Today is the 4th Sunday of the bar exams and

for the record-breaking 6,533 examinees, this

marks the culmination of all their efforts
throughout law school. Each examinee harbors
in his or her heart the burning wish to be
among the 20% or so who will make it or
roughly 1 out of 5. While the arduous trek is
done, the takers are in the unenviable position
of not knowing whether they have arrived at
their longed-for destination. The 2008
Philippine Bar Exam results will not be released
until another 6-7 months and the agony of
waiting is oftentimes more painful and
distressing than knowing the news outright,
whether it be good or bad.
I read that the present crop is exceptionally
resilient, there having been no drop-outs from
among the bar takers during the entire four
weeks. This includes an 81-year old man
taking the bar for the first time.
This is the modern-day Philippine equivalent of
the imperial examinations in China. The
Confucian classics stressed that education is
the basis of good government and this inspired
the rise of a scholar-mandarin class, whose
members were chosen through rigorous
examinations lasting days. Raul Pangalangan
explains the possible roots of our captivation
with the bar exams:
The Filipino fascination with the bar exams can
be understood as part of the cultural fixation,
especially in our part of Asia, for competitive
and highly secret examinations. I was in
Shanghai last week, and the slide show
contained a photograph of the ancient
examination rooms for the aspiring mandarins
to serve the imperial bureaucracy. The
confidentiality of the exams was such that, in
order to ensure absolute isolation for the
examinee and the integrity of the questions,
the examinees would live for the three days of
the examination inside a small cabin, bringing
along their food, water and waste bucket. It
was said that if an examinee died, they would
just throw his body over the fence rather than
sully the integrity of the mandarinate process
by letting strangers into the area.
Those exams produced a new elite based not
on noble birth but on noble virtue, and, I
venture, that is what the bar exams represent
for the Filipino. Its entire design embodies this
meritocratic ideal: The exams are blind-
graded, the examiner does not know whose
paper he is grading, their identities (examiners
and examinees alike) are revealed only at the
end of process and by authority of the
Supreme Court.
But the scholars, after having been admitted
into the powerful club of the mandarinate,
wanted only to preserve its privileges and
exclusivity. What was intended to be a
meritocracy soon became a self-perpetuating
and oppressive bureaucracy. This so-called
enlightened and learned group betrayed true
Confucian ideals and became legalistic and
hidebound. And notoriously corrupt. The
decadence of the system contributed in no
small way to the many injustices which led to
the collapse of Chinese dynasties, until in 1905
the imperial examinations were abandoned
altogether.
Which brings me to my point. While the legal
profession is in no danger of morphing into a
perverted mandarinate, many opinions have
been aired as to the desirability or even
necessity of the bar exams. No less than
former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban,
himself a bar topnotcher, has asked whether
the outdated bar exams are really necessary.
Instead of relying on the bar tests as the
measure of a lawyer’s worth, is it not better to
concentrate on the upgrading of law schools?
True, there are many lawyers who did not
place in the exams; nonetheless, they
performed quite well in the real world. In fact,
there are some initial bar flunkers who
singularly succeeded later on. The favorite
example is the late Sen. Claro M. Recto who
failed on his first attempt but became a
brilliant practitioner and exemplary public
servant.
True also, bar exams are not required in some
countries. In Spain, for instance, a law
graduate is deemed ready to practice the
profession without need to pass any new
hurdle. In the United States, the bar tests are
given quite perfunctorily on a state-to-state
basis. No big deal.
C.J. Panganiban has long championed reforms
in the process of admission to the bar, and
bewails the non-convening of the Legal
Education Board (LEB). Created by Republic
Act 7662 on Dec. 23, 1993, the LEB is the
agency authorized to “uplift the standards of
legal education.” The good justice convincingly
argues that the country and the legal
profession would be better served if the focus
on the bar exams is instead shifted to
upgrading the quality of legal education,
including nationwide qualifying examinations
before one is even admitted to law school.
Sadly however, the LEB has not been
operationalized; neither has its chair and
members been appointed and its budget
allocated. Until these are done by the President
of the Philippines, reforms in legal education
will remain in limbo.
Former S.C. Justice and our favorite
constitutional law professor Vicente V.
Mendoza, who has sat in the Supreme Court’s
committees to reform the bar exams, has also
called the bar exam process an “unscientific”
gauge to determine the fitness of aspiring
attorneys.
But even Panganiban concedes that there is a
cultural and social element which will stand in
the way of scrapping or even re-formatting the
examinations (for example, to make the larger
percentage of exam questions multiple-choice,
as is the case in the U.S., rather than
exclusively essay-type). Passing the bar has
always been a source of pride not only for the
candidates but also for their extended families
and friends (not to mention the law schools).
Until a better substitute is perfected and
implemented, this anachronistic tradition will
remain.