For an excellent law profession

Title

Language

English

Source

Volume XIX (6) June 1967

Year

1967

Subject

Lawyers -- Philippines

Law -- Study and teaching -- Philippines

Practice of law -- Philippines

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

[Something has to be done by our law schools and our Supreme Court to save the law profession and the administration of justice from being swamped by an avalanche of mediocre lawyers.

Fulltext

■ Something has to be done by our law schools and our Supreme Court to save the law profession and the administration of justice from being swamped by an avalanche of mediocre lawyers. FOR AN EXCELLENT LAW PROFESSION The rate at which Phil ippine law schools are turn ing out graduates seems to compete with the rapid rate of the population growth of the nation. Both are in a process of explosion. By it self this phenomenon of growth ought not to be a deep cause for alarm. On the contrary, it should be a reasonable cause for rejoicing if (and this is an important if) the law graduates turned out by our colleges are well educated ' in legal principles ana have received quality instruction in the discipline of tlaw. For Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, former Chancellor of the University of Chicago and once Dean of Yale Law School, is reported to have said that a good legal edu cation is one of the finest courses in liberal education and culture. There is no doubt that this is so. Most of the eminent Filipino law yers of the past were living examples of this assertion, for they were our outstand ing men of culture and learning, from Marcelo H. del Pilar, Mabini, Arellano, Calderon down to Palma, Apostol, Laurel, Recto, and Briones, and the members of our Supreme Court, to men tion but a few of them. Even among the less known lights, broad culture and ex cellent education were indis putable marks of the men in the legal profession of yesteryear. They knew the official language and they were widely read and signi ficantly knowledgeable. Un fortunately, not many of the Filipino lawyers of today may be frankly counted as possessing these enviable qualities. The reason is not difficult to discover: Nowadays, the June 1967 5 study of law in our country, except in very few colleges, has seriously deteriorated. In terms of quality, law is one of the poorest and most neg lected disciplines in our edu cational institutions. The law course is often treated as an ordinary vocational course with but a slight in tellectual content enough on ly to serve the fleeting me mory for mechanical repeti tion. It is studied not with the idea of broadening and stretching the mind and the critical faculties of the neo phyte but merely for the purpose of training him for the bar examinations. The average law student spends 4 or 5 months preparing for these tests which he and the average teacher hope would cover only those topics they have memorized during their review classes. In case the coincidence does not happen, the law graduate blames the bar examiners and the Sup reme Court as if it is his right to pass the examina tions on the ground that he had already spent eighteen years in school and college. Indeed it is a fact that thousands of law graduates have had eighteen years of schooling; but it is far from true that they have spent those years in educating themselves. Attending school is not necessarily getting an adequate education. The fact is that many of those who take the bar examina tions have not acquired enough knowledge of Eng lish, our most important and widely-used official language, to enable them to write one short understandable and correct paragraph. But this is not all. Thousands of them are deficient in basic understanding of legal prin ciples and ideas not to say anymore of general condi tions obtaining in the world of science, economics, and public affairs. Thus, so few of them could tell us the significance of the U.N., the NATO, the SEAT0, the AID, the Colombo Plan, the ICBM, the European Com mon Market, inflation and deflation of currency, the In donesia Mardeka, the apart heid, and other contemporary ideas and events. There is obviously a big “cultural gap” existing be tween the education that the 6 Panorama law student receives from his college and the actual state of educational progress in the world of today. So there is a marked discrepancy be tween the production rate of Filipino lawyers and the availability of well-educated lawyers. It is not an exag geration to say, for example, that out of five hundred new graduates of law in Philip pine colleges, one can hardly find 75 or 100 of them with enough cultural and intellec tual preparation to under stand and appreciate a deci sion of Justice Holmes, a lec ture of Professor Toynbee, or a book of Bertrand Rus sell. When educated young men and women come in contact with many of this kind of lawyers that literally fill the nooks and corners of our country today, they wonder whether law is really a learn ed profession, as has been claimed, or just an occupa tion fit for any mediocre creature whose chief ambi tion is to be addressed as “Attorney.” If things re main as they are, it is likely that the better educated members of the bar would develop a contemptuous dis like against this appellation. It seems a pity that the associations of the better lawyers of the country are not doing what the American Bar Association did in the United States some 30 or 40 years ago. That body, fol lowing the example of the American Medical Associa tion, undertook an intensive and unremitting campaign against the laxity of law schools and bar examinations which resulted in elevating the quality of American law yers and thus improving the administration of justice in the country. Our own asso ciations, with the assistance of the Supreme Court, would be rendering a real public service if they follow the example of the American Bar Association in undertaking something positive and con crete to raise the quality of legal education. This is a patriotic task. For it con cerns a problem that affects not only the name of the profession but also the qua lity of our judges as well as the competency and worth of our political leaders since most of them are lawyers. June 1967 7 The Supreme Court can do something if they give it a more serious thought and at tention. Increasing the num ber of subjects for the bar examinations and prescribing a longer time for completing a law course are not exactly the right remedies. In them selves they can not and do not guarantee adequate legal education. At best, they may only lengthen the time to acquire more information; but information alone is not education. For education is a process of improving the mind, the ability to think, to analyze, to criticize, to understand, and to form re levant judgments. If stand ards are low and instruction inadequate, if teachers are unprepared or indifferent and discipline lax, the addi tion of two or more years to the length of time to com plete a course in law would not result in improving the products of law schools. One vear of effective instruction by competent and dedicated instructors produces better students, than two more years of slipshod teaching under indifferent teachers. Education involves the ac quisition of the ability to communicate clearly and cor rectly. This is specially so in the case of the education of a lawyer. For if there is any profession that calls for proficiency in the skill of communication, for ability to express one’s ideas and in tentions in speech and in writing, it is the law profes sion. Correct language is the tool, the indispensable tool, of the lawyer. The Supreme Court might require everyone who wants to take the bar examinations to first show his ability to express himself by writing a brief essay on a subject given to him as he presents himself as a bar candidate. This should be a preliminary test, a qualifying test, before he is permitted to take the final bar test. It should serve as an elimination test. This need not be an additional subject. For this purpose, the examination now being given in legal ethics and practical exercises, properly adjusted, could well be used. It should be made the first subject and should be given about one month or two ahead of the other subjects. Panorama In that way more time would be available for correcting the papers of the applicants. And if, for instance, the stu dent fails to produce a pa per clearly and correctly written, he should have no further business bothering the Court for an examination of the rest of the subjects. He should be told to go back to school or to do some other kind of work. Alter natively, passing a language test could be required by the Department of Education before giving its certification for a candidate for the bar examinations. In our system of govern ment, lawyers are officers of the court. The quality of the profession tends to be strongly and faithfully re flected in the quality of the administration of justice. The debasement of the law profession which has been going on for the last decade or so is gradually causing a debasement of the courts if not of the entire govern ment service. As important to the nation as the matter of moral re generation is the problem of i n t e 11 e c tual regeneration among our people. For while it is of prime importance that we should have honest men; it is also imperative that we must have highly competent men, and women with cultivated minds, know ledgeable in the general af fairs of life. Competent lea dership requires both good morals and equally good brains. As many of our lea ders are recruited from the profession, the importance of improving the moral and in tellectual qualifications of the lawyer becomes immense ly pressing and significant. — By V. G. Sinco, 11/14/62. June 1967 9

pages

5-9

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