The 2025 Shari’ah Special Bar Examinations (SSBE) produced 154 new lawyers, or 24.48 percent of the total examinees.
SC Associate Justice Antonio Kho Jr., 2025 SSBE chairperson, said it marked another milestone in the High Court’s “continuing commitment to integration, inclusion, and innovation guided by the court’s strategic plan for judicial innovation (SPJI).”
“We reaffirm our commitment to making justice more accessible to all Filipinos including the Bangsamoro and Muslim Filipino communities… This year, we also continued our digital transformation enabling examinees to take their Arabic test using specialized translation software,” he said.
The shift allowed fairer, faster, and more faithful checking of Arabic-written answers that honors tradition and innovation, he added.
The two-day examination, conducted on May 25 and May 28 in four local testing centers, was considered a milestone as the first fully-digitalized Shari’ah bar examinations.
The regional testing centers include the University of the Philippines Diliman, Ateneo de Davao University, Ateneo de Zamboanga University, and Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology.
Among the SSBE subjects include jurisprudence (Fiqh); customary laws (Adat); persons, family relations, and property; succession, wills/adjudication; settlement of estates; and procedure of Shari’ah courts.
The oath taking and roll signing ceremonies for the successful examinees is set on August 6 at The Manila Hotel.
