A sidelight: Bravo Bar Ops!

IN these Bar exam days, a term that people may encounter in the media is “Bar Operations” or “Bar Ops” in the lingo of law students. Those uninitiated to the legal world may ask when they hear these terms: “What operations are these,” with cynical thoughts driven by memories of scandals in the Bar’s remote past.

These days, the Bar Ops consists of completely normal and legitimate activities that accompany the annual Bar examinations. Where the term Bar Operations or Bar Ops came from is not exactly known, but the term and its accompanying activities could be uniquely Filipino in origin.

These activities apparently resulted from a confluence of many factors, among them: the nature of our Bar exams, an examination that is known to be difficult so that the examinees need all the assistance they can get from classmates, friends, relatives, and the school itself; the attendant glamor and prestige resulting from the competitive nature of these exams and the attention the media have given them; the indisputable but unadmitted competition among law schools to garner the top spots; the initial presence of fraternities and other groups capable of organizing Bar assistance activities; the notion, largely erroneous, that some questions circulate before the Bar exam and that these can be secured through connections; and the notion, mostly correct, that the pre-Bar exams assistance can make a big difference.

The Bar Ops was no longer new when I first heard about it. I was initiated into my law school fraternity at the end of November, 1970 (or 47 years ago!). Although I had previously joined a fraternity in another school (a chemical engineering fraternity), I was enticed to undergo another initiation by talks that fraternities could make a difference in the law school, particularly in the Bar exams. Expectedly during my initiation, the side talks I heard were about the past Bar Ops and how smooth they had been.

I experienced my first Bar Ops in the Bar of 1971 where I learned that the “tips” many spoke of were not leakages sourced from the Supreme Court or its examiners. They were actually forecasts that our senior fraternity members, some of them members of the faculty, made as lastminute confidence-building reminders for the examinees.

That the “tips” covered some of the questions asked during the Bar exams was not be surprising as our “experts” always did their homework – they surveyed the past Bar questions, analyzed “hot” laws and recent Supreme Court decisions, gathered and considered the prominent Bar reviewers’ forecasts, and made educated guesstimates of possible questions based on these diverse sources! These, we farmed out as “tips” to the other organized groups, most of them fraternities in other law schools and who, in return, gave us their own tips.

While the “tips” were largely madeup (but nevertheless resulted in a few direct hits in some lucky years), the assistance we gave our examinees were very real. We saw this reality first-hand when our own turn at the Bar exams came.

We collated and organized the fraternity study notes, updated them every year, and made them available to our Bar candidates; we read and digested laws and cases at their request; we ran errands for them and did their many biddings, whether or not related to the Bar exams; we made the Bar exams a “fun” and happy time for everyone, even for those assisting the examinees; and we comforted our examinees at the moment they needed comfort the most – in the days leading to Bar exam Sunday, particularly on the night before the exams. All these we supported through our own contributions; the Bar candidates directly spent for their own hotel accommodations.

Over the years, new approaches in assisting the Bar candidates developed and the Bar operators gained experience. Bar Ops tales emerged and were told and re-told, some of them achieving the status of Bar Ops legends.

In our fraternity, none could compare with the lesson in humility that the eventually-martyred Governor Evelio Javier exhibited: for many years, his self-assigned task was to drive the bus that brought our candidates from the hotel to the examination site. As far as I can remember, Jacinto “Jack” Jimenez – the professor who taught most of us in law school – was the guru we consulted on difficult legal questions. We always sought the much-valued advice of Cesar Villanueva, our previous dean and authority in Commercial Law. We all “topped” the Bar and had riotous celebrations when our candidates made it to the “top ten.” For many, frat life after law school is the Bar Ops where one gets to meet and re-live the younger days with old friends. I am sure every law school or school organization has its own Bar Ops tales to tell and personalities to cite.

In no time at all, as the law school’s female population ballooned, the ladies organized their own sororities and had their own Bar Ops. This development might have left the law schools no choice but to organize their own Bar Ops to assist the school’s unorganized sector – the students who are neither in the fraternities, the sororities, nor in any organized groups. Some law schools – like my present one – saw no point in the scattered efforts and the generated competition, and encouraged all parties to participate in a combined Bar Ops.

School-organized Bar Ops is where many law schools are right now or are leading to. At this point, the Bar Ops has arrived and may have come to stay as part of the rites of passage to Bar admission. So far, I can only say in judgment – Bravo Bar Ops!

The Bar Ops, on the whole, has had salutary effects with none or very little negative consequences. Its most welcome effect, to me, is its contribution to the Bar candidate’s focus during the crucial days when focus is most needed. It provides a big boost to the spirit of the candidate who gets lonelier as the exam approaches, and who is at his loneliest inside the exam room. This spiritual boost cannot be discounted.

The candidate, though, is not the only beneficiary of the Bar Ops. As early as their first year in law school (and I have seen many freshmen volunteers in the Bar Ops), law students already get a taste – through the Bar Ops – of what is in store for them and what the study of law really involves. The realization and acceptance of the discipline and self-organization the study of law requires, are invaluable. The Bar Ops provides these early positive impressions that, carried and emphasized over the four years of law school, cannot but be advantageous to the undergrad.

The Bar Ops, for the law school, is a great opportunity to demonstrate its varied roles in legal education. Together with its faculty, the law school is the “father” figure whom law students look up to for their educational needs, most especially in their quest for Bar admission. The school should be there, too, for the non-educational needs that underlie its educational function – the inspiration students need to push them to greater heights and the spiritual comfort that must be with them, particularly in times of stress (and possibly distress) like the Bar exams.

To turn now to the Bar exams, I am not ready to convey my fullest congratulations to the Bar chairman and his examiners as we have one more Sunday to go, but the third Sunday exams deserve praise.

In the words of an expert I talked to, the exam was “reasonably difficult,” and is thus in line with what I wished for last week – an exam that tests for the candidates’ capacity for logic and for original and analytical thinking. Thus, on the whole, the Bar exams to date have been an ideal blend of the reasonable and the reasonably difficult. I hope the 4th Sunday will not be an exception.