The Hunt for the Peoples' Lawyer

The Hunt for the Peoples' Lawyer (Here I go with my silly views again...)

by Cirilo P. Cena


I am one of those dreamers who ambitions to be a lawyer. But the cost of a lawyer's education is just too much for a family man like me. I took a pre-law course—BA in Mass Communications, but never made it to law proper.

So what is it like being a lawyer in the Philippines and why do I “wanna be one”?
Honestly, I really don't know since I am only dreaming of becoming one. But based on what I see, I think its cool being a lawyer especially if you can use the law to help the poor. There's some degree of power in it. Here in the Philippines, nobody messes around with someone who knows the law. Even credit institutions don't want to deal with lawyers since it's difficult to demand from lawyers --who know the technicalities in the legal realm of things. Credit institutions though, hire lawyers to extract payments from downtrodden debtors. Lawyers are also used to threaten and oppress people who don't know the law.

Poor farmers fighting for their rights to the share of the land they till, and laborers who are victims of unfair labor practices are also the common casualties of the corporations who hire lawyers as agents of threats. Lawyers are effective in suppressing people's rights. This is so true since farmers and common laborers obviously cannot afford the service of a good lawyer. Their only immediate defense is to the government's labor ministry or agrarian ministry who do have public attorneys, but are usually too loaded with cases. Those who go to the government for legal help usually give up in the end. It may take their whole lifetime fighting against the rich, with only the government lawyer on their side.

Right now, there is also a great shortage of good public lawyers, as no good lawyer wants to stay long in the government since there is no money there. Most public lawyers only stay with the Public Attorney's Office to gain experience before heading off as corporate or private lawyers. The only good lawyers we see around in this country are our senators and congressmen. They are there in power to protect their own business interests.

The pursuit of justice in this country is also very slow because the rich criminals can afford a topnotch lawyer who knows how to delay the whole process. This I learned from a personal experience.

It was the year 2000 when my Father in law was slain by a policeman who ran amok. My father-in-law was a “barangay tanod”. “Tanods” are civilian volunteers who patrol the community at night usually with one police man in their aid. Unfortunately, it turned out their policeman aid became their enemy. Their policeman aid had a fight with his wife over an alleged affair with another man. The police man got drunk and, witnesses said, he was also high on drugs that time. The police man just opened fire his service gun towards the quarter where my father in law and his partner were waiting. My father in law died instantly from gunshot wounds at the throat and stomach while his partner was lucky to survive gunshot wounds at the armpit and arm. There were no altercations before the firings.

My father in law and his partner were just unlucky they were the only people around that night, and the policeman needed someone to vent off his steam.

So I had to help my wife's family to try to find justice. After that event, and even if there were no other suspects, it was funny that the police man was still reporting for duty for a year. The bureaucracy was stunning. We had to find friends in the government to make the case moving. Good thing we learned that one of my wife's relatives (a second degree cousin of his father) was Regional Director of the Education ministry. By the stroke of his pen, a simple request note to the ombudsman to look into the case, paved the way for the release of the arrest warrant. So the police man was only arrested after a year. And since the policeman can afford a good a lawyer, the case is still on trial until now. And we had to depend on the government lawyer who was provided by the state for us.

I am convinced our country needs good lawyers to help the poor.

I can say a good motivation, for most of those who can afford to acquire a law degree is basically power and money. The general picture of a lawyer is someone who wears the “barong tagalog”--the national costume, and drives off to court in a cozy car. It is also a good thing for most private lawyers to apply delaying tactics for most of their cases especially if their client's case is difficult to win. By delaying the case, the private lawyer earns more on the appearance fees—which must be paid on top of the acceptance fee. More trial sessions, mean more appearance fees to collect.
Even government lawyer who win cases on labor malpractice or land disputes will usually ask for a percentage from their poor clients. In the case of my father-in-law's murder, the only thing we could occasionally offer our government lawyer was a ripe marang or jack fruit from my in-law's backyard.

The general notion is that being a lawyer is cool, but only if you are a private or a corporate lawyer.

We need lawyers who's motivation is more than just money. We need lawyers who are motivated by the happy faces of their poor clients. This pro poor lawyer cannot be found in the current breed of lawyers we are having right now. Most of them come from financially well off families since they are the only ones who can afford the cost of a lawyer's education. Their immediate agenda is to regain the cost of their law education. After earning the money, they usually get used to earning more—thus they end up as corporate lawyers or private lawyers who can only defend those who can afford their service.

The people's lawyer must be someone from the poor. Someone who not only understands or knows what is being poor. Our country needs lawyers for the poor. Currently, this idea of a lawyer for the poor is an oxymoron, since there are no poor lawyers yet. Lawyers, as we know them right now are not poor—thus it is difficult for them to serve the poor.