SC to release Bar results tomorrow

MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court (SC) is set to release tomorrow results of last year’s Bar exams that featured for the first time multiple-choice questions, SC spokesman Midas Marquez said yesterday.

A total of 6,200 law graduates took the tests over four Sundays of November last year at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila.

Marquez said the results would be released after a special session of justices and decoding of results, to be led by 2011 Bar exams committee chair Associate Justice Roberto Abad at 2 p.m.

During the session, the Office of the Bar Confidant (OBC) will submit the results of the examinations for approval of the justices.

The OBC then starts decoding – the process where the test papers are matched with the numbers given to the bar examinees – a system adopted by the SC to prevent a bar examiner from knowing which test paper belongs to a particular examinee.

In computing a candidate’s final grade in the bar examinations, the SC said the results of the multiple choice questions will be given a weight of 60 percent, while those of the essay type will be given a weight of 40 percent.

The multiple choice questions format was introduced to specifically measure the candidate’s knowledge and ability to recall the laws, doctrines, and principles that every new lawyer needs in his practice, and assess the candidate’s understanding of the meaning and significance of those same laws and principles as they apply to specific situations.

The SC had explained that the change in format of the exams was approved by the high court “to address the problems caused by the essay type exams.”

It was believed that the previous essay type Bar exams “did not effectively measure the bar examinee’s level of knowledge of the law and its applications, mainly because the varying moods of the correctors may jeopardize and unfairly influence grading.”

Justice Abad had said this new format would make new lawyers “focus more on the basic legal concepts and principles, and not much on the finer points of the legal world which are better off left to the hands of the seasoned experts.”

The magistrate said his office had conducted a test on its own lawyers, a dry run on young lawyers, and another one on law students who were in their senior year.

Some Bar candidates admitted having a hard time answering the multiple choice-type questionnaires. Some said the questions were very confusing and tricky, since any of the choices could appear to be the correct answer.

The Bar committee had immediately addressed such concern and decided to give a 30-minute extension for the exams of mercantile law, remedial law and criminal law.

Apart from the multiple choice questions format, the high court also introduced more reforms in the conduct of the Bar exams.

The coverage of the annual bar tests has now been drawn up by topics and sub-topics rather than by simply stating the covered laws.

Security measures were also tightened to prevent a repeat of the grenade attack that marred the conclusion of the Bar exams in 2010 at the De La Salle University in Manila that left some 50 persons injured.

At the start of examinations last year, traditional bar operations – like setting up of streamers, sendoffs, and cheering squads – were banned within the vicinity of the UST for the four Sundays of the exams.

In 2010, a total of 982 law graduates passed the Bar exams, representing 20.26 percent of the total of 4,847 examinees from law schools nationwide who took the exams.

Of the 99 Bar topnotchers so far, 47 were graduates of the University of the Philippines; 20 were from Ateneo de Manila University; seven from San Beda College; five from Philippine Law School; four from the University of Manila; and three each from the University of Sto. Tomas and Far Eastern University.