It was a Friday the 13th of December, 2024 and our Rockwell campus was suffused with a familiar disquiet. For it was the day when the results of the September 2024 Bar Examinations were to be announced.
The escalating apprehension was ultimately dislodged with enormous relief, however, the moment it was confirmed that in this latest episode, 169 graduates of the Ateneo Law School (“ALS”) passed, yielding a passing rate of 96.36% and 96.02%, of our first-time and total bar takers, respectively.
Infusion of Ateneo Lawyers
The ALS began infusing so-called “Ateneo Lawyers” into the Philippine law profession from its first cohort of law graduates of the inaugural Class of 1939.
Except for the interruptive years of World War 2, the ALS continued each year to supply Ateneo Lawyers into the system in relatively significant numbers so much so that in 2023, the Legal Education Board bestowed the ALS the first Educating for Justice Award in recognition of the ALS having contributed the most number of new lawyers among all law schools in the Philippines during the period spanning 2011 to 2020.
The generally consistent levels of Ateneo Lawyer production since 1939 was the intended offshoot of a curriculum of law studies and a method of instruction that were deliberately designed to be exacting. The plain theory being that a rigorous law program should adequately prepare students to pass the bar examinations.
While the ALS is pleased with its relative success in this goal—i.e., preparing our students to conquer the bar exams and supporting our graduates who might need to do a retake—passing the bar exams has never been the be-all and end-all of its mission.
Tests, both legal and moral, far more impactful and agonizing than the bar exams, await every bar passer in the real world they are entering. It is in these challenges of law practice where the aspirations of the ALS and the mettle of its education and formation programs will have its true reckoning.
The Vision and Mission
The vision of the ALS recites:
We envision graduates who are not only skilled in the science and art of the law but also leaders imbued with a burning passion for justice and the desire to serve the nation for the greater glory of God.
ALS Students are introduced to the vision of the institution from the very moment they begin their law studies in their first year, emphasizing that by consenting to pursue their law studies at the ALS, they have become an essential part of the vocation for which our community exists.
The vision views each of our students and graduates as a homo viator on a pilgrimage in fulfillment of a mission for the greater good and its essence, including the aim to form them to become “lawyers for others,” is reiterated throughout their matriculation at the ALS by administrators and faculty, whether in individual classes or school-wide congregations.
In the world of actual law practice, we pray that from the years our graduates spent under our watch, endeavoring to touch upon not only their minds but their hearts, they will perpetually carry with them the suite of values of the Ateneo Lawyer brand: to be principled and skilled in law and to become leaders, in whatever form, infecting and affecting others with their passion for justice and service, with the conviction that all that they do as Ateneo Lawyers, is ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Guided by its vision, the ALS avowed mission involves forming our students to be academically excellent and competent, spiritually developed, socially involved, and globally connected.
Academically Excellent
The curriculum of the ALS is an intentionally rigorous one, having around 40 academic units more than the minimum required by the Legal Education Board. This is partly because it includes unique ALS identity subjects such as Theology and the Law as well as Human Rights. Students are also obligated to enroll in at least 14 units of elective subjects in line with their interests, wherein they are offered opportunities to encounter the law in action in various fields in the world beyond law school.
Moreover, although not a regulatory requirement, the ALS maintains its Thesis Program under which all students must research, write, and defend a thesis of at least 13,000 words.
Spiritually Developed and Socially Involved
As a Catholic and Jesuit law school, there are opportunities for furthering spiritual development and social involvement among members of the ALS community.
Apart from the classic vestiges of our Catholic faith such as the centrally located chapel, regular Mass, a prayer before each class, meeting and assembly and the prominent sword-offering St. Ignatius statue—all students must attend an annual recollection as we urge them to pause and listen to the stirrings of their spirits.
Similarly, there are opportunities for engagement with the larger society, particularly for those who are indigent and in need, through programs involving Clinical Legal Education, Free Legal Aid and the Ateneo Human Rights Center, providing exposure experiences essential to the formation of our students.
Globally Connected
In addition to the teaching of International Law, institutional efforts to establish linkages with international law schools have accelerated, developing programs that may allow students and faculty to broaden their perspectives on law by a variety of knowledge and mobility exchange arrangements.
The vision and the mission of the ALS ultimately seek to produce Ateneo Lawyers identifiable by their excellence, their sense of justice and purpose and who innately serve and care for others with integrity and in the most principled way.
Human Beings in the Service of Others
In the graduation ceremonies of the ALS’s Class of 2020, the commencement speaker, Fr. Jose T. Villarin, SJ, posed this question:
“You have a lawsuit. You have a choice of lawyers. Would any lawyer do? Of course, you’d go for the competent one, the one who knows their way in the legal jungle. Would you choose an Ateneo lawyer? Would an Ateneo lawyer have a particular way of dealing with your case? Should there be a difference?
xxx
The difference lies in this truth which we try to teach, a liberating conviction which we hope you will take to heart all your lives. The truth is this: You are greater than your job or legal profession. You are more than just a lawyer. You are a human being first before you are a lawyer.”
That each of our students and each Ateneo Lawyer is a human being with unique hopes and needs which must be cared for in the spirit of cura personalis are beliefs held resolutely by the ALS.
Thus for instance, some members of the faculty serve as advisers to each block of students from their first to their fourth year, making themselves available, as persons who care, to each and all of the students on their miscellaneous concerns.
It is in engaging with our students, face to face, where we can be present, alive and meaningful to them. It allows us not only to affirm to them that for us, each one of them is and will always be a human being foremost, but also to remind them in their eventual life undertaking as lawyers, they will need to likewise recognize that the persons they serve, represent, counsel and affect are themselves human beings and not mere statistics, sources of income, or trophies. And that this consciousness be yet another distinguishing mark of the Ateneo Lawyer.
The King’s Good Servant
“I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first,” was the phrase uttered famously by St. Thomas More moments before his public beheading. In some way, we dream that it is what each Ateneo Lawyer will themselves be able to say at the point of their death.
But not just in that they have placed God above all else, but that in their life of lawyerly service to their various Kings—their employers, their clients, their constituents, the parties litigating before them, even to the causes they advocate—the Ateneo Lawyer is able to say that they were not simply servants, definitely not bad ones, but that they were good servants.
Being a good servant, however, is not achieved by merely acceding and implementing what the King wants. On the contrary, a good servant is one who is also able to tell the King (or emperor, if you will) that he has no clothes.
We thus envision Ateneo Lawyers to be those who will assiduously champion your cause unless your cause is unjust or wrong in which case, they will responsibly advise you what is right, just, and proper. That Ateneo Lawyers will painstakingly negotiate your contracts knowing that it is good faith, and not one-upmanship for its own sake, that is and will be to the best interests of your client and his or her counterparty. That Ateneo Lawyers will render meaningful justice through their thoughtful rulings regardless of your tempting worldly enticements.
This, because the Ateneo Lawyer is the King’s good servant.
But always, God’s first.