Obsession with bar exams grades

This week’s hearing in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte resurrected the issue of her grade in the licensure examination for lawyers (which is more popularly known as bar exams) that she took in 2005.

In an earlier hearing, during the cross-examination of a lawyer from the National Bureau of Investigation whom the prosecution presented as its witness, the VP’s lawyer asked him if he knew that the VP took the bar exams in her first try and received a grade that was higher than many of the lawyers present got.

The witness said he read from news reports that she passed with the grade of 80 percent.

That question (rightfully so) raised a howl in the impeachment court and the legal community for being improper and irrelevant to the matters testified on by the witness.

While many thought that would be the end of that issue, in last Monday’s hearing, the prosecution brought it up by way of a question to the executive director of the Anti-Money Laundering Council, whose attendance was demanded by the prosecution, on the grade he earned when he took the bar exams.

When he said it was 85.75 percent, the prosecution lawyer commented that his grade was 5.7 percentage points higher than somebody they know (referring to the VP without directly naming her), the presiding officer ordered her comment to be stricken off the record.

The comparison of passing grades was obviously a subtle dig at the degree of the VP’s legal competence which had nothing to do with the purpose for which that witness was made to testify. It was clearly a publicity stunt.

Although those incidents may look petty, they reflect widespread obsession with the bar exams and, in general, the legal profession.

Note that they’re the only licensure or qualifying tests supervised by the government, in particular, the Supreme Court that, requires coordination with the police to ensure peace and order in the examination sites and a rerouting of traffic to avoid any delay in their conduct.

For law schools managed by religious groups, there are even prayer offerings or vigils that petition the Almighty to give His blessings of success to their examinees.

And when the results are released, the names and photos of the Top 10 get prominent treatment in broadsheets, television news, and social media, with often stories about the challenges that some successful examinees went through.

Obviously, those who don’t make it are heartbroken, especially if they made financial sacrifices to prepare for the exams or affixing the word “attorney” before their name was a sure ticket to promotion or higher pay.

Unless financial or physical reasons constrain them, chances are they will try their luck again the following year and hope the stars would align finally in their favor.

No other professional licensure or qualifying tests in the country get that kind of treatment. It’s exclusive to the legal profession and it dates back to the 1940s.

In the 2020/2021 bar exams, the high court, in an effort to avoid the bar exams evolving into a competition, did away with the traditional practice of listing the top bar passers and instead published the examinees’ performance as “excellent” if they got a grade of 90 percent or higher, and “exemplary” for grades of 85 percent to less than 90 percent.

Those who were not in any of those two brackets became nondescript. Poor guys and gals, they were just “other” examinees.

That arrangement turned out to be a one-time scheme because the following year, it was back to the old practice of treating the results of the bar exams as a matter of national interest that justifies the hoopla that accompanies their release.

The purported reason behind the manner the 2020/2021 results were made public was because of the exigencies of the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the country during those years. So when the health problem eased up, there appeared to be nothing wrong with returning to the old practice.

But the scuttlebutt in the legal community was, some private law schools lobbied for the return of the Top 10 results approach because of its potential enrollment value.

Naming the bar topnotchers and their schools is a good advertisement tool to attract more enrollment and, in the process, contribute to the continued viability of the law school.

The bar exams results are not meant to measure an examinee’s present and future competence to be a member of the legal profession. They’re simply a test of how well they studied or understood the basic principles of Philippine law at the time they took the bar exams.

The dignity of the law profession is diminished when its own members, in particular those who claim to have long experience in its practice, look to bar exams result as a criterion for according professional respect to their brethren.

—————-

[email protected]