IN the previous article, I echoed the longstanding yet still significant call to end our unhealthy and irrational fixation with the Bar Exam. But there are those who still maintain that the Bar Exam or the fixation thereto is not a problem. And in doing so, they pass the blame to the other components of legal education.
Some view the Bar Exam results as simply the reflection of the state of Philippine legal education. And if there is to be blamed, it should not be the law schools’ fixation with the Bar Exam, but their unfaithfulness to the “mission and primary objectives of training their students to become lawyers, advocates and leaders.” By implication, it seems that those which consistently perform well in the Bar Exams are the only law schools with strong commitment to their mission. The argument rings true, on its face. Law schools consistently ranking high in the Bar Exam are those with good and modern facilities, top-notch faculty members, research and policy centers, and frequent and winning participants in international moot-court competitions.
To further bolster this argument, they cite the 2004 Commission on Higher Education’s “Report on the Assessment/Visitation Activity Conducted by the Technical Panel on Legal Education on all the Law Schools” (“Report”), which enumerated the main problems besetting law schools: (1) lack of faculty with necessary skill and training to teach; (2) no standard syllabus as required by DECS Order 27, s. 1989; (3) law students’ incompetence in the written and spoken language; (4) absence of law aptitude examination; (5) the majority are working students with barely enough time to read the lessons and cases assigned to them, and some of whom enroll merely for purpose of promotion in work; (6) lack of qualitative assessment of the law program to obtain an in-depth analysis of the reasons for the low passing percentage in the Bar Exam by law graduates; (7) insufficient library facilities; (8) indifference of school administrators; (9) part-time service of majority of law school deans, who leave the running of the law school to their administrative staff and not even to a college secretary or faculty member; and (10) lack of funding resources to undertake development projects for the law school.
Notably, the common thread that binds these problems is the lack of regulation over law schools. Except for item 5, all these main problems can be solved by a regulatory body. This may well be true in 2004 when law schools were generally unregulated. However, five years after, the Legal Education Board (LEB) was finally convened pursuant to Republic Act 7662.
If law schools are really to blame, then why is it that the main problems occurring prior to the constitution of the LEB still exist to this day? And, furthermore, even if we are going to push this argument to its most logical extent—if we are going to close all “unfaithful” law schools or we make all law schools faithful—would the problems besetting the Philippine legal education system be solved? Do all faithful law schools adequately prepare their students for the changing dynamics of the profession and nation-building?
Perhaps, we should not blame law schools, so goes the other argument. Since Philippine legal education is heavily regulated, maybe the problem lies with the regulatory body.
The LEB, however, can only do so much. We should note that immediately after its constitution, the LEB promulgated its “Policies and Standards of Legal Education and Manual of Regulations for Law Schools” to implement RA 7662. This provides for the minimum academic qualifications of the law dean, faculty members, curricula, instructional standards (e.g., classroom, dean’s office, a faculty lounge, library facilities and contents, a moot court and a reliable Internet connection). The LEB has closed several law schools. It even examines the budget of law schools. It prohibited the holding of weekend-only executive classes for being “unpsychological and unpedagogical” since the mind of a student generally can only absorb so much. Also, online classes are disallowed since “the traditional classroom teaching is still the most effective way to teach law.” Recognizing the problem of Bar Exam fixation, it also prohibited law schools “from denying the giving of a certificate of nonderogatory record to law graduates on the sole ground that they did not pass the mock bar examinations after graduation.” Just recently, the LEB finally adopted a mandatory law-admission exam.
Or maybe the problem is with the Supreme Court? As the body entrusted by our Constitution to promulgate rules concerning the admission to the legal profession, it has the final say, i.e., exclusive prerogative on the way the Bar Exam is conducted. However, the Supreme Court is not stubborn as it experiments, from time to time, on how to best conduct the Bar Exam.
Anyway, this blaming game is not new.
During her time, Justice Irene Cortes, the first female dean of the University of the Philippines College of Law, lamented that “the law curriculum has been the whipping horse long enough.” She called the attention of law schools to revisit and go back to their purposes, i.e., genuine legal education, because they permit the Bar Exam to dominate their existence—leading us back to square one.
With its far-reaching effects on the Model Curricula, teaching methods of law professors, learning strategies of law students, drive to innovate among law schools, and the ability to introduce reforms by the LEB, what if we stop playing the blame game and treat Bar Exam fixation only as a proximate cause—and not the only cause?
If so, the problem becomes institutional in nature. Solving it piecemeal will be grossly insufficient. Neither will the improvement in the different components of legal education, in isolation from each other, bring about the needed reforms.
If reforming legal education entails an institutional problem, then it calls for institutional solutions.
Even before law school, Justin is passionate about reforming the country’s legal education system. He ended 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 Fulbright Awardee and a DeWitt Fellow, Justin is currently taking the Master of Laws program in the University of Michigan Law School. A public servant for five years, he served as commissioner representing the law student 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.
Image credits: Skypixel | Dreamstime.com
1 comment
I cannot seem to find any article re LEB prohibition or checking on a university mock bar passing as a requirement to take the bar. Can someone enlighten me on this matter.thanks