The annual Philippine Bar
Examinations for aspiring law students entering the legal profession has become
something of a ritual in its execution, on the part of the administrators on
the Supreme Court, the examiners, the test-takers, and their families, that
there seems to be a formalized method of doing things. One element of this Bar
Exam ritual is the publishing of the exam passers, presented as a list of names
and score percentage with the top-notch test-takers listed first. It tended to
be a source of pride for the schools that the passers hailed from, but a
Supreme Court justice believes it to be superfluous.
CNN Philippines reports that Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic
Leonen, who is chairman of the Philippine Bar Exams for 2020, is of the opinion
that the time has come to redefine what it means to make the bar in the
country. This is manifest in his idea to do away with the score-sorted list of
passers and simply classify test-takers as “Pass/Fail.” This means the scores
will no longer be listed; as long as a Bar Examinee sees his name in the list,
he is a qualified lawyer and his score ranking is rendered irrelevant.
Leonen says in his speech during
the Legal Education Summit at the Manila Hotel on Wednesday, July 31, that he
wants passing the Bar to be a qualification, not an achievement, exam. “It is
not an exam to find out the most brilliant of lawyers,” says Leonen. “It is
only an exam to add into our ranks those lawyers that deserve to practice.” The
Associate Justice did not care to give his reason for this proposal, saying the
Legal Education Summit was not the right place to justify such a reform. He
does say that the 2020 Bar Exams will be “reasonable” enough for examinees.
That will take a while since the
2019 Bar Exams have yet to be held this November. But the 2019 chairman,
Associate Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe, is also promising to streamline the
exam’s test questions. She means to remove questions involving “unfair trivia”
as well as “misleading” law problems, preferring answers that are considered “standard
acceptable” by the whole law school academic community. Perlas-Bernabe notes
that Bar Examinees now tend to approach the test as being unpredictable to
begin with. “The bar exams should not be made intentionally difficult for
extraneous reasons,” she says on her own LES speech according to ABS-CBN News. “Institutional measures
should be set to ensure that the Bar remains true to its purpose as the
licensure exam for the legal profession.”
The 2019 Bar Examinations are set
on the University of Santo Tomas this coming November.
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