MANILA, Philippines – Mickey Ingles didn’t want to jinx it.

Even after getting congratulatory phone calls from his friends, the 29-year-old 2012 bar exam topnotcher didn’t want to believe it. That is, until he got a call from a TV reporter asking for an interview.

“I guess it’s starting to sink in,” he said a few hours after the results of the bar exam were released.

The whole day had been a blur of live interviews, phone patches, and phone calls from random numbers, he told Rappler. We managed to steal him away from the chaos to talk about his love for football, prepping for the bar exam, what’s wrong with the judiciary, and the controversial new rule in the UAAP.

Why study law?

My dad’s a lawyer. I guess it’s a good profession. It’s a profession that will give you returns even as you grow older. As compared to an athlete, once you’re 25 or 30, medyo pababa na returns mo. It’s a viable profession and it’s a profession that helps other people.

Did you ever have to choose between football and your law studies?

There were a lot of times where I had to choose between football and law school. Sometimes I chose football but in the end, law school won. When I reached 3rd year in law, Loyola FC training became more serious. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to balance law and football and since law school was patapos na, I decided to stick with it. I asked my coach if I could just play with the second team and they agreed.

In the end, I still got to play a bit of football on the side and I got to concentrate on my law degree.

How did you prepare for the bar exams?

I started reviewing May 1 or May 2. I would study 8 hours a day. I used to study in the Loyola campus. I’d start at 9am, take lunch, hear mass in the college chapel, then start studying again until 5 or 6.

There was a time when I had to go to the States to visit the family of my wife. There, I’d study 8 hours a day as well. I got a lot of support from my family — they’d FedEx [my review material] to me.

Law school is a team effort. Taking the bar is a team effort. No one can do it alone.

Football seems to be a recurring thing in your life. How did it fit in while you were in law school?

A lot of the things I learned from football, I got to apply in law school. Our coach always told us that if you can’t do things in practice, you won’t be able to do it on the field during the game.

I applied that in law school. I made sure that I got to do the required readings, homework, study it well. I knew that once you get called for recitation in class, anything could happen.

Once you’re prepared, once you have that catalogue of knowledge in your head, you can just take that out.

From a freshman law student: crime, consti, civil?

Criminal law. I found it interesting to study. I want to get into taxation and corporation law.

Any plans of joining government?

No government. I think they can handle their own. I think more work needs to be done in the private sector. I always believe and my friends always believe that change doesn’t happen just because of the government. You need citizens, the private sector, the business sector to just come together.

What problems in the judiciary stand out?

I guess it’s a problem that’s been a problem even since — delayed justice. You can’t really blame the judges. As of now, if I’m not mistaken, their numbers aren’t that many for them to [be able to] handle the number of cases. I guess integrity… transparency.

Do you think you’ll ever see these problems solved in your lifetime?

You can have change, it could be fast change. Like in Naga with [the late] Secretary Robredo as former mayor. Change there happened rapidly, as long people cooperated. I think if people put their self-interest aside and keep the interests of the people first, I think there can be changes quickly in the judiciary.

What do you think of the current composition of the judiciary?

I’m happy that Justice Serreno is at the helm. I’m happy that she has 17-18 years left. As long as she has good intentions in her heart, she can bring change into the judiciary. She’s a fresh face — someone new. We always need someone new to stir things up.

You were a senior in law school during the Corona trial. Tell us what that was like for you.

At that time, we found it very interesting. Most law students have no experience going to court, we’d always just read the codals. It was the first time most of us saw what we were studying in action. It was a geek fest for us law students.

We also saw how people viewed lawyers. For example, us law students, we revered the lawyers –both the defense and prosecution. Then you see the other side, people who didn’t take law: they despised the defense.

We saw the different views [about lawyers]. It opened my eyes… to see that people may now view the profession you’re going into as highly as you do. How are you going to deal with it?

So how do you deal with it?

The only way you can deal with it is being the best lawyer that you can be. It doesn’t mean winning all your cases. It means being honest, having integrity, keeping to your word–those are all given.

What’s your biggest takeaway from the Corona trial?

Transparency [is essential in the judiciary]. Actually, that’s the biggest thing I took out of it. We also saw the gaps in the law. For example, the exceptions in the foreign currency deposit act–it didn’t apply in the impeachment cases.

As people who study the law, those are things you realize: law evolves. It’s not like you [craft] the law and it’s gonna be perfect.

In college, you led Ateneo to 3 straight championships in the University Athletic Assocation of the Philippines (UAAP). What do you think of the new UAAP rule for freshman transferees from other UAAP schools?

I don’t agree with the rule. The rule doesn’t consider the other aspects of being a student and being an athlete. For example, I graduated from Ateneo and I’m an athlete also. If I want to take up architecture and I move to UP… I mean, how can you punish a student for moving to a school with a course that he wants?

How can you punish him for playing the sport that he loves for two years? If they’re trying to quell bad recruitment practices, there are other ways.

What other ways can you suggest?

It’s an open secret that there are recruitment practices that shouldn’t be applied to amateur sports. In the States, you have NCAA rules. Boosters can give money to the students, not even shoes. Why can’t we just apply the same rules to the UAAP instead of having these two-year ban?

How do you attack a law to say it’s unconstitutional? You have to check if it has a valid purpose and if the means are reasonable to achieve the purpose. What’s the purpose of this two-year rule? Is the two-year residency ban on playing reasonable to get the goal?

A lowlight of the 2012 bar exams was that it recorded the lowest passing rate in recent years. How did that make you feel?

It makes me really sad. As much as you want to celebrate individual achievements, you want to celebrate it with your friends. Some of my friends didn’t pass; I really feel for them. And studying for the bar is really hard. You lose 6 months of your life studying for it, and there’s another 6 months waiting for the results.

They say the format of the exam played a part in the low passing rate. Do you agree?

I guess if you look at the cause and effect: last year, it was multiply choice and you had a [higher] passing rate. This year they shifted to 60% multiple choice, 40% essay… tapos biglang nag-baba. I guess the exam format really affected the passing rate.

There’s been much talk about you wanting to go into sports law.

I just wanted to apply the law [within] the context of sports. Like the UAAP rule, it can be a sports law issue. For example in Torts law, my thesis was on whether or not you can sue someone for injuring you while you were playing basketball or football. On another level, if you can sue the coach… or how you can impose liability on the coach for your injury.

That’s what I’m talking about when I say “sports law.” Different fields of law in the context of sports.

Did you ever have a bad recitation experience? How does a law student cope?

Worst ko was with Dean [Sedfrey] Candelaria. I couldn’t answer and he asked me to sit down.

Kailangan makapal rin [ang] mukha mo. You don’t get too high with the highs and too low with the lows. Because some day randomness will bite you in the butt–whether you study or not.

Don’t take the first 4 years of law school for granted. You prepare for the bar the moment you step into first year in school. Everything you learned from first year to fourth year will be asked in the bar. Most of it is stock knowledge. Concentrate from first to fourth year, and you’ll be fine. -Rappler.com