This country continues to have a high regard for lawyers, as shown by the attention to Thursday’s release of the list of those who passed the 2014 bar examinations.
Out of the 6,334 takers, 1,126 passed what is considered the toughest professional test here, translating into a passing rate of 18 percent.
Perhaps what occasions the high regard is the rigorous preparation for the exam. It may be the difficult four or five years of studies – memorization of statutes and details of jurisprudence, spanning several decades, on every legal issue imaginable, and the recitation of these before an unforgiving professor.
The eight subjects covered by the Bar exam include Political and Public International Law, Labor and Social Legislation, Civil law, Taxation, Mercantile Law, Criminal Law, Remedial Law, and Legal and Judicial Ethics.
The near-reverence may be because it is lawyers who run governments, craft and interpret its laws. They are influential and powerful, able to make history or rewrite it.
Most likely, the respect comes from the notion that lawyers are out to defend the defenseless, correct injustice and generally make the world – the country, at least – a better place.
We remain optimistic despite our experience with some lawyers deliberately using their expertise to advance their own or agenda, or twist the law for their purposes.
They are the still the exceptions rather than the rule – and this is why we are as interested to read about the Bar passers as though we were their own parents or friends. That a fresh, untarnished batch of lawyers will join the so-called real world gives us a sense of hope that there will be more to advance justice than those to pervert it.
The bar is not only a test of intellect but also of determination and willpower. The stories of some of the passers have amazed and inspired us. Remember there are 1,126 success stories to discover.
The US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is quoted prominently on a hall of the UP College of Law. A law school’s business, Wendell said, is to teach law in the grand manner, and to make great lawyers.
But grand teaching and great lawyering can only be seen if the products, not just of UP but all those who passed that tough test, quite simply and categorically, do good things, and well.
That is the ultimate exam, not of legal mastery, but plain character and humanity.