No untoward incident on first Sunday of Bar exams

MANILA, Philippines - This year’s Bar exams kicked off to an orderly and peaceful start yesterday.

The Supreme Court (SC), which facilitates the only licensure exam in the country not covered by the Professional Regulations Commission, reported no untoward incident during the first day of the four-Sunday exams.

Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada personally supervised authorities in securing the perimeter of the University of Sto. Tomas in Manila where the Bar exams have been held since 2011.

Estrada, who again ordered a liquor ban around the venue from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m., also greeted some of the examinees as they entered the gates of UST.

A total of 6,344 law graduates from all over the country registered with the SC to take this year’s Bar exams.

88-year-old takes Bar exam

A stand out among them was Bienvenido Hilario, an 88-year-old repeater from Bulacan. It will be his third time to take the exams, the first in 2008 and the second in 2012. Just like most of the examinees, the graduate of Philippine Law School believed that the Bar exams are a matter of preparation and a little luck.

“I’m not feeling the pressure because I believe I reviewed well. Perhaps, I wasn’t able to find my luck the first two tries that’s why I’m here again,” he said in Filipino.

The high court has lifted its five-strike rule in Bar examinations, a policy implemented since 2005 in which examinees who have flunked five times are disqualified from further taking the Bar exams.

Innovations

Several measures have been put in place since the grenade explosion that marred the September 2010 Bar exams in De La Salle University in Manila.

For this year, two new innovations were introduced by the SC Bar committee for 2014, chaired by Associate Justice Diosdado Peralta, to modernize the conduct of the exams.

For the first time in 113 years, the SC is using bar codes on booklets of examinees.

This new system, in which bar codes will be put on exam booklets with corresponding stickers bearing the name of examinees placed on their assigned seats, replaces the use of name cards for examinees in all previous Bar exams.

Apart from this, the SC also required all examinees to use transparent bags for purposes of convenience and security.

Yesterday’s exams covered subjects of Political Law and Public International Law in the morning and Labor Law and Social Legislation in the afternoon.

The other subjects in the next three Sundays will be Civil Law, Taxation, Mercantile Law, Criminal Law, Remedial Law and Legal and Judicial Ethics.

A total of 1,174 from 5,292 examinees or 22.18 percent passed last year’s Bar exams. Nielson Pangan of University of the Philippines College of Law placed first.

It was the year the SC reverted back to its previous format, which was predominantly essay-type. This would consist of 80 percent essay-type questions and 20 percent multiple-choice questions. In the past two years, the SC has conducted a predominantly multiple-choice format.