The PHILSAT Case: Stairway to becoming a lawyer

Every kid has been asked by the question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Some
would say “I like to be a teacher just like their mother, some would dream to be a doctor to cure the sick
and some would like to be a lawyer.” Whatever they may have, in every child’s belief those dreams
would happen someday.

“I don’t have dreams, I have goals”, one of Harvey Specter’s famous line from the television
series Suits. A dream of becoming a lawyer should not remain a dream it should become a goal. Barack
Obama once said “The study of law can be disappointing at times, a matter of applying narrow rules and
arcane procedure to an uncooperative reality; a sort of glorified accounting that serves to regulate the
affairs of those who have power and that all too often seeks to explain, to those who do not, the
ultimate wisdom and justness of their condition. But that's not all the law is. The law is also memory; the
law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience. 1 They say studying in
law school is hard. You will be studying for another four years, you will have to memorize 2, and sleepless
nights. But how does one start with law school? How does one become a lawyer?

Education has become a potent force for transforming reality and for personal change. It also
affirms that education, when taken as a commodity and subjected to the peculiar characteristics like
economic goods, will always be naturally scarce. For, in education, “many are called but few are
chosen,” to which, we even say cold but few are frozen.” 3To show the egalitarian philosophy of
education, the act also provides that the statute shall promote the right of every individual to qualify
relevant education, regardless of sex, age, creed, socio – economic status, physical and mental
conditions, racial or ethnic origin, political or other affiliation. They shall therefore promote and
maintain equality of access to education as well as the enjoyment of the benefits of education by all its
citizens.4

Yet, the framework for the delivery of legal education towards the qualification of lawyers
adequately knowledgeable and skilled to work in the growing gap of addressing the needs of the basic
sectors has been slow to follow. A significant step towards reform of Philippine legal education came in
1993, with the passage of Republic Act No. 7662, entitled An Act Providing for Reforms in Legal
Education, Creating for the Purpose a Legal Education Board, and for Other Purposes, and popularly
known as the Legal Education Reform Act of 1993. This law provides that that legal education in the
Philippines is geared not only to prepare students for the practice of law, but also to “increase
awareness among members of the legal profession of the needs of the poor, deprived and oppressed
sectors of society,” and ‘contribute towards the promotion and advancement of justice and the
improvement of its administration, the legal system and legal institutions in the light of the historical
and contemporary development of law in the Philippines and in other countries.” To achieve this
objectives, the Legal Education Board (“LEB”) was established with the mandate to, among others,
“prescribe the basic curricula for the course of study aligned to the requirements for admission to the

1
Retreived rom https://quotessayings.net/topics/law-school/.
2
Retrieved from https://medium.com/@hedgemagik/the-hard-realities-of-law-school-in-the-philippines-
de6b16a60bca.
3
Prisciliano T. Bauzon, Handbook in Legal Bases of Education, p. 27.
4
Ibid, p. 58.
Bar, law practice and social consciousness, and such other courses of study as may be prescribed by the
law schools and colleges under the different level of accreditation status.” 5

On December 29, 2016, the Legal Education Board issued a memorandum order mandating all
aspiring law school students to take the Philippine Law School Admission Test (PHILSAT). The first
examination took place in April 2017 across seven key cities in the Philippines. [ 6][7]Starting from 2017,
the Legal Education Board had started implementing the Philippine Law School Admission Test
(PHILSAT); the failure to pass such admission test prohibits a person from enrolling to any law schools in
the Philippines. It is a one-day aptitude test intended to measure the academic potential of an examinee
who wishes to pursue the study of law. 8

The purpose of an educational measurement or testing depends to a great extent on the type of
decisions to be made based on the results of the test. Some tests are designed for the purpose of
determining the students’ suitability to enter a school. College Admission Test, High School Entrance
Examinations etc. All fall under this category. The purpose of a selection test is to gauge the student’s
likelihood to succeed in the particular school. 9Standardized admission tests are available in the
Philippines. A Nationwide College Admission Test or the NCEE was either developed by the NFTRC which
was later replaced by NSAT. Every higher education institution in the country, presumably, has a
standardized admission test. 10Standardized test may serve the purpose of measuring the end results of
school instruction. However, standardized test had also been developed for the purposes of predicting
future performance. Such tests are called “aptitude tests.” 11

This article seeks to present the importance and inevitability of Philippine Law School Admission
Test and the Philippine Bar Examinations for the admission to the practice of law and to be a full –
pledged lawyer it the Philippines.

Let us have a step-by-step purview of how one become a lawyer.

To be a full-fledged lawyer in the Philippines and be eligible to use the title Attorney, a candidate
must graduate from a Philippine law school, take and pass the Philippine Bar Examinations, and to be
eligible to take the national bar exam, a candidate must be a Filipino citizen, at least twenty-one years of
age, and holder of a bachelor's degree and a law degree obtained from a government recognized law
school in the Philippines. 12

5
The Philippine law Journal Centennial Issue, Theodore Te’s “Legal Education in the Philippines: Confronting the
issue of relevance and responsiveness”: A Commentary by Gwen Garcia – De Vera., p. 680.
6
"PhilSAT: Entrance exam for aspiring law students starts this year". ABS-CBN News. February 3, 2017. Retrieved
January 17, 2019.
7
Buan, Lian (May 5, 2017). "81.43% pass first national law school entrance test PhilSAT". Rappler. Retrieved
January 17, 2019.
8
"PhilSAT: Entrance exam for aspiring law students starts this year". ABS-CBN News. February 3, 2017. Retrieved
December 6, 2017.
9
Roberto Padua and Rosita Santos, Educational and Evaluation Measurement: Theory, practice and Application,
p.11.
10
Ibid, p. 86.
11
Ibid, p. 86
12
Section 2, 5-6; Rule 138, Revised Rules of Court.
Importance of PHILSAT in taking Law Studies

You’ve probably nursed an age-long dream of becoming a lawyer as you were growing up.
Fortunately, taking that big leap is extremely possible! But before you can start choosing your pre-law
course and picking the best law school out there, there’s one additional hurdle that you need to face
after college: the PHILSAT.

But what exactly is the PHILSAT? And why do you need it to pass before you can get to law
school when this exam didn’t even exist before 2017?

The Philippine Law School Admission Test (PHILSAT) is a one-day aptitude test that was
established by the Legal Education Board (LEB) to assess any aspiring law student’s overall academic
ability to pursue the course. It happens twice a year, with one every April another every September.
Before the PHILSAT was established in 2017, law schools were allowed to admit students under various
circumstances, as long as they already had an undergraduate degree. According to LEB Chair Emerson
Aquende in a 2017 interview, some law schools required entrance exams, while others followed ‘open
admission’ policies, hence the demand to create a more “uniform exam.” Since then, the PHILSAT has
become a national qualifier for any student who wishes to become a lawyer. During its initial year, the
PHILSAT had an easier transition for its applicants, where students were still permitted by law school
deans to enroll, even without meeting the 55% cut-off grade. But after the implementation of LEB
Memorandum No. 18 in 2018, law schools in the Philippines are no longer allowed to admit students
without a Certificate of Eligibility (COE).Fortunately, the PHILSAT is not as rigorous as the Philippine Bar
Exam. But your overall performance in the exam is crucial if you still want to get into a good law
school!13

The PHILSAT consists of subtests on communications and language proficiency, critical thinking
skills, and verbal and quantitative reasoning.

COMMUNICATIONS AND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY. This subtest measures the ability to recognize
grammar and usage errors and determine the appropriateness of words and phrases in given sentences.
This subtest consists of three question types— identifying sentence error, sentence completion, and
improving sentences.

CRITICAL THINKING. This subtest measures the ability to analyze and evaluate the reasoning in written
materials and to draw conclusions about given propositions. This subtest consists of two question types
—logical reasoning and analytical reasoning.

VERBAL REASONING. This subtest measures the ability to understand written materials and make
conclusions based on their content. This subtest consists of reading passages followed by questions
about the passage.

QUANTITATIVE REASONING.  This subtest measures the ability to apply basic mathematical skills to the
analysis and interpretation of real-world numerical information to draw conclusions. This subtest
consists of three question types—pattern recognition, data sufficiency, and data interpretation. The
items in this subtest involve basic mathematical concepts and the four fundamental operations—
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The items do not require difficult computations hence
13
Retrieved from https://blog.edukasyon.ph/college-life/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-philsat/.
the use of a calculator is not needed. Some questions can be answered more quickly by reasoning and
estimating.

The Center for Educational Measurement, Inc. (CEM) has been accredited to manage the affairs
and activities related to the operation of the PHILSAT. With CEM's experience as an educational testing
agency, it was commissioned to prepare the questions and administer the test, ensure the reliability and
validity of the test, and uphold the confidentiality of results and integrity of its administration. 14

Importance of PHILSAT in taking the Bar Exams

“What gives compelling direction to law schools, however, is the nature of the bar
examinations, which has the effect of tailoring the curriculum content, the method of
teaching, and the operational objectives of the law schools to the singular demand of giving
the correct answers in the qualifying examinations largely recalled from memory […]. Still
the gravitational pull of the bar examinations redirects the resources of law schools away
from meaningful reforms opened by the new policies and standards and they simply
operate on the pragmatism of making it in these examinations. […] As constituted now, it
has become a bottleneck in the need to release the potential of legal education” Former
University of the Philippines College of Law Dean Merline M. Magallona. 15

The Philippine Bar Examinations is the national licensure exam for admission to the practice of
law. It is conducted during the four Sundays of November of every year. It is arguably the hardest and
the most media-covered of all government licensure examinations in the country. 16 It is also reputedly
one of the hardest bar examinations in the world. 17

Although PHILSAT is a standardized test designed to measure the academic potential for success
in the study of law. The rationale for Test Content as follows:

1. Coverage of local and foreign admission tests

The coverage of the PHILSAT parallels the coverage of various local and foreign admission tests used to
screen applicants to the study of law. Among the tests reviewed were CEM’s Law School Qualifying test
(LSQT), the UP-Law Admission Test (UP LAE), the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), and the Graduate
Record Examination (GRE).

2. Study on the Law School Qualifying Test (LSQT) scores and its relationship to first-year law
average.

14
Retrieved from https://www.cem-inc.org.ph/philsat-philippine-law-school-admission-test.
15
The Philippine law Journal Centennial Issue, Theodore Te’s “Legal Education in the Philippines: Confronting the
issue of relevance and responsiveness”: A Commentary by Gwen Garcia – De Vera., p. 683.
16
Alexander L. Lacson. "A Nation Under Lawyers." The Practice: Business and Leisure Magazine for Lawyers.
August–September 2004 Issue.
17
Reports made by members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,
September 2005.
The LSQT is a standardized admission test developed by CEM since 1999 for use by law schools in
screening applicants to the study of law. Research has shown that the LSQT has a significant positive
relationship to various performance indicators in the study of law. This supports the use of LSQT as a
basis for the coverage of PHILSAT.

The LSQT was retired upon accreditation of CEM as the PHILSAT testing administrator.

LEB’s Policies and Standards of Legal Education and Manual of Regulations for Law Schools on
prerequisites for admission and the model curriculum for Bachelor of Laws / Juris Doctor

Part I, Article III, Section 16 specifies that “An applicant for admission to the LI.B. / J.D. program of
studies must be a graduate of a bachelor’s degree and must have earned at least eighteen (18) units in
English, six (6) units in Mathematics, and eighteen (18) units of social science subjects.”18

PHILSAT has been very controversial. In 2017, two petitions were filed before the Supreme
Court: a petition challenging the constitutionality of the Legal Education Board, and the second was a
petition challenging the powers of the Board to administer a standardized national test and creating
such test as a requirement for law school admission. [19][20] Oral arguments were held on March 5 and 12,
2019.21 On March 18, 2019, the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order for the
implementation of PHILSAT. The order further conditionally allowed those who have not taken PHILSAT
for the academic year of 2018-2019, those did not pass the tests in the previous years, those honor
graduates with no exemption certificates or with expired exemption certificates to enroll as incoming
law students for the upcoming academic year. The said order was effective immediately and shall
continue until further orders from the said high court. 22

In view of the release of the results of the 6 th Philippine Law School Admission Test administered
on September 29, 2019 LEB has released a Memorandum Circular No. 48 Series of 2019 “Advisory on
Conditionally Enrolled Students in the First Semester of AY 2019 - 2020 in Relation to the September 29,
2019 PHILSAT”, allowing students with conditional enrollment permit who scored at least 45% but
below 55% and students with conditional enrollment permit who scored below 45% permits to admit
examinees under discretionary admission. 23

18
Retrieved from https://www.cem-inc.org.ph/philsat-philippine-law-school-admission-test.
19
Benjamin, Pulta (February 4, 2019). "SC sets oral arguments on Legal Education Board issue". Philippine News
Agency. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
20
Philippine News Agency. "SC sets rules on oral arguments over LEB validity". Manila Bulletin. Retrieved March 18,
2019.
21
"SC to hold oral arguments on law entrance exam next month". GMA News. February 4, 2019. Retrieved March
18, 2019.
22
Navallo, Mike (March 18, 2019). "SC allows non-PhiLSAT passers to enroll in law schools for now, subject to next
exam". ABS-CBN News. Retrieved March 18, 2019.
23
LEBMC No. 48 Advisory on Conditionally Enrolled Students in the First Semester of AY 2019 – 2020. Retrieved
from http://leb.gov.ph/leb-memorandum-circular/.