The Judicial and Bar Council or JBC campaigns for Judge-applicants, a banner in the Post, stated. It is calling for law practitioners to apply for the position of judge either in the Municipal Circuit Trial Court of Regional Trial Courts. There is a backlog of cases and the calendars of present MCTC and RTC salas are full. The workload has to be shared There are so many vacancies at present and they must be filled. We wonder if there will be many takers. There were the days that judges were not even lawyers. That was before the war. Nowadays, he cannot be a judge if he is not a lawyer

The field of opportunity in the legal profession is wide. Once a fellow passes the bar, he can either go into civil law or criminal law. In civil law, he can specialize in commercial law, which guides the policies of large commercial firms, credit and collection, or taxation, where money is to be made by looking for opportunities of tax avoidance, or into corporate law, He can also specialize in criminal law, by being a trial lawyer.

A law firm usually recruits a lawyer, who comes from the top of his class. He starts at the lowest position, an associate. The firm assigns clients to him according to his specialty, he bills the client by the hour or whatever is the legal arrangement. A lawyer in a good firm earns more than enough, sometimes he is overworked but the money is good. He eventually becomes a partner, who gets a bigger share of the proceeds. Some prefer to go into private practice. Until a lucky break is made, he chases ambulances. However, when he breaks into the news by handling a really big case, his reputation is made. He becomes an abogado de campanilla and cases come to him. Not all are that lucky. When cases are scarce some just make a living by notarizing legal instruments, what ever they are. He either lands a position as a government employee, as a fiscal, or as a judge in the Municipal Circuit Trial Court or in the Regional Trial Court. Those people draw regular monthly salaries and several perks but they must know more than an ordinary lawyer.

First the prospective judge must be familiar with both procedural and substantive law. He must know that the case must be sufficient in form before it its filed. That means he must know the techniques and methods of application of the substantive law. He should also know that the case he will handle is sufficient in substance. This means he knows how a person ought to act under certain circumstances or how a dispute ought to be decided. Those may produce technical defects, which nullifies his decisions. Since a case is to be decided according to the evidence presented or according to the interpretation of a law or statute or according to legal precedent, the would be prospective judge must know jurisprudence. Aside from those he must know how to find his way through gray areas in law. This is where logic is needed. He must also know how to wade through legal verbiage .to arrive at a logical conclusion when jurisprudence cannot provide a precedent. A prospective judge must be aware that those whose decisions are frequently reversed by higher courts are not worthy of his position. Ignorance of the law is a liability.

During these days jurisprudence can be easily accessed. Any trial lawyer or judge worth his salt has a computerized copy of Supreme Court decisions, Presidential Decrees and any authoritative pronouncement that has a bearing on the case. Voluminous Supreme Court decisions as summarized by the SCRA or Supreme Court Researchers Association. . Any lawyer knows that he who cites the most precedent is likely to win the case. The judge therefore will have to determine if the citation does really have a bearing on the case. With all those required qualities, it is not likely that a good practitioner would apply for a position as a judge in the MCTC or RTC. The hours are long the pay is comparatively low. There is money to be made in private practice. However, there are those who are civic spirited, the people who would like to see justice done, the types who frequently handle cases pro bono. As incentive, the pay of the judges must be raised and more perks added whatever they may be, so a good lawyer would not lose when he enters government service.