Raising the bar

She couldn’t forget the day the bar results were released. Stephanie Viola recalled that she was at the Padre Pio Shrine in Quezon City, alone and praying her usual novena. Nights before, she had nightmares from too much anxiety about the bar and decided not to check the results herself. Soon enough, people started calling and congratulating her.

After three calls from different people saying she had passed, she decided to call her dad. “Dad, may abogada ka na  (you now have a lawyer).”

Her dad’s response was unexpected.  “No, anak. I’m holding the results in my hand, and you’re not here.”

True enough, there had been a mix-up in the listings online. A website that was supposed to post the list of bar passers had mistakenly posted the list of bar takers instead. It was true: she had failed.

And she had always thought that having a lawyer for a father and grandfather would work to her advantage. She grew up doodling on her father’s law briefs and recalled tagging along when he met with his Chinese clients, finishing up the lauriat meals that nobody seemed inclined to eat, and surrounded by talks about litigation. Law, she always thought, was her “family’s bloodline.”

“Prodigal daughter”

It was her father who urged her to take up law, said Viola, who took the entrance exam at the San Beda College Faculty of Law but eventually transferred to the Arellano University School of Law. The decision made her turn her back on a Master’s degree while teaching Political Science at the College of Saint Benilde. Her love of singing meanwhile propelled her into becoming president of the university’s official choir.

After spending half her life studying law and failing the bar, she was all fired up to try again.  Her family was supportive: “Laban mo lang  (Fight!),” they urged her.  Being the first bar flunker in a five-generation family of lawyers, Viola considered herself the “prodigal daughter,” a description not shared by her family and relatives who sat her down for a pep talk.

It was then that Viola realized that the God she believes in and sings for knows exactly what she needed even before she knew it. It was failure that she needed, not the smooth-sailing finish she had wanted all this time.

She took the bar a second time—and failed. It made her ask herself: “Is this really for me? Can I really do this? Was I spending more than half my life studying for a profession not meant for me?”  Despite such doubts, she decided to go for a third try. “Naturally after the first take, you’d want to fight back. But when I still didn’t make it, it was up to me if I wanted to go again.”

It was then that her dad called—to deliver an ultimatum: “If you decide to take the bar again, it’s going to be on my terms,” he said and presented her what he called “The Covenant,” a contract he personally wrote. It was a pact between a judge and a subject, and between two family members trying their best not to disappoint each other.

Modern-day hermit

“There were provisions on what I can and cannot do, and what I should do while I was reviewing for the exams. Any violation will revoke my right to take the bar,” said Viola.

The contract turned her into a modern-day hermit, confined within the walls of the school during day and inside coffee houses at night.  Her own home became a dormitory, where she stayed only to sleep and eat. She followed a rigid schedule: wake up at 5 a.m. for an hour’s exercise session, breakfast, school, lunch, sing with the choir, back to school for more lectures, dinner, and more self-study to wrap up the day. It was a routine she did not break.

Her iPad and songs from the Broadway musical “Wicked” kept her company and gave her a break from the stress of law school. The choir helped her keep her sanity. If there was one lesson she learned from her struggles, it was that loving anything—be it a person, a craft, a place or a discipline—means letting go.

No more doubts

“You’d think my drive going to the Supreme Court (to check the bar results) would be the longest drive I’ll ever have. But I’m through accepting doubts. It was just love and surrender,” she said.

The 29-year-old brought her closest friends with her to wait for the exam results. No more phone calls this time. When people started calling and congratulating her, she wasn’t buying it. Three hours into waiting, the results finally came out. She waited for her name to flash on the screen, but the names were arranged alphabetically and she could no longer wait for Viola.  She finally skimmed through the papers posted in the middle of the high court’s emblem, and there it was: Stephanie-Eden Torres Viola.

A woman suddenly knelt in front of the emblem, crying and shouting. The press swarmed her like bees, trying to get an interview. But the woman just wanted to call her dad.

Witnessing that, Viola recalled how her father—despite her twice flunking the bar—had always reminded her that she was intelligent and responsible enough to make it, even though she sometimes did not believe it herself.

“Stephanie passing was better than me personally passing the bar,” her father said. “It was better than all the cases I’ve won, even when I was appointed judge. It was immeasurable,” he added.

When it was her turn to call her father, there was only laughter, boisterous and crisp, at the end of the line. “Failing twice was a test of how much I really want this. And in turn, it is essentially my heart, my family that became my inspiration to fight again and again,” Viola said.

Months before her oath-taking, Viola watched the musical “Wicked,” whose songs offered her comfort during those difficult days of reviewing for the bar. As she recalled the scene when “Defying Gravity” was being sung, she was almost in tears.

“I’m through accepting limits. I think I was able to defy my own gravity,” Viola said.

Two and a half years after officially becoming a lawyer, Viola now works as legal counsel for the Jeremiah Foundation, a non-profit organization under the tutelage of the Light of Jesus group founded by Bo Sanchez. The Foundation seeks to help minors who had been raped or sexually abused, mostly by their own family and relatives. It provides food, shelter, education, psychological support and legal aid for these survivors in the hope that they would be able to reintegrate themselves into society after their trauma.

Viola considers her own struggle with the bar exams as a driving force behind her advocacy.  “Because of my failures, I’ve become more confident and bolder in defending the rights of my clients. It’s not about the compensation anymore, but the principle to uphold and protect those who are in need,” she said.