SC's Proposal To Use Filipino As Court Language A Travel Back To Time?

The people behind the Supreme Court's proposal to use the Filipino language in all court proceedings should know that shifting to any language won't make for a more judicial justice system.

What the country's justice system needs is a reform. More importantly, the components of the justice system specially the lawyers and the judges need a rebirth and maybe a "going back" to their legal ethics subjects. However, this is just like saying every Filipino should repent and go back to Christ.

The logic behind the SC's intention to use the Filipino language in court proceedings is to improve the understanding of the marginalized sector on the different court processes and also to improve their access to justice. The SC may be barking at the wrong tree. What the majority of the poor Filipinos need is access to lawyers. Even if the court proceedings are all in the Filipino language, people would still not have access to justice if they do not have lawyers who will brief them on their court options.

Case in point:

There was one young lawyer (now in the States) who advised her client (a reporter who was facing libel charges) to just prepare money for bail. The lawyer refused to appeal the case to the Department of Justice to exhaust all remedies prior to the filing of the case in court. It's funny because legal ethics provide that any lawyer should exhaust all actions to make sure the client gets justice.

What the SC should do is to establish more free legal centers like the one being run by the Ateneo de Davao University College of Law. Atty. Manuel Quibod has been doing a good job in maximizing the resources of the Ateneo Legal Aide, sometimes asking the help of law students to help those who do not have access to justice.

It seems the SC is hell-bent in changing the court's language from English to Filipino since it has already scheduled a seminar-workshop on October 21 and 22 at the Bulacan State University in Malolos. During the seminar, the Philippine Judicial Academy legal experts are expected to come up with a training program to be used by the judiciary when they start using the Filipino language in court litigation.

So what's next? Perhaps mandating that all law students and law professors should use Filipino in class? How about changing the law books and the SCRA as well as the decided cases to the Filipino language also?

Bar Exam Results Out By Tomorrow?

Well with the Supreme Court, you can never tell. The BAR results may come out this afternoon, tonight, tomorrow or even next week. However what is sure is that the 5,626 law graduates who took the bar exams last year are all fidgety now, unable to sleep, eat and be merry. Well, not until the verdict is out.

Passing the bar is the ultimate dream of any law student. I should know. But what after the bar exams? Unless your goal in becoming a lawyer is to help the poor and the needy and those who cannot afford a lawyer, better not go into law school anymore. If your main goal is to earn money then you might want to look somewhere else, like being a content writer perhaps or a big time drug dealer (then you can buy all the lawyers in the world!).

A lot of my classmates who are lawyers now are complaining about how low their incomes are. A starting lawyer should be happy if he gets a P7,000 monthly salary from a respectable law firm. Mos newbies I know are however thriving with the 30-70% payment being given by most law firms---the 30% goes to the lawyer and the 70% goes to the firm. Well,. you're even lucky if you get a case in a month because if you are a new lawyer then you would probably be relegated to the pro bono cases which the big guys are not interested in anymore.

However, there are also lawyers who have made it big. Call it luck, perseverance or whatever. My former professor Atty. Edison Batacan used to tell us how his life has changed when he became a laywer. He got a Masters before he went to Law School but nothing much there. All good things came when he became a lawyer.
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I had been racking my brain trying to think of other lawyers I know who became successful financially and that's what I got. Blank wall. Well, there are other successful lawyers in Manila and in other places. But based on who I know and what I know of their financial status, I am encountering a blank wall. Maybe I should get to know more people then. Or more lawyers earning big bucks.

But if you are planning to take up law, don't let my cynicism get to you. Go ahead with your ideals. One thing I learned in life is to "do what you love" because then, you will never have to work a single day in your life. Maybe that's why I have remained a writer.