By Farah G. Decano

 

THE Philippines will be celebrating the Law Week this September so I thought of asking a young lawyer, who recently passed the bar, to write about her heartaches in and hopes for the legal profession. Atty. Iyay Vargas-Malicdem is a magna cum laude graduate of Journalism at the UP Diliman and Juris Doctor alumna of the University of Cordilleras. The dismissal of Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno made me lose hope for the country. I was mulling on abandoning   the responsibility to create positive change and pass the same to the next generation.  It was she who reminded me, “nasa atin pa ang laban”.

These are Atty. Iyay’s musings:

“I would be lying if I said nobody warned me about the difficulties of being a new lawyer. As early as my freshman year in law school, our criminal law professor had already painted a vivid picture of what we should expect once we enter the legal profession. “Your first seven years would be of famine,” he brutally predicted. “On your best days, you would probably earn enough to afford rotisserie chicken from Chooks to Go; most days you won’t have anything to take home at all.”

As hard as it may be to admit, he was right. Keeping financially afloat when you’re solely relying on your private law practice is a challenge in itself. With the fleeting glory of getting my license still fresh in people’s minds, I get addressed by my new title but don’t receive the compensation they think automatically comes with it. So far, my saving grace has been the generosity of a senior lawyer who has given me the privilege of being called her associate.

And yet keeping a peso or two has not been, for me, the biggest hardship of being a rookie. What  keeps me up long after my husband and our five-year-old have started snoring is the ever-lingering existential question of “why.”

Why am I lawyer? What am I doing here? Am I even good enough for this profession?

It didn’t take long for the wide-eyed, justice-seeking, idealistic millennial to turn into a trauma-stricken, self-doubting, demoralized adult. Don’t get me wrong; ironic as it may sound, I still consider being a lawyer a dream come true. But no amount of studying has prepared me for the realities of actually having a legal career. Everything I learned in law school now seems like only theories from a different era. With real people with real problems coming for advice, I feel the heaviness of my own ignorance and inexperience weighing down on me.

But hey, as they say, hope springs eternal.

Aside from the genuine thank-yous of grateful clients, my silver lining comes in every opportunity to learn something new. I welcome every chance of further understanding the tricks of the trade — even though it usually entails an empty pocket and a badly bruised ego. From not knowing what to say to the judge to beating deadlines for the submission of pleadings, I have seen just how much room there is still for growth. Without sacrificing the cause of my clients, I continue to view my mistakes as lampposts for future guidance.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the heartache of personally witnessing how injustice and corruption could creep into our own justice system. It’s an unhealed wound my husband, who is also a lawyer, and I continue to carry. But we have learned early on to choose our battles — to do all that we can without sacrificing our integrity and mental stability. The rest we leave to our loving Creator.

So for now, I am allowing myself to just be, while at the same time enjoying a pan of Jolly spaghetti (not Chooks to Go) every now and then.”

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