A crowd mostly made up of aspiring lawyers troops to the University of Santo Tomas to take the bar exams in this 2013 Inquirer photo.
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
All roads for aspiring lawyers will lead today (Sunday) to España Boulevard in Manila as 7,227 bar candidates from different law schools take one of the country’s toughest professional licensure exams.
The series of exams will begin today at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) and will continue for the three succeeding Sundays.
The bar is the only professional licensure exams that is not administered by the Professional Regulation Commission.
Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin is the chairman of this year’s bar.
Students and professors of Cebu-based law schools who are involved in the so-called Bar Operations have already flown to Manila to lend moral and material support to their bets.
Lawyer Joan Largo, dean of the University of San Carlos’ (USC) College of Law, urged their examinees to do their best and to work harder.
“We advised them to trust themselves and their USC training, and to have faith in God’s grace,” she told Cebu Daily News.
After one of their examinees clinched the top spot and two others making it to the top 10 in last year’s bar, Largo advised their examinees to set aside any pressure, and just to do what is expected of them.
“We told them to just continue what we have been doing the past years which is to give it our best,” she said.
Karen Mae Calam of USC topped the 2016 bar examinations with a rating of 89.05 percent.
Three other Carolinians landed on the top 10 : Fiona Cristy Lao (3rd), Anne Margaret Momongan (7th) and Jefferson Gomez (8th).
It was the first time a USC graduate clinched the top spot and the first time in the history of the bar exams that not a single Metro Manila-based school landed in the top 10.
Last year’s bar yielded a 59 percent passing rate, the highest percentage of exam passers since 1954.
The bar exams cover eight subjects: Political Law, Civil Law, Taxation, Labor Law, Criminal Law, Remedial Law, Mercantile Law, and Legal and Judicial Ethics. /with Inquirer.net report