Teaching legal ethics must be strengthened in law schools — lawyer candidates

MANILA, Philippines — The legal education in the country must be reformed, lawyers who are seeking Senate seats in the May midterm elections stressed as they lamented that curriculum in law schools often disregards teaching students ethical values.

In a town hall meeting with law professionals Friday, lawyers Chel Diokno and Neri Colmenares pointed out that the legal curriculum in the Philippines is “bar-centered.”

“The entire curriculum of law schools is oriented toward the bar exams and it disregards ethical values, skills that they need everyday in their practice,” Diokno, the founding dean of De La Salle College of Law said, adding that “legal education has become a business of making students pass the bar exams and that’s it.”

“The business of a law school is to produce good lawyers and when I say good lawyers, hindi ibig sabihin na magaling lang sa batas. Dapat marunong siya na ang batas dapat mabilbihan sa nakararami,” Colmenares said. 

The Supreme Court is expected to release the results of the 2018 Bar exams on May 3. A total of 8,155 law graduates took last year’s bar exams. 

Diokno and Colmenares, as well as the other lawyers who attended the town hall meeting such as Ernesto Arellano, Joan Sheelah Nalliw and Erin Tañada stressed that teaching ethical values in law schools must be strengthened. 

Diokno noted lawyers are “influential” and “important” but law students only get few units of legal ethics. 

“Kailangang higpitan natin ‘yung usapin ng ethics. As a lawyer kasi malaki ang impact nito sa pag-practice ng profession. Importante ‘yan. We’ll admit na ang kalakaran ngayon is not the practice itself but who [are the] judges you know. ‘Yun ang kailangan nating bantayan,” Tañada said. 

“Legal ethics maliit na subject lang ‘yan. Kaya minsang yung mga lawyers di nila [‘yan] masyadong nabibigyan ng importansya  'pag sila ay naging abogado na,” Nalliw, an independent candidate, said. 

Judicial track 

The founding dean of the De La Salle College of Law suggested that a judicial track for law students must be created to “lessen corruption.”

“Law students pa lang sila pero magsasabi na sila na gusto nilang pumasok sa judiciary, executive or legislative,” Diokno said.

He added: “They will have additional curriculum so they will understand about the budgeting process, about court management, deal with databases and everything you need to run a good court in our country, or to make a good law or to run the executive department.” 

Sonny Matula, a labor leader and law school teacher, for his part proposed the removal of review courses, which he deemed as “redundant.”