This year however, we saw a peculiar but delightful phenomenon: the 2016 Bar Exam Top 10 was swept by schools outside Manila! Really, great lawyers in the Philippines aren’t just found in Manila but all over the country.
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| [photo: prcboard.com] |
According to Inquirer, “all topnotchers of the 2016 Bar Exams came from law schools outside Metro Manila,” annexing that only 2 from the 12 from the top 10 were from law schools in Luzon. This year, Visayas and Mindanao did some major representing of adding to the brilliant pool of attorneys in the Philippines.
On the top of all the other ‘notchers is Karen Mae Calam of the University of San Carlos (USC) with a rating of 89.05%. Since the bar exams are in the form of question and response essays, Calam says, “It’s how barristers answer and how the examiners appreciate the answer,” and that, because of this, no one school can claim supremacy over law education and that brilliance can still be discovered in and out of Manila. She is joined in the top 10 by 3 other USC graduates Fiona Cristy Lao, Anne Margaret Momongan, and Jefferson Gomez.
Not only has the result of this year’s exam challenge the notion that Metro means better, we also observed the highest turn out of board passers since raising the passing grade back to 75% (the SC lowered the passing rate to 70% in 2007 due to low passing probability at only 5% of 5,626 of applicants) and the majority of the top 10 (8/12) is female.
Becoming an attorney in the Philippines is a road filled with much struggles but also of colorful stories like that of the security guard in Baguio who worked and studied his way to becoming a lawyer while also supporting a family. Truly, lawyers in Manila are without question competent and amazing but the same can be said about any other hardworking and dignified attorney anywhere else in the Philippines.
Article by: NDV Law
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