Pre-law Requirement

Section 6 of Rule 138 provides:

Section 6. Pre-Law. — No applicant for admission to the bar examination shall be admitted unless he presents a certificate that he has satisfied the Secretary of Education that, before he began the study of law, he had pursued and satisfactorily completed in an authorized and recognized university or college, requiring for admission thereto the completion of a four-year high school course, the course of study prescribed therein for a bachelor’s degree in arts or sciences with any of the following subjects as major or field of concentration: political science, logic, english, spanish, history and economics. [Emphasis supplied]

Here you go, the Supreme Court requires that we pursue and satisfactorily complete a Bachelor’s degree. This is one of the many requirements provided by the Supreme Court before a person can enter the legal profession. To simplify the provision, we’ll detail the pre-law requirement

1. The applicant must have pursued a Bachelor’s degree.
2. The applicant must have completed it.
3. The Bachelor’s degree has the following subjects as major or field of concentration: political science, logic, english, spanish, history and economics. (Note that a person need not be a major of these fields. An applicant must have taken substantial number of units covering these subjects as discussed below.)
4. The college where the Bachelor’s degree was obtained is authorized and recognized by the government.
5. The college where the Bachelor’s degree was obtained require a four-year high school course before admission.

The requirements may also be more stringent depending on the school or university.

For the University of Santo Tomas, for instance, the Faculty of Civil Law requires that the Bachelor’s degree contains 18 units of English, 18 units of Social Sciences, and 6 units of Mathematics. For admission to the College of Law of the University of the Philippines, the Bachelor’s degree holder must have completed 12 units of English, 9 units of History/Economics, 9 units of any of the following Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology or Sociology, and 3 units of Rizal course.  Deficiency units may be earned during one’s enrollment in law school.

As a minimum, no law school may admit an applicant without a Bachelor’s degree.

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