lawyers wannabe...

to those who are aiming to become lawyers someday... please read this...
this was a blog written by LANBER J. DAсs and charissa m. luci, entitled "The making of a Filipino lawyer "
i read this while searching the 2006 bar topnotchers... hehe... may you, like me, be inspired by their words....
passing the bar is like being able to climb the highest mountain or being able to stand up in the face of a gargantuan tempest. the passing percentages of barristers have not been high ever since the inception of the bar exams in 1901. the highest bar exam percentage has been in 1981 with a sensational 43 percent passers. though the rate is impressive, the fatalities are still too numerous. the question is, why does the philippines has a very low passing percentage in the bar exam? is it because of the quality of the law schools or is it the quality of the students that is dipping? the life of a law studentif you are a graduate of a four-year course, you can automatically be eligible to apply for law school as long as you pass the qualifying exams and the interview. most of the time the qualifying exam for law schools consists of reading comprehension, this means that you need to have a combination of good analytical aptitude and a good command of english. as of the present, the language used in law schools is english, sometimes professors will add bonus points just because your answer to the questions is grammatically sound.now, except for some law schools, the entrance exam is not the hardest challenge for most students. rather, surviving in the school is the major goal. you may be able to pass the entrance exam but the school will do everything to filter out the deserving from those who are not.every year, you will never fail to see a scene during enrollment. when it is time to get your grades, mostly you will see some students hold back tears, sometimes they let out the sorrow and cry when they learn that their clearance has the red stamp with "debarred?? spelled out in bold. on the other side of the fence, you will see other students giving out a sigh of relief, others immediately run away from the scene to celebrate their acceptance for yet another semester.some students who are enrolled in law have not ever failed a subject before in their whole life. the scene is somewhat pathetic if you see a student cry over one subject that he or she failed while you have a couple of 5.0s in your class card. clearly, this only indicates that law school is not college, it is head and shoulders tougher.some of those who fail put the blame on some nasty professor whom they can?t adapt to. some just accept that they had not studied very well on the exam. some will try to figure a way to continue their studies, while some reject the notion of ever going back.a law student needs to read. for them life is all about reading law books as much as they can. for example, a student may only read the book of atty. ernesto pineda regarding the family code of the philippines.most of the time this is not enough in recitations, so the student reads everything he can get his hands on regarding the subject, including reading and memorizing a landmark case about a particular article.now, there are professors who give out insane amounts of cases for daily reading. if you have a class with that professor every other day, forget sleep. you will spend your night burning the midnight oil just so you can digest 20-30 cases for recitation the next day. the hard part is ? you still need to study for your other classes, so forget lunch, dinner, and c.r. breaks.one problem of a law student is how to stay up late at night to study, probably the best friend of a law student is coffee, but if you are a choosy fellow, you can opt for red bull, the official energy drink of law students. you can also stay up late armed only with a pack of cigarette, your law books, and a file cabinet full of photocopied cases. suffice it to say, it must be stressed that law school is not college anymore.if you want to be a law student, expect to decline on almost every conceivable party your yuppie friends invites you to. they don?t care about your studies, in fact most of them have the misconception that law school is just like college. but if you are a law student, you know that your time is best served by reading, memorizing and digesting cases. the fact is, not many party animals graduate in law.the serious pupil knows when to pick up the books and when to relax. this is never easy for working students, as they have to divide their time between school and work. just imagine ? a full time student can fail in a lot of subjects, that?s with full time studying.the working student on the other hand can?t even fit study time in one day. don?t get me wrong, i am not making martyrs out of working students, admirable some of them may be. there are still leech-like working students who photocopies the case digests of classmates so they can answer in recitations. some call them resourceful, maybe, but they?re more of a user type in everyday standards. that?s not even the worst case of leeching, as some full-time students can su*k dry their classmates resources without them lifting a finger to find cases in the library. this only illustrates the broad survival skills that you need to develop when you become a law student.the bar exam the bar examination started in the philippines on 1901 with 13 examinees, the language still used then was spanish. in the 1913 pre-war era, manuel roxas of the university of the philippines got the top rank with a score of 92 percent. during the war on 1944, jovito salonga of up got top honors along with jose diokno both garnering 95.3 percent. in 1954 the highest grade obtained in the bar was achieved by florenz d. regalado of the san beda college with a total of 96.7 percent.in the history of the bar exams the highest recorded passing rate was in 1981?setting a huge 43 percent passing benchmark. after this phenomenal passing ratio, the rate of passing has never gone up past 43 percent, but in 1998 the passing rate of 39.63 percent was recorded as the second best rank, though still below the 43 mark. in a surprising turn of events, after setting the second best record in 1998, 1999 has set the lowest record in bar exams history, setting a dismal 16.59 percent passing rate.