Prospects for would-be lawyers
By Carlos Isagani Zarate
Inquirer News Service

THE MORE than 4,000 or so hopefuls who survived the gruelling bar examinations held last September must have, by now, heaved a sigh of relief. As in previous years, a frenzied atmosphere enveloped a long stretch of Taft Avenue fronting De La Salle University, site of the annual bar examinations since 1995, as the survivors exited the gates where awaited boisterous throngs of relatives, faculty members and fraternity and sorority buddies.

Now, the killing game of waiting begins. As a majority, if not all, of those who went through that gauntlet (for some, more than once) will attest, any one of them may, in the months leading to the announcement of the results, suffer fits of anxiety. But what is certain though is that only a thousand new lawyers, more or less, will troop to the Philippine International Convention Center by April next year and take their oath before a full court special session of the Supreme Court. And pretty soon, these new compañeros and compañeras will join the legal profession.

Most of the new lawyers will start looking for stable jobs either in the government or in the private sector. Many others will probably eye the so-called big-ticket law firms in the hope of landing slots for associate positions. Many will also be drawn into the "hit and miss" world of solo or loose partnership legal firms (some Davao lawyers call it "guerrilla lawyering"), gravitating mostly to the big cities and capital towns.

Yet, nowadays, with the worsening economic crunch, many lawyers in private practice -- except maybe for those who are in the big law firms -- would attest that they, too, like the majority of Filipinos, feel the brunt of the country's worsening economic lot. As payments of legal fees come few and far between, it is not surprising to learn that some lawyers are preparing for a career shift, like enrolling in nursing courses, with employment abroad as a final goal.

If the lawyers themselves feel the economic pinch, how much more the litigants, particularly those from the middle class and the poor majority?

Thus, in the ruckus over the pork barrel, the fat salaries received by government bureaucrats and the proposed new taxes allegedly to stave off an Argentina-type financial collapse, it is disheartening to note that even access to our judicial system, especially for the poor, is becoming more expensive.

Effective last August 16, court fees were increased dramatically, ranging from a low of 25 percent to as high as 4,900 percent. While the Supreme Court had already suspended the increase in three areas-marriage fee, compulsory counter-claims and filing of motions-I agree with my colleagues in the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) led by Pablito Sanidad, and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) headed by national president Jose Cadiz, that the move is not enough.

The IBP board of governors recently petitioned the high court to declare as unconstitutional Republic Act 9227 which allows hikes in court fees to fund the additional compensation of the members of the judiciary. Ironically, while the said law grants additional compensation to judges and justices, it mandates that the pay hikes must be paid with funds taken from the legal fees, not from the national budget which is sourced from taxes.

As pointed out by Cadiz, only the "very rich will escape the harsh bite of these new legal fees and will surely hurt" the not so rich, the middle class and the majority poor Filipinos.

Sadly, despite the bloated budget allocated to the two other co-equal branches of government -- the executive and the legislative -- the judiciary, with about 25,000 employees, receives only 0.9 percent of the government's annual budget. Still, I am hopeful that the high court will resolve in earnest the IBP petition.

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Another offshoot of the economic crisis that has adversely affected the legal profession can be felt in the fewer number of private practitioners joining the ranks of the so-called alternative or public interest lawyers. A case in point is the September 21 launching in Davao City of the Pieta Legal Resource Center for Women and Children spearheaded by women and child rights advocates. To paraphrase an adage, "many were invited but only a few" -- at least 15 lawyers --responded. With sky-high court fees and the many hidden costs of litigation, pro bono lawyering apparently is now less appealing to lawyers, including the new ones, who sometimes, if not often, have to shoulder the court fees because some clients, including NGOs, just do not have the funds for litigation. To those who responded, they may have been driven there by a vocation, but -- as the saying goes -- reality bites. And alternative or public interest lawyers may yet become another "endangered species."

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COME AND JOIN US: On October 7-9, 2004, lawyers in Mindanao will convene in Davao City for a three-day convention and Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) seminar. Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Justice Reynato Puno, House majority leader Prospero Nograles, Senate majority leader Francis Pangilinan and legal luminaries from all over the country will grace the affair.