How to do well in law school

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LODESTAR - Danton Remoto (The Philippine Star) - November 24, 2017 - 4:00pm
The assiduous student who wants to do well in law school should do well to start preparing now.
Atty. Jim Lopez has written a most helpful book for those entering the equivalent of Dante
Alighieri’s Divina Commedia (1307) – the law schools in the Philippines. It’s a world filled with
“name-calling, long assignments, cranky professors, vicious insults, numerous case studies, and
protracted recitation.”

Ranged against this “dark side” of law school is the book, The Fundamentals of Law School (Anvil
Publishing), a treasure trove of history, lore, tips and techniques for the aspiring lawyer. The author
is a three-time winner of the National Book Award for his
books The Law on Annulment of Marriage (2001), Judgment Proof: How to Protect Your Property an
d Business from Lawsuits (2003), and The Law on Alternative Dispute Resolutions (2004).

This UP College of Law alumnus asks outright: How should you cope with the rigors of law school?
“The first step is to have a burning desire to be a lawyer.” Right. So those of us who took – and
passed with high grades – the UP Law Aptitude Exams in 1984 but did not pursue it wouldn’t fare
well anyway. Pushed by fathers who were lawyers and only following the template others have
prepared for us, we would have found the tomes too thick to read, the articles too many to
memorize. The eyes blur, the head aches, and you begin to ask: Why am I here in the first place?

Being a lawyer should be your dream, and since it is your dream, let nothing snatch it away from
you, including that demon called fear. “Nihil timendum est. Fear nothing. This should be the motto of
law students who wish to excel in law school and in the practice of law.” Atty. Lopez argues that the
law is relatively easy to study – if you have the strategy and the commitment to excel. Your mantra
should be this: “Nothing is better than a most diligent life.” And what is the cause of failure and
dropouts? “Unfamiliarity with the new environment and lack of preparation.”

Atty. Lopez paraphrases Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection (1859). In
law school, the one that survives is not the strongest of the species, or even the most intelligent, but
the one “most responsive to change.”And change begins in freshman year, the period of adjustment
and the scariest. “An intense culture shock will be felt, a time in which the tectonic plates will be
rubbing up against one another in ways that often make law school a jarring experience.”

This is when your professor in Persons and Family Relations will ask you to make a digest of 200
cases – in your own penmanship, which he will compare with your penmanship in the midterm and
final exams, to make sure your boyfriend didn’t do the digests for you. This is when your professor in
Criminal Law I will ask you to recite the first ten articles in the Revised Penal Code, Book I, while
you’re standing up, sweat dribbling down your back because the professor said you missed “one
word” in Article 5. This is when everybody is watching Justice League and the last film you watched
was two years ago, because you were busy wrestling with the thousands of pages in your law
books.

We are no longer in Wichita; we are no longer in college. Cuteness will get you nowhere in law
school.
 Welcome to law school, where there is little handholding from teachers and administrators, and you
are on your own. The former Dean of the UP College of Law, Dean Merlin Magallona, remembers
his teacher, Professor Troadio Quiason, asking him a question in class based on a footnote found in
the textbook. Another legend at UP, Dean Vicente Abad Santos, once asked a student to recite a
case. The student did and with eloquence, too. But the Dean’s last question floored the student:
“What is the address of the defendant in that case?”

But at year’s end, the freshman student begins to see the how the laws intersect in a logical, if not
grand, design. Moreover, one begins to think like a lawyer, which “involves suspending judgment,
much as the reader of poetry or fiction must willingly suspend disbelief. A lawyer may have to argue
either side of any case or question, so one should not come to an opinion too quickly.”

How about study methods? Atty. Lopez gives us 10 tips. 1) Write a brief schedule and stick to it; 2)
Schedule your study time for your hard courses during law-school hours so that you can get help
from law professors; 3) Do all of your homework and hand them on time; 4) Write your work neatly
because neat papers get better grades; 5) Make sure all your work is accurate and complete; 6)
Write brief outlines; 7) Study when you say you’re going to study; 8) Ask advice from your law
professors about problems you’re having and follow their suggestions; 9) Listen closely and look
interested in the classroom; and 10) Be persistent. Keep at it every day.

And you have to read fast: first to skim, then to scan, and finally to read with intensity, while taking
notes along the way. You also have to read your notes after every class, and after every chapter, to
understand them, or even to rewrite them neatly. The Rozakis Method also tells you to study the
most difficult subject first, and study when you aren’t sleepy or tired. Give yourself short breaks;
stretch every 15 minutes or so. My friend who is now studying in Hungary told me that she would
rest from the density of the law texts every 30 minutes, scanning the green ceiling. Look at the big
picture – what is the issue, the law, and the application? What is the policy behind the legal rule?

And do not forget to eat, sleep, exercise, and keep good relations with your family and friends –
even if you rarely see them now. That is the closing argument for anybody who wants to be a
damned good lawyer.


MISSION
 HISTORY

+
 CAMPUS
 UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS
 LAW SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS

BEYOND THE LAW

Law school or jail. For Florencio Abad, his choice back in 1980 had been simple. A year before
the formal lifting of Martial rule, he, along with four others, had been detained near Camp Aguinaldo
for “conspiracy to assassinate” then President Ferdinand Marcos. Fr. Jose Cruz, at the time the
president of the Ateneo De Manila University, had been negotiating with Gen. Prospero Olivas for
the students’ release.

“I was going to be released at that time, which was nearing four o’clock in the morning, and the
agreement was, I would stay away from trade union work, and in exchange, I was going to law
school,” recalls Abad. “Fr. Cruz said I was going to be a president’s scholar so I would not have to
pay for anything. I grabbed it.”

A trade union organizer back then, Abad would rather not take up law. “It was martial law. Who
wanted to take up law? But I wanted to be free,” he recounts. Also, going to law school had been
one of two things his father wanted him to do; the other had been to cut his hair. Abad has done
both, but after his father died.

Married with a three-year-old daughter, Abad had taken the Ateneo Law School’s evening program,
a five-year course designed primarily for working students. Living in Fairview, Quezon City at the
time, he had worked for the non-government Philippine Business for Social Progress, and had used
the two-hour bus ride from Philcoa to his office in Manila to read class cases and commentaries.

The toughest subject had been taxation, which many in class were close to flunking. Fortunately, the
professor, Gerry Geronimo, had fancied running marathons. “If you run with me for at least five
kilometers at least you can have additions in your grade,” Abad recalls Geronimo telling the class.
So the whole class would speed off to earn those additional points. The longer they ran, the higher
their grade rose, so Abad and his classmates would dash with Geronimo around Buendia and Ayala
avenues in Makati. Abad recalls that a classmate collapsed during one of those marathons. “Not
everybody was fit to run, but we all wanted a higher grade in taxation.”

His professor in mercantile law, the future Justice Secretary Hernando Perez, had been known as a
“terror teacher,” who at one time took out a balisong and planted it on a desk. “He’ll make you stand
up there and throw all sorts of insults at you,” Abad recounts. Sometimes Perez would make a bet
with a student called on to recite, causing the youngster to break down and cry. “He’ll bet you
money, he’ll put it there,” Abad says, adding that the professor never lost. “But he was a good
teacher.”

Abad’s most memorable recitation had been with Perez, who also taught criminal procedure.
Scheduled to recite on illegal possession of firearms, Abad had spent the previous night reading and
re-reading the case, and preparing questions to grill himself with. “The very first question he asked
me was, ‘What is the license number of the gun?’” The information had been in the case, but Abad
couldn’t remember. “If you didn’t get the first question, you’re dead, so sit down.”

But even as he pursued legal education, Abad has maintained that the law was not just a set of
rules. “We wanted the law to be seen as empowering. How do you make law, being a lawyer, as an
instrument for empowerment and liberation? We were questioning the very orientation of the law
education, law training, law practice,” he says.

This had led him and a couple of friends to put up Abogasiya Ngayon sa Ikasusulong ng Bayan
(ANIB), which provided paralegal and legal support “to those who were fighting the dictatorship.”
After ANIB, Abad had helped organize Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligal, “which is now
providing legal support to a lot of human rights victims.” Like his friends, Abad also had pursued his
advocacy work alongside a teaching job at the Ateneo.

However, “a lot of our work was really political, and legal was like a support function,” he says, citing
their efforts to expose the dictatorship’s use of the law to legitimize its rule. To give power back to
the people, Abad has insisted in going “beyond the law.” “That’s why we had to go into politics,
because politics can help you change the law,” he says.

After the 1986 Edsa uprising restored democracy, Abad has gone into politics full-time, representing
the lone congressional seat of Batanes province for the better part of more than a decade. He had
served in the Cabinet of two administrations to oversee areas closest to his heart: agrarian reform
and education.

His most recent appointment as budget secretary of President Benigno Aquino III places Abad in the
unenviable position of dispensing the state kitty, and in so doing, influencing how politicians, both
elected and appointed, would address national imperatives. For a country that has a long tradition of
legalized looting of state coffers, this latest appointment may very well be the biggest challenge for
the activist lawyer.