Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The petition in Adm. Case No. 526 formally prays the Court to order the
integration of the Philippine Bar, after due hearing, giving recognition as
far as possible and practicable to existing provincial and other local Bar
associations. On August 16, 1962, arguments in favor of as well as in
opposition to the petition were orally expounded before the Court. Written
oppositions were admitted, 3 and all parties were thereafter granted leave to
file written memoranda. 4
Since then, the Court has closely observed and followed significant
developments relative to the matter of the integration of the Bar in this
jurisdiction.
In 1970, convinced from preliminary surveys that there had grown a
strong nationwide sentiment in favor of Bar integration, the Court created
the Commission on Bar Integration for the purpose of ascertaining the
advisability of unifying the Philippine Bar.
In September, 1971, Congress passed House Bill No. 3277 entitled "An
Act Providing for the Integration of the Philippine Bar, and Appropriating
Funds Therefor." The measure was signed by President Ferdinand E.
Marcos on September 17, 1971 and took effect on the same day as Rep.
Act 6397. This law provides as follows:
SECTION 1. Within two years from the approval of this
Act, the Supreme Court may adopt rules of court to effect
the integration of the Philippine Bar under such conditions
as it shall see fit in order to raise the standards of the
legal profession, improve the administration of justice,
and enable the Bar to discharge its public responsibility
more effectively.
SEC. 2. The sum of five hundred thousand pesos is
hereby appropriated, out of any funds in the National
Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to carry out the
purposes of this Act. Thereafter, such sums as may be
the country so that the poor may not lack competent legal
service;
(9) Distribute educational and informational materials that
are difficult to obtain in many of our provinces;
(10) Devise and maintain a program of continuing legal
education for practising attorneys in order to elevate the
standards of the profession throughout the country;
(11) Enforce rigid ethical standards, and promulgate
minimum fees schedules;
(12) Create law centers and establish law libraries for
legal research;
(13) Conduct campaigns to educate the people on their
legal rights and obligations, on the importance of
preventive legal advice, and on the functions and duties
of the Filipino lawyer; and
(14) Generate and maintain pervasive and meaningful
country-wide involvement of the lawyer population in the
solution of the multifarious problems that afflict the nation.
Anent the first issue, the Court is of the view that it may integrate the
Philippine Bar in the exercise of its power, under Article VIII, Sec. 13 of
the Constitution, "to promulgate rules concerning pleading, practice, and
procedure in all courts, and the admission to the practice of law." Indeed,
the power to integrate is an inherent part of the Court's constitutional
authority over the Bar. In providing that "the Supreme Court may adopt
rules of court to effect the integration of the Philippine Bar," Republic Act
6397 neither confers a new power nor restricts the Court's inherent
power, but is a mere legislative declaration that the integration of the Bar
will promote public interest or, more specifically, will "raise the standards
of the legal profession, improve the administration of justice, and enable
the Bar to discharge its public responsibility more effectively."
Resolution of the second issue whether the unification of the Bar
would be constitutional hinges on the effects of Bar integration on the
lawyer's constitutional rights of freedom of association and freedom of
speech, and on the nature of the dues exacted from him.
The Court approvingly quotes the following pertinent discussion made by
the Commission on Bar Integration pages 44 to 49 of its Report:
Constitutionality of Bar Integration
Judicial Pronouncements.
In all cases where the validity of Bar integration measures
has been put in issue, the Courts have upheld their
constitutionality.
The judicial pronouncements support this reasoning:
Courts have inherent power to supervise and regulate
the practice of law.
Upon the other hand, it has been variously argued that in the event of
integration, Government authority will dominate the Bar; local Bar
associations will be weakened; cliquism will be the inevitable result;
effective lobbying will not be possible; the Bar will become an impersonal
Bar; and politics will intrude into its affairs.
It is noteworthy, however, that these and other evils prophesied by
opponents of Bar integration have failed to materialize in over fifty years
of Bar integration experience in England, Canada and the United States.
In all the jurisdictions where the Integrated Bar has been tried, none of
the abuses or evils feared has arisen; on the other hand, it has restored
public confidence in the Bar, enlarged professional consciousness,
energized the Bar's responsibilities to the public, and vastly improved the
administration of justice.
How do the Filipino lawyers themselves regard Bar integration? The
official statistics compiled by the Commission on Bar integration show
that in the national poll recently conducted by the Commission in the
matter of the integration of the Philippine Bar, of a total of 15,090 lawyers
from all over the archipelago who have turned in their individual
responses, 14,555 (or 96.45 per cent) voted in favor of Bar integration,
while only 378 (or 2.51 per cent) voted against it, and 157 (or 1.04 per
cent) are non-commital. In addition, a total of eighty (80) local Bar
association and lawyers' groups all over the Philippines have submitted
resolutions and other expressions of unqualified endorsement and/or
support for Bar integration, while not a single local Bar association or
lawyers' group has expressed opposed position thereto. Finally, of the
13,802 individual lawyers who cast their plebiscite ballots on the
proposed integration Court Rule drafted by the Commission, 12,855 (or
93.14 per cent) voted in favor thereof, 662 (or 4.80 per cent) vote against
it, and 285 (or 2.06 per cent) are non-committal. 5 All these clearly indicate
an overwhelming nationwide demand for Bar integration at this time.
The test that defines law practice by looking to traditional areas of law
practice is essentially tautologous, unhelpful defining the practice of law
as that which lawyers do. (Charles W. Wolfram, Modern Legal
Ethics [West Publishing Co.: Minnesota, 1986], p. 593). The practice of
law is defined as the performance of any acts . . . in or out of court,
commonly understood to be the practice of law. (State Bar Ass'n v.
Connecticut Bank & Trust Co., 145 Conn. 222, 140 A.2d 863, 870 [1958]
[quoting Grievance Comm. v. Payne, 128 Conn. 325, 22 A.2d 623, 626
[1941]). Because lawyers perform almost every function known in the
commercial and governmental realm, such a definition would obviously
be too global to be workable.(Wolfram, op. cit.).
The appearance of a lawyer in litigation in behalf of a client is at once the
most publicly familiar role for lawyers as well as an uncommon role for
the average lawyer. Most lawyers spend little time in courtrooms, and a
large percentage spend their entire practice without litigating a case.
(Ibid., p. 593). Nonetheless, many lawyers do continue to litigate and the
litigating lawyer's role colors much of both the public image and the self
perception of the legal profession. (Ibid.).
In this regard thus, the dominance of litigation in the public mind reflects
history, not reality. (Ibid.). Why is this so? Recall that the late Alexander
SyCip, a corporate lawyer, once articulated on the importance of a lawyer
as a business counselor in this wise: "Even today, there are still
uninformed laymen whose concept of an attorney is one who principally
tries cases before the courts. The members of the bench and bar and the
informed laymen such as businessmen, know that in most developed
societies today, substantially more legal work is transacted in law offices
than in the courtrooms. General practitioners of law who do both litigation
and non-litigation work also know that in most cases they find themselves
spending more time doing what [is] loosely desccribe[d] as business
counseling than in trying cases. The business lawyer has been described
as the planner, the diagnostician and the trial lawyer, the surgeon. I[t]
need not [be] stress[ed] that in law, as in medicine, surgery should be
avoided where internal medicine can be effective." (Business Star,
"Corporate Finance Law," Jan. 11, 1989, p. 4).
In the course of a working day the average general practitioner wig
engage in a number of legal tasks, each involving different legal
doctrines, legal skills, legal processes, legal institutions, clients, and other
interested parties. Even the increasing numbers of lawyers in specialized
practice wig usually perform at least some legal services outside their
specialty. And even within a narrow specialty such as tax practice, a
lawyer will shift from one legal task or role such as advice-giving to an
importantly different one such as representing a client before an
administrative agency. (Wolfram, supra, p. 687).
By no means will most of this work involve litigation, unless the lawyer is
one of the relatively rare types a litigator who specializes in this work
to the exclusion of much else. Instead, the work will require the lawyer to
have mastered the full range of traditional lawyer skills of client
counselling, advice-giving, document drafting, and negotiation. And
increasingly lawyers find that the new skills of evaluation and mediation
are both effective for many clients and a source of employment. (Ibid.).
Most lawyers will engage in non-litigation legal work or in litigation work
that is constrained in very important ways, at least theoretically, so as to
remove from it some of the salient features of adversarial litigation. Of
these special roles, the most prominent is that of prosecutor. In some
lawyers' work the constraints are imposed both by the nature of the client
and by the way in which the lawyer is organized into a social unit to
perform that work. The most common of these roles are those of
corporate practice and government legal service. (Ibid.).
In several issues of the Business Star, a business daily, herein below
quoted are emerging trends in corporate law practice, a departure from
the traditional concept of practice of law.
We are experiencing today what truly may be called a
revolutionary transformation in corporate law practice.
Lawyers and other professional groups, in particular those
members participating in various legal-policy decisional
contexts, are finding that understanding the major
emerging trends in corporation law is indispensable to
intelligent decision-making.
Constructive adjustment to major corporate problems of
today requires an accurate understanding of the nature
and implications of the corporate law research function
accompanied by an accelerating rate of information
accumulation. The recognition of the need for such
improved corporate legal policy formulation, particularly
"model-making" and "contingency planning," has
impressed upon us the inadequacy of traditional
procedures in many decisional contexts.
In a complex legal problem the mass of information to be
processed, the sorting and weighing of significant
conditional factors, the appraisal of major trends, the
necessity of estimating the consequences of given
courses of action, and the need for fast decision and
response in situations of acute danger have prompted the
use of sophisticated concepts of information flow theory,
operational analysis, automatic data processing, and
electronic computing equipment. Understandably, an
improved decisional structure must stress the predictive
The challenge for lawyers (both of the bar and the bench)
is to have more than a passing knowledge of financial law
affecting each aspect of their work. Yet, many would
admit to ignorance of vast tracts of the financial law
territory. What transpires next is a dilemma of
professional security: Will the lawyer admit ignorance and
risk opprobrium?; or will he feign understanding and risk
exposure? (Business Star, "Corporate Finance law," Jan.
11, 1989, p. 4).
Respondent Christian Monsod was nominated by President Corazon C.
Aquino to the position of Chairman of the COMELEC in a letter received
by the Secretariat of the Commission on Appointments on April 25, 1991.
Petitioner opposed the nomination because allegedly Monsod does not
possess the required qualification of having been engaged in the practice
of law for at least ten years.
On June 5, 1991, the Commission on Appointments confirmed the
nomination of Monsod as Chairman of the COMELEC. On June 18,
1991, he took his oath of office. On the same day, he assumed office as
Chairman of the COMELEC.
Challenging the validity of the confirmation by the Commission on
Appointments of Monsod's nomination, petitioner as a citizen and
taxpayer, filed the instant petition for certiorari and Prohibition praying
that said confirmation and the consequent appointment of Monsod as
Chairman of the Commission on Elections be declared null and void.
Atty. Christian Monsod is a member of the Philippine Bar, having passed
the bar examinations of 1960 with a grade of 86-55%. He has been a
dues paying member of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines since its
inception in 1972-73. He has also been paying his professional license
fees as lawyer for more than ten years. (p. 124, Rollo)
After graduating from the College of Law (U.P.) and having hurdled the
bar, Atty. Monsod worked in the law office of his father. During his stint in
the World Bank Group (1963-1970), Monsod worked as an operations
officer for about two years in Costa Rica and Panama, which involved
getting acquainted with the laws of member-countries negotiating loans
and coordinating legal, economic, and project work of the Bank. Upon
returning to the Philippines in 1970, he worked with the Meralco Group,
served as chief executive officer of an investment bank and subsequently
of a business conglomerate, and since 1986, has rendered services to
various companies as a legal and economic consultant or chief executive
officer. As former Secretary-General (1986) and National Chairman
(1987) of NAMFREL. Monsod's work involved being knowledgeable in
election law. He appeared for NAMFREL in its accreditation hearings
before the Comelec. In the field of advocacy, Monsod, in his personal
capacity and as former Co-Chairman of the Bishops Businessmen's
The main issues posed for resolution before the Court are whether or not
the services offered by respondent, The Legal Clinic, Inc., as advertised
by it constitutes practice of law and, in either case, whether the same can
properly be the subject of the advertisements herein complained of.
Before proceeding with an in-depth analysis of the merits of this case, we
deem it proper and enlightening to present hereunder excerpts from the
respective position papers adopted by the aforementioned bar
associations and the memoranda submitted by them on the issues
involved in this bar matter.
1. Integrated Bar of the Philippines:
xxx xxx xxx
Notwithstanding the subtle manner by which respondent
endeavored to distinguish the two terms, i.e., "legal
support services" vis-a-vis "legal services", common
sense would readily dictate that the same are essentially
without substantial distinction. For who could deny that
document search, evidence gathering, assistance to
layman in need of basic institutional services from
government or non-government agencies like birth,
marriage, property, or business registration, obtaining
documents like clearance, passports, local or foreign
visas, constitutes practice of law?
xxx xxx xxx
The Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) does not wish
to make issue with respondent's foreign citations. Suffice
it to state that the IBP has made its position manifest, to
wit, that it strongly opposes the view espoused by
A. The use of the name "The Legal Clinic, Inc." gives the
impression that respondent corporation is being operated
by lawyers and that it renders legal services.
While the respondent repeatedly denies that it offers legal
services to the public, the advertisements in question give
the impression that respondent is offering legal services.
The Petition in fact simply assumes this to be so, as
earlier mentioned, apparently because this (is) the effect
that the advertisements have on the reading public.
The impression created by the advertisements in question
can be traced, first of all, to the very name being used by
respondent "The Legal Clinic, Inc." Such a name, it is
respectfully submitted connotes the rendering of legal
services for legal problems, just like a medical clinic
connotes medical services for medical problems. More
importantly, the term "Legal Clinic" connotes lawyers, as
the term medical clinic connotes doctors.
Furthermore, the respondent's name, as published in the
advertisements subject of the present case, appears with
(the) scale(s) of justice, which all the more reinforces the
impression that it is being operated by members of the
bar and that it offers legal services. In addition, the
advertisements in question appear with a picture and
name of a person being represented as a lawyer from
Guam, and this practically removes whatever doubt may
still remain as to the nature of the service or services
being offered.
It thus becomes irrelevant whether respondent is merely
offering "legal support services" as claimed by it, or
whether it offers legal services as any lawyer actively
engaged in law practice does. And it becomes
unnecessary to make a distinction between "legal
services" and "legal support services," as the respondent
THE
REPRESENTATION AND ADVISING OF
A PARTICULAR PERSON IN A
PARTICULAR SITUATION. At most the
book assumes to offer general advice on
common problems, and does not purport
to give personal advice on a specific
problem peculiar to a designated or
readily identified person. Similarly the
defendant's publication does not purport
to give personal advice on a specific
problem peculiar to a designated or
readily identified person in a particular
situation in their publication and sale of
the kits, such publication and sale did not
constitutes the unlawful practice of law . . .
. There being no legal impediment under
the statute to the sale of the kit, there was
no proper basis for the injunction against
defendant maintaining an office for the
purpose of selling to persons seeking a
divorce,
separation,
annulment
or
separation agreement any printed material
or writings relating to matrimonial law or
the prohibition in the memorandum of
modification of the judgment against
defendant having an interest in any
publishing
house
publishing
his
manuscript on divorce and against his
having any personal contact with any
prospective purchaser. The record does
fully support, however, the finding that for
the change of $75 or $100 for the kit, the
defendant gave legal advice in the course
of personal contacts concerning particular
problems which might arise in the
preparation and presentation of the
the American Bar Association which set up Guidelines for the Approval of
Legal Assistant Education Programs (1973). Legislation has even been
proposed to certify legal assistants. There are also associations of paralegals
in the United States with their own code of professional ethics, such as the
National Association of Legal Assistants, Inc. and the American Paralegal
Association. 29
Trustworthy
from
71%
to
14%
Professional
from
71%
to
14%
Honest
from
65%
to
14%
Dignified from 45% to 14%
Secondly, it is our firm belief that with the present situation of our legal
and judicial systems, to allow the publication of advertisements of the
kind used by respondent would only serve to aggravate what is already a
deteriorating public opinion of the legal profession whose integrity has
consistently been under attack lately by media and the community in
general. At this point in time, it is of utmost importance in the face of such
negative, even if unfair, criticisms at times, to adopt and maintain that
level of professional conduct which is beyond reproach, and to exert all
efforts to regain the high esteem formerly accorded to the legal
profession.
In sum, it is undoubtedly a misbehavior on the part of the lawyer, subject
to disciplinary action, to advertise his services except in allowable
instances 48 or to aid a layman in the unauthorized practice of
law. 49 Considering that Atty. Rogelio P. Nogales, who is the prime
incorporator, major stockholder and proprietor of The Legal Clinic, Inc. is a
member of the Philippine Bar, he is hereby reprimanded, with a warning that
a repetition of the same or similar acts which are involved in this proceeding
will be dealt with more severely.