lucid intervals on what lawyers do
when i decided to revive this blog from the nether regions of memory i had relegated it to, i changed the title to 'lucid intervals.' it's one of my favorite legal phrases. it's from Article 12, par. 1 of the Revised Penal Code. in a nutshell, it says that insane people are always exempt from criminal liability, except when they acted during a lucid interval. a lucid interval apparently is some sort of moment of clarity when one is able to cut through the haze (self-induced or otherwise) clouding one's thoughts and be truly conscious of one's doing - hence the responsibility imputed on you for your actions. why'd i use that for a blog title? i really don't know. i don't have lucid intervals that often. it just sounds catchy. i guess one can say that the entire point of writing a blog is to attempt (or hope) to reach that stage. at any rate, it definitely sounds better than 'tender years presumption' or 'last chance doctrine.'
the long silence can be attributed to my becoming a law student - sorry, working law student - since june of this year. the increasing dullness of my recent posts can also be attributed to same phenomenon (my blockmates all claim to have suffered similar losses in their creativity. you can almost hear it being sucked out of you during those long study breaks). like everyone else, i'm still in the process of trying to figure everything out. what is this so-called law profession? and what the hell am i doing with my life?
we now arrive at the best possible explanation for the drastic renaming. the blogger wishes to change this blog into a channel by which he can understand this new stage in his life.
haha. it just occurred to me. if i end up quitting law school and decide on working to be a chef instead, what then will i call this blog? 'secret recipe'? eeew.
yeah, i haven't written anything even remotely law or law school-related at all, and that's a shame. just goes to show how little thought i actually give to the things i enter into. (insert close friends nodding their heads - jason, thinking abuot the things he does? tch. that'll be the day.)
this semester we're taking up law 120 (the legal profession). it's a required subject that's supposed to give us a crash course on ethics and an overview of -what else? - the legal profession. the course's thrust is more on ethics though, it being a bar subject. i was hoping it would be more about the legal profession instead. like a sesame street segment on 'what lawyers do' to the tune of 'who are the people in your neighborhood?' god knows us clueless losers need to get an idea of what it is we're getting into...
after a semester and a half of law school, i've encountered several diffrent conceptions of what lawyers are and what it is they do. one professor told us that lawyering is as close as you can get to knighthood, that it's like an order of esteemed individuals committed to excellence and the pursuit of justice and striking own evil whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. same professor also failed about a third of our batch in legal history on some undisclosed grading basis. so much for that 'knight of justice.'
others are less romantic about it. lawyers are 'glorified puppets' paid to recite and repeat the law and do what their clients want. the best one we got from jj disini. lawyers aren't worth anything without the fiction that is the law. in a life or death situation, what can a lawyer do? determine who's liable? his trade doesn't really enable him to make people happy. when civilization and society breaks down, there will be plenty of work for doctors and chefs and even artists and poets. the lawyer? he'll be like a high priest for a religion that doesn't exist.
and what do i have to contribute to this particular topic? what would justify my freezing my ass off in some remote internet cafe to make this post? i dunno. but i do know that my semester-and-a-half of studying law did pay off las t christmas day. how? when i was tasked to play banker in my little cousins' monopoly game..
see, the funny thing with the law is that it's all written down. in words. in text. some of it's perfectly clear, but a greater part of it wouldn't make sense until after the third or fourth time you've read the provision - and only after then after you've read the entire chapter or title. and yet those letters and commas - 'the language of the law,' as they call it, indeterminate and vague as they are, regulate a significant portion of our day-to-day lives. it's like the 'code' in the matrix. yeah, sure, you decide what to wear today or what to eat for lunch, but what do you think determines what clothing brands actually get into the philippines or how money actually travels in this world? economics? politics? maybe. but how do you think those twin sisters actually affect lives at the societal level? it's the law. the law on sales. private and public international law. the law on family relations. constitutional and political law. but wait, aren't laws perfectly capable of being broken? yeah. but hello, criminal law. and what, oh what, keeps the admittedly inequitable, restrictive, and oppressive philipine socio-economic structure in place? it's not super glue, that's for sure.
take for example the vague text on the chance 'real estate tax' card. it says that you pay $25 for each house and $100 for each hotel you own. enter overzealous parent 1, who claims that player 2, who has built a hotel each on baltic and mediteranean, must pay not $200- as would be the common-sense interpretation, but $800- which includes the maount for the hotels as well as the anount for the four houses player 2 constructed as a requirement for building the hotel. the $600 difference would spell the difference between survival and bankruptcy in a late monopoly game with houses on the pacific and boardwalk block. already overzealous parents 2 and 3 are arguing the point with overzealous parent 1. (it's right out of national geographic, i tell you. 'uncles and aunts in action') the kids are too busy laughing at each other's farting sound imitations to care.
the title deed card offers no aid for interpretation. it just says 'houses cost $50 each, hotels, $50 each plus four houses.' so what exactly happens to the houses when you build the hotel? are they demolished and deemed nonexistent? or do they still exist and therefore require payment of the $25 tax? how can i, the banker, restore order and possibly save player 2's (who also happens to be my little sister) prospects?
my first instinct would've been to argue the point or just laugh it off. but law school makes you think differently. before i used to start out with an idea, and argue for its acceptance based on how desirable, logical, or neceaasry it would be (i used to be good at it too). but that wouldn't be enough for law school, no sir. you'd have to have that ever-elusive 'legal basis' to make yours a valid legal assertion. if it isn't written in the law, it ain't worth squat. so we then turn to the rules.
the rules on hotels say that the player 'returns the houses' to the bank when s/he builds a hotel on his/her property. that word - 'returns' was all i needed to find order in the disorder of disguised sibling rivalry (that's all it was, really - my uncles and aunts channelling pent-up childhood monopoly grudges and using their kids as pawns). 'return' connotes a loss of possession and ownership. player 2 therefore cant be required to pay for houses that are no longer there or no longer hers. so speaketh the banker. and when you're the only one in the family with even the slightest semblance of familiarity with law and legal mumbo-jumbo, you get away with a lot of what you say. my little sister eventually won the game, but i maintain that my interference had little to do with it. glad i could help though. hehe.
i think a similar situation happened before in a previous game, during which my grandfather (the overzealous parents' parent) put his foot down and said the exact same thing i did. we all could've relied on precedent, but i think figuring it out on my own was pretty nifty in itself.
i have a dim idea that lawyers are supposed to use their specialized (and grossly overpriced and overhyped) knowledge to help people from all walks of life navigate the legal world and look after their interests and life-realities under the legal system at any given time. said lawyer dude can do cutthroat corporate work in the concrete jungles of makati, or he can get paid in fruit and livestock while representing farmers and peasants in a david vs. goliath land struggle. whatever he may end up doing, i think it's the representation and adversarial quality of legal proceedings that really sets him apart. no matter whose interests you're representing - in court, in some barangay proceeding, or in some boardroom meeting - you're duty-bound to do your best for that person (besides, if you win, you get more money - if you go for that kind of thing). it's a challenge and a privilege at the same time. fortunes rise and fall and lives change for the better or worse with each lawyerly act you do. i may be romanticizing a bit (okay, a lot), but there have been cases where a single comma or vague phrase can invalidate or negate a contract and lead to a major money-drain.
i wrote this down in an ethics journal assignment for the law 120 subject: what i find darkly exciting about the idea of practicing law is that it offers an opportunity to affect real change at the societal level even as it challenges one to continuously improve one's self. yeah, that, i believe, is what makes it close to knighthood. i find myself disinclined to talk about justice or such things, because in the end (one ofthe first thigs i learned in law school), there hardly is any 'justice' in the law. only lawyers who are willing to commit themselves to the struggle to secure just outcomes.
great. now we're making some progress. we can now talk about law and law school without feeling all corny and dopey about it. we can actually use 'law' and 'i' in the same sentence now! we've also formed our own elementary (and hoplessly naive) idea of what lawyers do. we now know what we're getting ourselves into... i think.
it's a start. now all i need to figure out is what i'm staying in law school for. or better, 'who'...
the long silence can be attributed to my becoming a law student - sorry, working law student - since june of this year. the increasing dullness of my recent posts can also be attributed to same phenomenon (my blockmates all claim to have suffered similar losses in their creativity. you can almost hear it being sucked out of you during those long study breaks). like everyone else, i'm still in the process of trying to figure everything out. what is this so-called law profession? and what the hell am i doing with my life?
we now arrive at the best possible explanation for the drastic renaming. the blogger wishes to change this blog into a channel by which he can understand this new stage in his life.
haha. it just occurred to me. if i end up quitting law school and decide on working to be a chef instead, what then will i call this blog? 'secret recipe'? eeew.
yeah, i haven't written anything even remotely law or law school-related at all, and that's a shame. just goes to show how little thought i actually give to the things i enter into. (insert close friends nodding their heads - jason, thinking abuot the things he does? tch. that'll be the day.)
this semester we're taking up law 120 (the legal profession). it's a required subject that's supposed to give us a crash course on ethics and an overview of -what else? - the legal profession. the course's thrust is more on ethics though, it being a bar subject. i was hoping it would be more about the legal profession instead. like a sesame street segment on 'what lawyers do' to the tune of 'who are the people in your neighborhood?' god knows us clueless losers need to get an idea of what it is we're getting into...
after a semester and a half of law school, i've encountered several diffrent conceptions of what lawyers are and what it is they do. one professor told us that lawyering is as close as you can get to knighthood, that it's like an order of esteemed individuals committed to excellence and the pursuit of justice and striking own evil whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head. same professor also failed about a third of our batch in legal history on some undisclosed grading basis. so much for that 'knight of justice.'
others are less romantic about it. lawyers are 'glorified puppets' paid to recite and repeat the law and do what their clients want. the best one we got from jj disini. lawyers aren't worth anything without the fiction that is the law. in a life or death situation, what can a lawyer do? determine who's liable? his trade doesn't really enable him to make people happy. when civilization and society breaks down, there will be plenty of work for doctors and chefs and even artists and poets. the lawyer? he'll be like a high priest for a religion that doesn't exist.
and what do i have to contribute to this particular topic? what would justify my freezing my ass off in some remote internet cafe to make this post? i dunno. but i do know that my semester-and-a-half of studying law did pay off las t christmas day. how? when i was tasked to play banker in my little cousins' monopoly game..
see, the funny thing with the law is that it's all written down. in words. in text. some of it's perfectly clear, but a greater part of it wouldn't make sense until after the third or fourth time you've read the provision - and only after then after you've read the entire chapter or title. and yet those letters and commas - 'the language of the law,' as they call it, indeterminate and vague as they are, regulate a significant portion of our day-to-day lives. it's like the 'code' in the matrix. yeah, sure, you decide what to wear today or what to eat for lunch, but what do you think determines what clothing brands actually get into the philippines or how money actually travels in this world? economics? politics? maybe. but how do you think those twin sisters actually affect lives at the societal level? it's the law. the law on sales. private and public international law. the law on family relations. constitutional and political law. but wait, aren't laws perfectly capable of being broken? yeah. but hello, criminal law. and what, oh what, keeps the admittedly inequitable, restrictive, and oppressive philipine socio-economic structure in place? it's not super glue, that's for sure.
take for example the vague text on the chance 'real estate tax' card. it says that you pay $25 for each house and $100 for each hotel you own. enter overzealous parent 1, who claims that player 2, who has built a hotel each on baltic and mediteranean, must pay not $200- as would be the common-sense interpretation, but $800- which includes the maount for the hotels as well as the anount for the four houses player 2 constructed as a requirement for building the hotel. the $600 difference would spell the difference between survival and bankruptcy in a late monopoly game with houses on the pacific and boardwalk block. already overzealous parents 2 and 3 are arguing the point with overzealous parent 1. (it's right out of national geographic, i tell you. 'uncles and aunts in action') the kids are too busy laughing at each other's farting sound imitations to care.
the title deed card offers no aid for interpretation. it just says 'houses cost $50 each, hotels, $50 each plus four houses.' so what exactly happens to the houses when you build the hotel? are they demolished and deemed nonexistent? or do they still exist and therefore require payment of the $25 tax? how can i, the banker, restore order and possibly save player 2's (who also happens to be my little sister) prospects?
my first instinct would've been to argue the point or just laugh it off. but law school makes you think differently. before i used to start out with an idea, and argue for its acceptance based on how desirable, logical, or neceaasry it would be (i used to be good at it too). but that wouldn't be enough for law school, no sir. you'd have to have that ever-elusive 'legal basis' to make yours a valid legal assertion. if it isn't written in the law, it ain't worth squat. so we then turn to the rules.
the rules on hotels say that the player 'returns the houses' to the bank when s/he builds a hotel on his/her property. that word - 'returns' was all i needed to find order in the disorder of disguised sibling rivalry (that's all it was, really - my uncles and aunts channelling pent-up childhood monopoly grudges and using their kids as pawns). 'return' connotes a loss of possession and ownership. player 2 therefore cant be required to pay for houses that are no longer there or no longer hers. so speaketh the banker. and when you're the only one in the family with even the slightest semblance of familiarity with law and legal mumbo-jumbo, you get away with a lot of what you say. my little sister eventually won the game, but i maintain that my interference had little to do with it. glad i could help though. hehe.
i think a similar situation happened before in a previous game, during which my grandfather (the overzealous parents' parent) put his foot down and said the exact same thing i did. we all could've relied on precedent, but i think figuring it out on my own was pretty nifty in itself.
i have a dim idea that lawyers are supposed to use their specialized (and grossly overpriced and overhyped) knowledge to help people from all walks of life navigate the legal world and look after their interests and life-realities under the legal system at any given time. said lawyer dude can do cutthroat corporate work in the concrete jungles of makati, or he can get paid in fruit and livestock while representing farmers and peasants in a david vs. goliath land struggle. whatever he may end up doing, i think it's the representation and adversarial quality of legal proceedings that really sets him apart. no matter whose interests you're representing - in court, in some barangay proceeding, or in some boardroom meeting - you're duty-bound to do your best for that person (besides, if you win, you get more money - if you go for that kind of thing). it's a challenge and a privilege at the same time. fortunes rise and fall and lives change for the better or worse with each lawyerly act you do. i may be romanticizing a bit (okay, a lot), but there have been cases where a single comma or vague phrase can invalidate or negate a contract and lead to a major money-drain.
i wrote this down in an ethics journal assignment for the law 120 subject: what i find darkly exciting about the idea of practicing law is that it offers an opportunity to affect real change at the societal level even as it challenges one to continuously improve one's self. yeah, that, i believe, is what makes it close to knighthood. i find myself disinclined to talk about justice or such things, because in the end (one ofthe first thigs i learned in law school), there hardly is any 'justice' in the law. only lawyers who are willing to commit themselves to the struggle to secure just outcomes.
great. now we're making some progress. we can now talk about law and law school without feeling all corny and dopey about it. we can actually use 'law' and 'i' in the same sentence now! we've also formed our own elementary (and hoplessly naive) idea of what lawyers do. we now know what we're getting ourselves into... i think.
it's a start. now all i need to figure out is what i'm staying in law school for. or better, 'who'...
posted by strangelysilent at 6:35 PM
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