2009 PHILIPPINE BAR EXAMS

The list of successful 2009 Philippine bar examinees (and the Top Ten
placers) will be released tonight by the Supreme Court.

The examinees and their families nervously await the list.

Once released, as usual, the list will hug the headlines of Philippine dailies,
especially when examinees from very poor families make it to the Top Ten,
an accomplishment that serves as an inspiring human interest story,
considering the multitudes of mental, physical and financial sufferings that
one undergoes to be a lawyer anywhere in the world.

The Court has meanwhile released the advanced information that a total
of 1,451 out of 5,903 examinees from 108 law schools nationwide passed the
2009 bar examinations, according to Associate Justice Antonio Eduardo
Nachura, chairman of the 2009 Bar examinations committee, who added
that 24.58 percent of the total number passed the exam.

In the last decade, the highest passing rate was posted in 2001 at 32.89%,
while the lowest was in 2002 at 19.68%. The highest passing percentage of
all time was in 1954 at 75.17%, while the lowest was in 1999 with 16.59%.

(Note: When I placed 3rd in the 1984 bar exams, where I garnered 90.95%,
the passing rate was only 22%, with UP College of Law failing to land in the
Top Ten. It was the heyday of the Ateneo de Manila University, with 7 slots in
the Top Ten. To this very day, I thank the late Hon. Neptali Gonzalez II, our
law dean at my alma mater Far Eastern University at that time. He was a
dedicated mentor and law scholar and philosopher who was seen by his
students as their second father. I honor him in my prayers, meditation, law
practice, and pro bono advocacy of law and justices issues. Upon retiring
from the law academe, Dean Gonzalez he was elected as an Assemblyman,
Congressman, and Senator. He later served as the president of the Philippine
Senate).

This year’s examiners were lawyers Sixto S. Brillantes, Jr. and Jeremy I.
Gatdula (Political and International Law); Court of Appeals (CA) Justice
Vicente S.E. Veloso and lawyer Pablo R. Cruz (Labor and Social Legislation);
Justice Alicia V. Sempio-Diy (retired) and Court Administrator Zenaida N.
Elepaño (retired) (Civil Law); Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) Presiding Justice
Ernesto D. Acosta and lawyer Edwin R. Abella (Taxation); CA Justice Ramon
Paul L. Hernando and lawyer Hector Danny D. Uy (Mercantile Law);
Sandiganbayan Justice Edilberto G. Sandoval and CA Justice Mario V. Lopez
(Criminal Law); Sandiganbayan Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo and CA
Justice Magdangal M. De Leon (Remedial Law); and Sandiganbayan Justice
Samuel R. Martires and CA Justice Noel G. Tijam (Legal Ethics and Practical
Exercises).

A few months ago, I recommended to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) and
the Supreme Court Chief Justice the promotion of Court of Appeals Associate
Justice Magdangal de Leon (examiner in Remedial Law) to the rank of
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, knowing his credentials, character,
integrity and independence. Unfortunately, he did not make it to the
appointments in the latter part of 2009. I am sure, though, that it is his
karmic fate and destiny to serve in the Supreme Court. It is just a matter of
time. Justice De Leon served as the chairman of the Las Pinas City Bar
Association (LPBA), Inc. in the early part of this decade. I founded the bar
association on March 21, 2001. I served it as its founding president and later
as its chairman. It served as a model for the formation of the voluntary bar
associations in other cities of southern Metro Manila.

1,451 out of 5,903 Bar examinees pass

By Tetch Torres
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 12:04:00 03/26/2010

MANILA, Philippines – (UPDATE) A total of 1,451 out of 5,903 examinees from

108 law schools nationwide passed the 2009 Bar examinations, Associate
Justice Antonio Eduardo Nachura announced Friday.

Nachura, chairman of the 2009 Bar examinations committee, said this

represented 24.58 percent of the total number.

The announcement came after the high court’s en banc session where
Nachura presented the result.

Nachura said the passing rate was lowered from 75 percent to 71 percent
while the disqualification grade in Taxation was lowered from 49 percent to
45 percent.

In the last decade, the highest passing rate was posted in 2001 at 32.89%,
while the lowest was in 2002 at 19.68%. The highest passing percentage of
all time was in 1954 at 75.17%, while the lowest was in 1999 with 16.59%.

The passing percentage for this year was higher compared to last year’s
20.58 percent or 1,310 out of 6,364.

The 2009 Bar exams was also the first time that two examiners were
designated in each of the eight subjects. Thus, every Bar subject was divided
into two parts.

The 2-examiner policy was adopted by the high court after the Committee on
Legal Education and Bar Matters approved the proposal of lawyer Ma.
Cristina B. Layusa, deputy clerk of Court and Bar Confidant, to designate two
examiners per Bar subject, pursuant to Paragraph 4, Part B of Bar Matter No.
1161.

The Court conducts the Bar examinations pursuant to Article VIII, Sec. 5 of
the Constitution which provides that it shall have the power to promulgate
rules governing the admission to the practice of law.

The Rules of Court provide that “a candidate may be deemed to have passed
his examination successfully if he has obtained a general average of 75% in
all subjects without falling below 50% in any subject.”

In determining the average, subjects in the examinations are given the

following relative weights: Political and International Law, 15%; Labor and
Social Legislation, 10%; Civil Law, 15%; Taxation, 10%; Mercantile Law, 15%;
Criminal Law, 10%; Remedial Law, 20%; and Legal Ethics and Practical
Exercises, 5%, for a total of 100%.

This year’s examiners were lawyers Sixto S. Brillantes, Jr. and Jeremy I.
Gatdula (Political and International Law); Court of Appeals (CA) Justice
Vicente S.E. Veloso and lawyer Pablo R. Cruz (Labor and Social Legislation);
Justice Alicia V. Sempio-Diy (retired) and Court Administrator Zenaida N.
Elepaño (retired) (Civil Law); Court of Tax Appeals (CTA) Presiding Justice
Ernesto D. Acosta and lawyer Edwin R. Abella (Taxation); CA Justice Ramon
Paul L. Hernando and lawyer Hector Danny D. Uy (Mercantile Law);
Sandiganbayan Justice Edilberto G. Sandoval and CA Justice Mario V. Lopez
(Criminal Law); Sandiganbayan Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo and CA
Justice Magdangal M. De Leon (Remedial Law); and Sandiganbayan Justice
Samuel R. Martires and CA Justice Noel G. Tijam (Legal Ethics and Practical
Exercises).
See:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20100326-
260930/1451-out-of-5903-Bar-examinees-pass
Read also:

Passion For Reason

Bar exam reforms
By Raul Pangalangan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:16:00 03/25/2010

THE RESULTS OF THE BAR EXAMINATIONS will be out Friday, the Supreme
Court has announced. For those who make it, Friday night will feel like an
early Christmas. For those who don’t, it will be an early Biyernes Santo. But
for all of them, the entire bar review process and the painful waiting for the
results would have been sheer Calvary, because the Philippine bar
examinations are the most unpredictable and unscientific licensing
examination I know.

And when I describe how unreliable it can be, do you know the typical Pinoy
reaction? “Then the result must be God’s will!”

Oo nga naman. If you’re that lucky, it’s got to be destiny! That attitude, in
fact, is one big hurdle for anyone trying to reform the antiquated bar exams.
How does one tamper with what the heavens ordained?

For the most recent bar exam, the Supreme Court has taken one bold
organizational reform. Now we have two bar examiners for each subject
instead of just one. It was a laudable measure but one that unfortunately did
not produce the desired result.

Laudable, because it confronted one undeniable fact: there are more and
more bar candidates each year, hovering at around 6,000 takers for the past
several years already (this, year, 5,903 to be exact). The system of the
solitary bar examiner grading all the exam booklets was designed for an
earlier time when there were much fewer takers. Splitting that task between
two graders made eminent sense.

Unfortunate, because instead of getting the grades sooner by cutting the

“checking time” by half, we are now back where we started: it has taken just
as long to check the exam booklets. Why? Because the two bar examiners
merely submitted two sets of questions, and the exam simply became
almost twice as long.

The experiment would have worked had the exam kept to fewer questions.
And may I add, the questions should be bundled together in, say, one factual
problem with three sub-questions, for a total of 10 percentage points. That
way, we strike a balance. Too few questions and the examinee runs the risk
of being caught on the few points of law that he didn’t study. Too many, and
the examinee runs out of time to answer them all. Worse, the weights
assigned perforce are limited to 2 or 3 points for each question. A perfect
answer gets a 3, but anything less than perfect gets a 2—technically a grade
of 66 percent in an exam where the passing grade is 75 percent. It’s just
impossible to grade such questions fairly.

I hope this gentle critique doesn’t deter further experimenting with bold
reforms. There are basically two sets of proposed reforms. The first focuses
on the substance of the exam, the nature of the questions asked (e.g., avoid
rote memory, use problem-based questions using cases, avoid questions on
esoteric points of law). The second set focuses on how the bar exam is
administered (e.g., who makes the questions, how he or she grades the
answers, or how the passing grade is fixed).

The first kind of reform is more difficult. UP law professor Florin Hilbay,
ranked 1st in the 1999 bar examinations, Yale LL.M. and now vice chair of
Bantay Katarungan, published an essay in the Integrated Bar of the
Philippines Journal entitled “The Flunker: The Bar Exams & The Construction
of the Filipino Lawyer.” He says that the bar exam “suffers from an identity
crisis—it does not know what it’s really for.” It is a “licensure exam,” “a
filtering mechanism that weeds out [the in]competent.” But it is also a
measure of “some vague potential” for genius.

The bar exam cannot achieve one goal without sacrificing the other. A
“pass/fail” grading system will serve the winnowing out function but not the
mother-of-all-battles fetish. We test on too many bar subjects, instead of
focusing on the main subjects that embody the core competencies needed
by a young lawyer. Hilbay says that this “transforms intelligent young
Filipinos into zombies walking along the corridors of law schools memorizing
voluminous texts” and has reduced the bar exam into “nothing more than a
national quiz bee on statutes and decided cases.”
The second kind of reform is actually what the recent change addresses, the
sociology of who asks the questions and grades the answers. This is where
the real uncertainty and arbitrariness comes in because each year, there are
new bar examiners, who in turn are left unchecked if they ask idiosyncratic
questions or apply unrealistic grading patterns. (There was a year when one
examiner passed less than 1 percent in his subject, and another less than 7
percent!) That is why Justice Vicente Mendoza has proposed a standing
committee of examiners and graders.

Finally, I implore all law deans to stop bar candidates from calling
themselves “barristers.” When I go abroad and meet real barristers—
especially the Queen’s Counsels—I shudder at the prospect that they will
discover how benighted Filipinos have debased the term to mean mere
aspirants for the lawyers’ guild.

The error is understandable. We have what they call a “unified bar” and
make no distinction between solicitors and barristers. But it’s an error
nonetheless.

***

See:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100325-260785/
Bar-exam-reforms