QUEZON City, Philippines (September 23) – Fair and autonomous laws must be achieved by the lawyers themselves. Why would the people follow the law if those in charge on implementing it are the one’s violating it?
The increasing cases of lawyers exercising their powers in the wrong way is causing an uproar in the society. The main purpose of MCLE is to to ensure that throughout the career of the attorneys, they will be kept abreast with law and jurisprudence, maintain the ethics of the profession and enhance the standards of the practice of law.
The MCLE is required for all the members of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines as specified in the Bar Matter 850 of the year 2001. It states that every three years the members are required to complete 36 hours of service that will be divided into 6 hours for legal ethics, 4 hours for trial and pretrial skills, 5 hours for alternative dispute resolution, 9 hours on substantive and procedural laws and jurisprudence, 4 hours on legal writing and oral advocacy, 2 hours for international law and international invention and lastly 6 hours to any subjects prescribed by the MCLE committee. Failure in complying can result into paying non-compliance fee, listed as delinquent member or accrual of membership fee.
The credited hours that members can do is categorized into participatory credit units which includes attending approved seminars, conferences, conventions and other related activities, speaking, lecturing or acting as a panelist, reactor, commentator or speaker in an activity and teaching in a law school or lecturing a review class for bar exam. The other one is the non-participatory credit units which the member can participate in writing a book as a co-author or author or publish his own written material and editing a law book, law journal or legal newsletter.
If those skilled and expert in the field of law foresaw that MCLE can be the way for the lawyers to reflect and renew their values and ethics, then it can be the salvation of the true justice.
SOURCE: http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/jurisprudence/2001/oct2001/bm_850.htm
(written by Alanna Marie Ambil, edited by Jay Paul Carlos, additional research by Lovely Ann Cruz)
