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Opening UP Philippine Legal PROFESSION
By SEN. Edgardo J. Angara
January 19, 2013, 8:17pm
LAST week, I visited Davao City to keynote the 14th National Lawyers’ Convention and 40th Founding Anniversary of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP).
There, I underscored that major changes are posing challenges – as well as providing new opportunities – in the realms of law practice and legal education today.
For one, ICT is transforming many aspects of the legal profession. Research can now be more collaborative, with information easily available over the Internet. Legal libraries are no longer large physical venues lined with books, but digital spaces packed with gigabytes of information.
Many legal services are also being outsourced, instead of conducted in-house. Firms relegate the work of researchers, paralegals, and other legal professionals to external providers – at times, oceans away from the home-country.
The online revolution is also making legal work more mobile. Lawyers no longer meet face-to-face with their clients, but do so via online means like Skype. Some have even resorted to social media like Twitter and Facebook to reach their clients.
Financial uncertainty around the globe has also made clients more conscious of the fees they pay to law firms. To keep up, firms will have to make their workflows more efficient and their compensation models more attuned to their client’s demands.
This drive for efficiency has also pushed lawyers to innovation and specialization. With law becoming more interdisciplinary, legal professionals are tasked with creating new models to serve their client’s needs.
Legal advice is no longer about referring back to antiquated, static libraries of information, but finding innovative interpretations of a dynamic and ever-changing body of knowledge.
So many things are happening – new ways of communicating, new ways of charging fees on clients, new ways of expediting trial and litigation. Those things will never catch on unless we open up the Philippine legal profession.
For starters, we must update and revise our legal education programs. Interdisciplinary and international collaboration would be a step in the right direction.
The world’s well-known law schools have already adopted this approach. Harvard Law School and Yale Law School have long offered joint-degree programs.
So-called “Global Law Schools” have also emerged. Opportunities to study abroad are no longer part of a grant, but a component of mainstream curriculum.
Yet, the Philippine legal profession discourages foreign entanglements. Legal scholars from foreign universities may not teach credited courses in Philippine law schools, let alone practice before our courts. Young lawyers may take their master’s degrees abroad, but this will have a negligible effect on their local practice.
Whether we like it or not, foreign competition will come into the country, especially with the creation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) in 2015. This unification and integration will be as much about the free movement of skilled labor as it is of goods and capital.
In many ways, competition is good, especially in elevating the prevailing service standards of the legal profession. If Filipino doctors are not afraid of their foreign counterparts, why should Filipino lawyers be wary of foreign lawyers?
For years, the Philippine legal profession has remained isolated from the rest of the world. In the wake of global changes, law practice in the country has to be internationalized to remain relevant.
On one hand, the Supreme Court should consider revising the Rules of Court to allow foreign lawyers to do limited practice in the country. On the other, legal education in the country must loosen its intellectual borders and reflect how the world is becoming more globalized.
A paradigm shift is definitely needed. Hopefully, this can be achieved under the focused leadership of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.
Website: www.edangara.com | Email: angara.ed@gmail.com.
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