Bar review by webinar for Cebu barristers

One of the blessings of the new normal is the newly-discovered approaches to teaching and learning using digital platforms. DepEd, CHED, and the education sector are embracing technology as an effective means of facilitating the learning process.

On the first day of June, the University of the Visayas Gullas Law School, through dean Joseph Randi Torregosa and associate dean Charymyth Wagas, embarked on a Bar review using webinar platforms, and with myself as lecturer every Monday evening. We have committed no less than 36 Mondays up to February 2021 and a detailed outline of the Bar Review Curriculum for over 100 or so graduates as well as seniors in the college of law. The Bar review via Zoom enjoys the blessings and support of the university administration. This will reinforce the regular Bar review being undertaken in preparation for the next Bar exams.

The next Bar, for the first time in history, will be held simultaneously both in Manila and Cebu. It’s projected that a total of more than 10,000 aspiring lawyers will take the examinations. This is because there will be no exams in 2020 due to the current COVID-19 crisis, and therefore both the graduates in 2019 and 2020 are expected to take it together. It will be for four consecutive Sundays. The chairman, Associate Supreme Court Justice Mario Victor Leonen, will announce the details of the scheduled examinations. An expert in Law education, Leonen is a long-time professor of Political and Constitutional Law in the UP School of Law.

I myself have been a long-time professor of Law in UV since 1977 when I was privileged to have two great stalwarts as my students, the late secretary Cerge Remonde and the now incumbent Cebu City Vice Mayor Michael Rama. I have been teaching Law for 43 years and teach classes in San Beda Law School in Alabang and UE, both of which produced Bar topnotchers in the 2019 Bar exams, the results of which were released last month. Both my classes in San Beda and UE are also conducted through webinars. All my students have laptops and are tech-savvy. I’m also a Bar reviewer in a number of review centers here in Metro Manila likewise via digital platform.

The Bar review we started for UV's Gullas Law School is called Visayanians' Bar Operations Excellence, and will hopefully go a long way in reviving the glory of this Law school. The university already produced a Supreme Court justice, the venerable legal luminary from Sibonga, Justice Regino Hermosisima, Court of Appeals justices Portia Hormachuelos and Pampio Abarintos, and hundreds of regional trial court judges, municipal and city court judges, thousands of prosecutors, regional directors, governors, mayors, and other public officials. The late senator Ernesto Herrera and ALU-TUCP stalwart Democrito Mendoza were alumni of this great institution.

It’s my fervent hope that the Bar review we’re conducting through the digital platform will enable and empower our Bar candidates in the next examinations. We’re calling all alumni of the UV Gullas Law School to help in whatever way they can and join us in our advocacy to move forward UV's renewed passion for Bar excellence.