Angara urges lawyers to specialize and compete globally

MANILA, Philippines—The age of the “superman-lawyer” is over, Senator Edgardo J. Angara told the University of the Philippines College of Law on Friday.

In a talk on the teaching of law, Angara said UP Law, which is celebrating its 100th year, must adapt to rapidly changing trends in the legal profession, most notably the shift toward specialization.

Like doctors and engineers, he said, more and more lawyers are getting hired for their experience and knowledge in various fields of legal expertise than the Jacks-of-all-trades, who try to master everything.

“The threat, or the promise, of specialization has pushed the great generalists to the side. Globalization has aggravated this trend,” said Angara, chair of the UP Law Centennial Commission, in a lecture titled “Examining the Role of UP Law.”

He cited the 2010 Financial Times Global Education Report, which noted: “In today’s world, a ‘superman-lawyer’ – one who knows everything about anything (or at least claims to) – is viewed with skepticism and disregarded in favor of the specialist.”

“Those who know more about a narrower field, indeed, offer a tremendous advantage to business in legal conflicts. And if a business in legal trouble wants to cover its flanks, it should hire specialists in other fields,” Angara said, adding, “It is like that in warfare, and business is war.”

For UP Law to continue producing graduates of the same caliber as its distinguished alumni, he said, it would largely depend on the college’s ability to “evolve its teaching methods to meet the changing and mounting challenges facing the practice of the profession.”

UP Law counts among its alumni four presidents: Manuel Roxas, Jose P. Laurel, Elpidio Quirino and Ferdinand Marcos: three vice presidents, including the incumbent Jejomar Binay;  and 12 chief justices of the Supreme Court. Eight of the incumbent senators, including Angara, are also graduates of the college.

Another challenge, and the worst, facing the legal  profession, he said, is the economic crisis of 2008, whose effects linger to this day. When the crisis hit, he said, the first to go in corporate spending programs, after advertising, was the legal budget.

“Frankly, it has always been like that; when lawyers win a case, the client thinks he was always right anyway. When lawyers lose a case, it is the lawyer’s fault for losing a winning cause,” he said, drawing chuckles from an audience that included legal luminaries, teachers and law students.

As a result of advances in computer technology, law education is also “vulnerable to computerization,” he said, attributing this to the fact that “law, by its nature is and should be, routine and repetitive.”

“Soon fields of legal learning and practice can be packaged and sold like movies in DVDs or, worse, pirated versions,” he said.

The senator said there was no way to fight this trend but to go with it.

Angara pointed out that Harvard Law School emphasizes its ability to offer joint degree programs, which allow students to earn another degree from any of its other professional schools, similar to the strategy of Yale Law School, which boasts an interdisciplinary approach to law.

“This is the age of ‘global law schools’,” he said. “Opportunities to study abroad are no longer a part of a grant but a component of mainstream curriculum,” he added, citing Harvard Law’s exchange programs with schools in Tokyo, Geneva, Shanghai, among others.

But not so in the Philippines, he lamented.

“Philippine teaching and practice of law remains impervious to it. Our profession firmly discourages foreign entanglements. Foreign legal scholars may not teach credited courses in Philippine law schools, let alone practice before our courts,” Angara said.

“You can go, if you want, to take your masters abroad, but it will have a negligible, if any, effect on your practice back home. You can take the bar in New York but not in Manila. The Philippine legal profession, despite its evident talents, fears international competition,” he said.

Angara challenged UP Law to adopt such novel approaches to law teaching. “I believe that this time, the UP College of Law can lead, rather than follow, in meeting these challenges,” he said.

He concluded his lecture with a reminder: “Law schools are not established to create great men for great moments, but to make excellent everyday lawyers to protect good men in the ordinary course of law.”

“Those who, from that everyday but necessary vocation, rise to greatness will owe their eminence not from the school they attended, but from the conscience, values and the wisdom they acquire on their own,” Angara said.