WATCH: Handwriting lesson for Bar examinees

Good and legible handwriting is very important in law school and during the Bar examination. It is not clear why the Supreme Court has decided to stick to this handwritten-essay method of testing bar candidates but it has been this way for more than a hundred years now. What makes people feel uncomfortable is the apparent lack of relationship between practice of law and handwriting.

Nowadays, lawyers use computers to draft and print their pleadings and other documents. It would seem that requiring bar examinees to write answers by hand is quite old-fashioned, considering that testing can also be done with computers and special programs with the same level of confidence in the results thereof.

This method of testing allows more bias in the examiners because handwriting becomes a factor in checking, instead of merely focusing on the law, language and logic exhibited in the candidates' answers. What aggravates this is the fact that, most of the time, examiners are longstanding experts in their fields of law, which means that they may not be the youngest in the legal profession and they may not have the best eyesight or patience to decipher poorly-handwritten paragraphs.

Be that as it may, the Bar exam requires petitioners to write legibly and this will stay this way for a long time. Because of this, ChanRobles Internet Bar Review hired Engr. Noel Porciuncula to teach bar candidates and law students how to write legibly during the bar exam or law school exams. Watch his introductory video below.
For more details: www.facebook.com/ChanRoblesInternetBarReview/videos/278717419568525.

The Philippine Bar Examination is the professional licensure examination for lawyers in the Philippines. The exam is exclusively administered by the Supreme Court of the Philippines through the Supreme Court Bar Examination Committee. (en.wikipedia.org).

The largely essay-type exams are manually checked by members of the Committee of Bar Examiners. Candidates have to wait from the last Sunday of the bar exams in September up to the date of the release of results, which traditionally happens before or during the Holy Week (the last week of March or the first week of April) of the following year. During this period, candidates (who already hold law and bachelor's degrees) may opt to work in law firms and courts as legal researchers, teach in liberal arts and business colleges, function in companies and organizations using their pre-law degrees (i.e. Communication Arts, Accounting, Economics, Journalism, etc.), help run the family business, or take a long vacation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Bar_Examination.