Many things are different about the Bar examinations happening today.
The two-day test, which began Friday—no longer the four-consecutive-Sundays big event complete with cheering and bar ops—combines the examinees from 2020 and 2021, all 11, 378 as of initial count. The test has been postponed three times due to virus surges.
This is also the first time the exam takers will be allowed to use their laptops in any of the 31 testing sites.
A main feature of the Bar is the negative COVID test requirement for examinees.
It is easy to get distracted by the novelty of the safety protocols and the immense logistical planning for this event. Imagine the ordeal of a law graduate when, after hurdling law school and preparing for the exam for more than a year, suddenly tests positive for the virus or for some reason cannot take the exam.
Then as now, however, and whatever form it takes, one of the most difficult examinations remains to be about reverence for the law and the quest to give justice to every person.
Lawyers could be revered or reviled in our society, for their power to ensure rightness and fairness in society, but for others, for their uncanny ability to bend the rules or find loopholes to suit their own or their clients’ interests.
Those taking the Bar this weekend should remember that they may be living in unprecedented times because of the pandemic, but when they do hurdle this test, the same old ills, challenges, difficulties, temptations, and dilemmas await them for the rest of their professional lives.
Then and now, and under any external disruption, may these future lawyers have social justice and the rule of law at the core of their practice.
