For the new lawyers, today is the day. For those who don't make it, try and try again.
The Supreme Court en banc is meeting today to decide on the number of bar examinees who shall be anointed as new lawyers for successfully hurdling the 2017 Bar. The 2016 exams results showed an unusually high percentage of 56.06 percent. This time, it will be definitely lower. This year's chairman is my good friend and neighbor, a bar topnotcher himself, Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin. We used to teach together in the UST Faculty of Civil Law and the UE College of Law. He is a very good professor but a very strict one.
The examinees took eight subjects for four Sundays in November. The subjects they must pass with corresponding weight in computing their overall average are: Political law, Civil Law and Mercantile Law at 15 percent each; Labor Law, Criminal Law, and Taxation (10 percent each); Remedial Law (20 percent); plus Legal Ethics and Practical Exercise (5 percent). This last one is not easy because we must know how to make a deed of sale, a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, a complaint for breach of contract, documents and pleadings, motions, and affidavits,etc. Students have to study for eight years and spend another year for Bar Review. It is not easy to be a lawyer.
I have been teaching Law in UV (my alma mater) since 1977 when I was just 27 years young. When I relocated to Metro Manila, I taught in the UE College of Law from 1985 to the present. In between, I taught in UST, FEU, San Sebastian, CEU, and a Bar reviewer in various universities and Review Centers. Teaching law has been very rewarding to me, not in financial terms, but in sheer joy and satisfaction of seeing my students rise. Some of them are now in Congress, in local governments, and as trial judges (I have one in Cebu RTC – he and his wife were my students in UE).In many courts around the country, I see judges, prosecutors, clerks of courts and other judicial officials who were under me some years back.
This year's batch of my students is jittery because they expect a lower passing rate. It was 59.06 percent in 2016 (3747 out of 6344); 26.21 percent in 2015 (1731 out of 7146); 18.82 percent in 2014 (1126 out of 5984), and 22.18 percent in 2013 (1174 out of 5293). One of the lowest was in 2012 with only 17.76 percent (949 out of 3343). UP had 48 bar topnotchers (number one), Ateneo has 21, our USC had one last year, and Divine Word College now Holy Name University in Bohol had one: Oscar Glovasa, the first outside Metro Manila to ever top the Bar. Cebu has so many brilliant law graduates and bar topnotchers. The founder of this paper, Paulino Gullas topped the Bar with a rating of 93.
I hope Cebuanos will do well this time and produce another bar topnotcher. Let us cross our fingers and wait for this afternoon's announcement. May the force be with you.