THIS call is not new.
As early as 1968, this call was made by the late Supreme Court Justice Irene Cortes, the first female dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law, after embarking on a series of studies that examined the relationship among law school curriculum, teaching and assessment methods, and the Bar Exam. Some years after, in his speech at the first conference of the Philippine Association of Law Professors, Chief Justice Andres Narvasa, then dean of the University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Civil Law, reached the same conclusion. And this was echoed by Justice Florenz Regalado, then dean of San Beda College of Law, and still the highest scorer in the Bar Exam.
At the turn of the new millennium, the SC constituted a Special Study Group (SSG), composed of Justices Ameurfina Melencio-Herrera, Jose Feria and Camilo Quiason. The SSG, in its September 18, 2000, final report, concluded that the “very existence of the examination has stymied in a significant manner legal education.” Fortunately, to date, I still hear advocates—some few progressive law deans and legal scholars—calling for the end of our unnecessary and unhealthy fixation with the Bar Exam.
Neither is this call insignificant.
While I acknowledge that a responsible law school should place some importance on Bar Exam preparation, it is to be equally recognized that “[m]any, if not most, law schools,” as observed by the SSG, “have made passing the Bar Examinations the principal, or even sole, objective of legal education. This has without doubt impoverished legal education and constricted its scope to the possible items that may be asked in the Bar Examinations.” Indeed, this fixation has become the proximate cause of many of the problems that our legal education system has been confronting for decades. Allow me to mention some.
We have Model Curricula that are no longer responsive to the demands of a modern society. Courses that should have been taught considering the growing complexities in legal, economic and political transactions have not yet seen the light of day. At best, they are offered as electives, taken by few students because they are not usually asked in the Bar Exam. On the contrary, courses that are rarely used in common daily transactions are still required to be taught. These Model Curricula—which, to a great extent, follow the 1963 curriculum prescribed by the Department of Education Bureau of Private Schools—contain all subjects as appearing in an enumeration of courses under the 1920 Rules for the Examination of Candidates for Admission to the Practice of Law. We have Model Curricula that attempt to cover all the laws there are notwithstanding the exponential growth of law and jurisprudence, and the simple fact that it simply cannot be done. And, even if it can be, not within a four-year period.
We have an overwhelming number of law professors who still prefer and use an 1870 teaching strategy (i.e., Langdellian “modified” Socratic Method), born out of pedagogical assumptions culled from the 19th century. Despite the availability of newer and more enriching methods, many professors cling to the traditional one because they do not have the necessary training to employ the newer forms of teaching. And granting that they have, they simply cannot afford to use these methods, especially when they are assigned to teach Bar Exam subjects.
Until recently, we have had law students who were, surprisingly, studying to become lawyers despite not having the aptitude to satisfy the demands of law school. Furthermore, even if they are apt for legal studies, these students are being forced to adapt to the traditional mode of instruction, notwithstanding individual differences in learning. Despite research studies showing that the younger generations are becoming more and more visual, the law school pedagogy is still biased toward the traditional aural-centric Langdellian Method. This, therefore, creates a gap, which both law students and professors cannot afford to bridge, under pain of rewriting a law school pedagogy proven time and again to increase the chances of passing the Bar Exam.
We have law schools whose hands are tied in introducing innovations that deviate from the traditional mode of instruction and existing curricula. No matter how they want to effect reforms, they simply cannot just do so lest they suffer the brunt of declining student population due to low Bar Exam passing rate.
We have a statutory regulatory body that struggles with introducing reforms because most of the problems are endemic within the educational system.
Inscribed in one of the halls of the University of Michigan Law School is a preamble of the last will and testament of William Cook, the great legal scholar on Corporate Law and its then biggest benefactor. In explaining his donation to Michigan Law, Cook highlighted the role of legal education in nation-building. He believed that “American institutions are of more consequence than the wealth or power of the country; and…that the preservation and development of these institutions have been, are, and will continue to be under the leadership of the legal profession; and…that the future of America depends largely on that profession; and…that the character of the law schools determines the character of the legal profession.”
Our political history shows that we are a nation run by lawyers, fortunately or unfortunately. And if we are to progress as a nation, we need to ensure that the education received by our lawyers is responsive to the changing demands of the profession and nation-building.
Even before law school, Justin had been passionate about reforming the country’s legal education system, and culminated his stint at De La Salle University College of Law with a Juris Doctor thesis, entitled “A Problem Bigger than Law Schools: Reforming Philippine Legal Education System through an Institutional Approach.”
A Sen. James William Fulbright Awardee and a Clyde Alton DeWitt Fellow, Justin is currently taking the Master of Laws program in the University of Michigan Law School. He was a previous public servant, serving as commissioner representing the law students’ sector in the Legal Education Board, and director at the Office of the President of the Philippines. Upon his return, he plans to teach law full time in his Alma Mater.
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