Philippine Law Schools; History.

In 1733, or 266 years ago, the University of Santo Tomas, which is older
than Harvard University in the United States, opened a Faculty of Civil Law and a
Faculty of Canon Law. From 1734 to 1800 (66 years), out of 3,360 students, it
graduated only 40 students in its various law programs, to wit: 29 in Bachelor of
Civil Law, 8 in Licentiate in Civil Law, and 3 in Doctor of Law, showing the rigid
training in these courses.
In 1898 the Universidad Literia Filipinas was established in Malolos,
Bulacan and offered courses in law and notary public. It later moved to Tarlac.
In 1899 Don Felipe Calderon (author of the 1899 Malolos Constitution)
founded the Escuela de Derecho de Manila, which in 1924 was renamed the
Manila Law School.
In 1910 the College of Law of the University of the Philippines opened with
50 Filipino and American students. The first dean was Justice Sherman Moreland
of the Philippine Supreme Court. He was replaced by George A. Malcolm, who
later became a Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court.
Other law schools followed: Philippine Law School, 1915; University of
Manila College of Law, 1918; Far Eastern University Institute of Law, 1934;
Southern College of Law, 1935; Arellano Law College, 1938; and Francisco Law
School, 1940.

Under the First Philippine Commission (1899) and the Second Philippine
Commission (1900), laws were passed requiring the inspection of private
schools, e.g. Act No. 74, which created the Department of Public Instruction; Act
No. 459, or the Corporation Law; Act No. 2706; Act No. 3075.
Under the Commonwealth Government, C.A. No. 180 was passed which
created the Office of Private Schools (later called the Bureau of Private Schools).
After World War II,, R.A. No. 74 was passed providing additional budget for the
supervision of private schools.
The latest law on legal education is R.A. No. 7662, also known as the
"Legal Education Act of 1993", which, inter alia, created the Board of Legal
Education.

Legal Education; history.

In 1911 the only educational requirements to be a lawyer were a high

school degree (as pre-law degree) and a 3-year law course. Later the pre-law
requirement was raised to two years of college work (associate in arts degree) in
addition to a high school degree.
In 1960, Sec. 6 of Rule 138 of the Rules of Court was amended by the
Supreme Court increasing the pre-law requirement to a 4-year bachelor's degree
(Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science) and increasing the law course to 4
years (Bachelor of Laws). This resulted in a dramatic decrease in law enrollment
in 1960. For instance, at the University of the Philippines, from an enrollment of
196 students in 1959, it dropped to 28 in 1960.
The University of the Philippines started the law aptitude test and interview
by a screening committee as requirements for entry into its College of Law.
In the 1960s to the 1980s the 4-year law course (Ll.B.)n was made up of
122 units which emphasize the bar subjects listed in Sec. 6, Rule 138 of the
Rules of Court: civil law, criminal law, remedial law, legal ethics and legal forms,
commercial law, political law, tax law, labor law, public corporation and public
officers, and international law. The course included non-bar subjects: legal
history, legal bibliography, statutory construction, jurisprudence, trial techniques,
thesis and legal research, legal medicine, and practice court.

The sources of Philippine legal education are (a) Spain, which gave it the
Roman civil law and the canon law, (b) the United States, which gave it the
English common law, and (c) Indonesia (thru the Majapahit Empire and the Shri
Visaya Empire), which gave it the Islamic law.
In 1988 the University of the Philippines launched a "core-elective
curriculum" which allowed law students to enroll up to 20 percent of elective
subjects. It hope to lead to specialization in legal education.

In 1989 the Department of Education, Culture and Sports adopted a

revised model law curriculum for the 4-year Bachelor of Laws degree composed
of 51 subjects (124 units) which took effect in 1990. It offered more subjects on
the legal profession, legal ethics, legal counselling, legal research and legal
writing.
From 1950 to 1960, 35 new law schools were opened. In 1972, there were
80 law schools in the country. In 1982 the number decreased to 45 law schools,
35 percent of which were located in Metro Manila. In the same year, there were 3
state-supported law schools: University of the Philippines College of Law,
Mindanao State University, and Don Mariano Marcos University College of Law.
The law schools accreditation system proposed by the Standing
Committee on Legal Education and Bar Administration of the Integrated Bar of
the Philippines (IBP) is still pending with the Supreme Court for final action.
In 1964 R.A. No. 3870 created the University of the Philippines Law
Center to conduct continuing legal education programs and legal research and
publications.

Bar Exams; Performance Rate

Generally, between 20 to 30 percent of bar examinees pass the bar

exams. A sample of the passing percentage is as follows: 1946, 19.39%; 1957,
19.85%; 1962, 19.39%; 1969, 28.00%; 1974, 35.02%; 1979, 49.51%; 1984,
22.55%; 1989, 21,26%; and 1991, 17.85%. The number of bar examinees has
been increasing: 1973, 1,631; 1978, 1,890; 1983, 2,455; 1988, 2,824; and 1991,
3,196. In 1954, there were 14,000 Filipino lawyers; in 1977, 28, 000; and in 1992,
34,922. From 1946 to 1953, the passing percentage of most law schools was
below the 50% level of the national passing percentage.
The Philippine annual bar exams are administered every September by a
committee created by the Supreme Court composed of one justice as chair and 8
lawyers, with a term of office of one year. The bar examinee must be at least 21
years of age, a Filipino citizen and a resident of the Philippines, of good moral
character, has completed the required 4-year law course (Ll.B.) in a law school

recognized by the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (now by the

Commission on Higher Education and the Board of Legal Education).

Private Law Practice

In a 1976 survey among lawyers conducted by the UP Law Center, it was

discovered that only 23.4 percent were engaged in active private practice and
that the rest were either employed in the government (32.2 percent) or private
sector (38.6 percent). In 1962, 25 percent of lawyers were in active private
practice.
Law practice is complicated and it requires specialization. Under the martial law
regime alone (1972-June 12, 1978), there were 1,473 presidential decrees, 708
letters of instructions, and 62 general orders. As of 1911, under the regime of the
Philippine Commission, there were 2,092 statutes. As of 1970, there were 10,078
statutes (Republic Acts [Ras], Philippine Commission Acts [Acts], Commonwealth
Acts [CAs]). The figures excluded local ordinances and administrative rules and
regulations.

Popularizing the Law

This complex situation gave rise to the need to "popularize the law". In the
1980s the UP Law Center launched a series of "programs in legal literacy, street
law, or practical law" in cooperation with women's non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), student organizations, and the local barangays (barangay
legal education seminars).
Certain sectors of society began to urge the Filipinization of the law
(curriculum, textbooks, laws, court decisions). In other countries the
popularization of their laws in their own native tongues was a normal rule of
society, such as, for instance, in Indonesia where its national language, Bahasa

Indonesia, is the official medium of instruction in law schools, and where "the
enshrinement of customary law (is) part of the legal system".
In the words of former Supreme Court Justice Irene Cortez, who once
served as the dean of the UP College of Law: "xxx Where law is written and
taught in a foreign language, it becomes more esoteric, its concepts more difficult
to assimilate and retain. If it is difficult for those who undergo the professional
training for lawyers, it would be even more difficult for the ordinary citizen. There
are those of us in the Philippines who have begun to give serious thought to
using our own language in legal education. xxx."

Legal Education Act of 1993

Under R.A. No. 7662 (Legal Education Act of 1993), the focus of legal
education are[1]: advocacy, counselling, problem solving, decision making, ethics
and nobility of the legal profession, bench-bar partnership, and social
commitment, selection of law students [2], quality of law schools, the law faculty,
and the law curriculum[3], mandatory legal apprenticeship[4], and continuing legal
education.

The Law Teacher

The average law teacher is 51-55 years of age, married, male, with
Bachelor of Laws degree as his highest degree, has bee teaching for less than
10 years, has a load of 10 to 12 hours a week, teaches Civil Law, derives less
than 5 percent of his income from law teaching, teaches in a private law school,
and has not published.

More than 80 percent of the law faculty are part-time teachers. They are
underpaid even in a highly subsidized state university such as the University of
the Philippines. "A person who embraces teaching as a career takes the vow of
poverty".
Despite the financial constraints he faces, he plays a noble and important
role in the training of future lawyers. And he has duties to comply with: "xxx The
law teachers to be effective must endeavor for deeper understanding of the law,
thru research and reflection. Through critical study, they also identify emerging
trends and areas for reform and contribute towards making law an instrument of
social development. Law teachers must principally assume the critical and
predictive functions in the legal profession xxx."

by

MANUEL J. LASERNA JR.

c. 1998