] their unique learning strategies…”

6. “Weed[s] out the unprepared [through]… other means of screening such as the Mandatory National Screening Program…”

7. “Employ[s] the bar exam [only to test knowledge of] the fundamental and core subjects of the law … [uses only the] pass-fail grading system and abolish[es] the bar topnotcher system…”

These proposals are open for discussion.

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