Law Student Practice

By: Abigail Rem T. Soliva

Legal profession is a profession, and legal professionals study, develop and apply law.
Our country is running short of legal practitioners that Supreme Court has looked into
allowing law students to appear and represent their clients on court under the
supervision of a lawyer.

The Supreme Court en banc, on June 25, 2019, adopted and promulgated A.M. No. 19-
03-24-SC Rule 138-A Law Student Practice, otherwise known as the Revised Law
Student Practice Rule (Revised Rule). The Revised Rule is an amendment to the existing
provisions of Rule 138-A of the Rules of Court. A salient feature of the Revised Rule is
that a law student must now be certified to be able to engage in the limited practice of
law.

“A lot of our countrymen are still underserved in the needs for legal services. Even the
current number of lawyers are not enough,” SC Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin stated
during a testimonial dinner on June 28 where he also said that SC Associate Justice
Alexander Gesmundo has been asked to draft the formal order for the expansion.

The Supreme Court accessed our country’s condition and created rules concerning legal
assistance to the underprivileged. This amendment of the Law Student Practice Rule
ensures access to justice of the marginalized sectors, enhances learning opportunities of
law students by instilling in them the value of legal professional social responsibility, and
to prepare them for the practice of law. The Supreme Court also addressed the need to
institutionalize clinical legal education program in all law schools in order to enhance,
improve, and streamline law student practice, and regulate their limited practice of law.
The Revised Rule is now more comprehensive with 14 sections and shall take effect at the
start of the Academic Year 2020-2021 following its publication in two newspapers of
general circulation.

Under Section 3 of the Revised Rule, a law student shall apply for and secure a Level 1 or
2 Certification, as the case may be, in order to be permitted to engage in any of the
activities under the Clinical Legal Education Program of a law school. The basic
distinction between the two levels involve the minimum academic requirement the law
student has successfully completed: for Level 1 Certification – first-year law subjects,
while for Level 2 Certification – third-year law subjects.

Once the law student is certified, the certificate number must be used in signing
pleadings, briefs, letters, and other similar documents produced under the direction of a
supervising lawyer. (Section 7) The law student shall also take the Law Student
Practitioner’s Oath, a modified lawyer’s oath, under Section 8 before engaging in the
limited practice of law.1

1 http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/4810/
Supreme court stands by what the Late President Ramon Magsaysay Sr. has once said, I
believe that government starts at the bottom, and moves upward, for government exists
for the welfare of the masses of the nation.

“He who has less in life should have more in law.”

SC now allows certified and qualified law students to appear in court pro bono to
represent indigent clients in need of legal representation. The expansion of Rule 138-
A states that cases allowed are criminal, civil, and administrative.

The Revised Rule has it’s strict limits and also enumerates in Section 13 acts considered
as unauthorized practice of law as well as the corresponding sanctions, without prejudice
to existing laws, rules, regulations, and circulars. It stresses that “unauthorized practice
of law shall be a ground for revocation of the law student practitioner’s certification
and/or disqualification for a law student from taking the bar examinations for a period
to be determined by the Supreme Court.”