Some lawyers’ journey ‘from greenhorns to vultures’
In his letter, (“With lawyers like ours, who needs criminals” Opinion, 3/24/16), Ramon Torrefranca wrote about prominent lawyers being in the service of big-time crooks in plunder of public funds, and asked: “What has the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) to say about it? What has the Supreme Court to say about it?”
Doesn’t he get it? What can the IBP and the Supreme Court do? Nothing! The IBP has always been run by the same omnium-gatherum of lawyers belonging to or connected with law firms on retainer with syndicates run by crooks who are able to pay them handsomely from their plunder activities! In the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, are entrenched former lawyers of those firms. Notice how many of them go back to those law offices upon their retirement via the front or back door?
An avid fan of “Suits” (an American TV series about law practice on the opposite side of the globe), I cannot help being awed by how even the most veteran of unethical law practitioners shudder at the thought of being disbarred for any kind of fraud! In this country, lawyers getting complicit in crimes with crime lords practically consider it an “honor” just to be in their company!
It is a sure sign they have “arrived”—a long way from being greenhorns to being, not necessarily eagles, excuse me, but vultures! The thing is, when high-profile crooks hire them, it sends the unmistakable message that they are so smart and so amoral they have no problem finding ways around the law or squeezing through its eye-of-the-needle loopholes. With so much filthy lucre at their disposal, coopting those who sit in judgment of their clients’ crimes is practically par for the course! Oh, what to do with our kind of lawyers!
—RIMALDO PACIFICO, [email protected]
