As fierce as they come . . .
(standing, from left to right: Kim Nyca R. Lofranco, Elwell B. Mariano and Elenor Marisse Isabel M. Andaya)
(seated, from left to right: Jewel O. Dela Cruz, Katrina Janine B. Cabanos, Norietess P. De Los Reyes and Patrick V. Arcellana)
Browsers used to to be a one window-one webpage-only affair. For doing legal research, this was a bummer. If you Googled a topic and got a Results page, this meant that you could only check potentially relevant links one at a time. You would have to click on one result and by doing so, leave the Results page. If the link wasn’t to your liking, you’d have to hit the browser’s Back button to return to your Results page, wait for it to reload, before you could view another listed link. You’d have to repeat this viewing process over and over. That’s how cumbersome it was.
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You have a few days left to finish a pleading and you need some authorities to back up an argument.
The traditional way of getting those authorities meant poring over the old reliables: commentaries by well-recognized authors such as Tolentino for Civil Law, Moran or Regalado for Remedial, Reyes for Criminal, etc., or scanning through the SCRA Quick-Index Digests for those snippets quoted from Supreme Court decisions. The latter was (and still is) especially tedious, as this meant having the whole array of the SCRA (Supreme Court Reports Annotated), 500+ volumes as of this year, at your immediate disposal, so you could shuffle back and forth from the Quick-Index Digest to your SCRA library to check the accuracy of the quotations and the context in which they appeared. (Some lawyers don’t bother doing this, which is very risky. The Quick-Index Digests have their fair share of typos and wrong citations, plus you never can tell from the QID alone if the quoted portion was applied to defeat or support your position.)
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You’re at a children’s party, watching the kids play Musical Chairs as you chat idly with the other grown-ups, some of whom are friends, others new acquaintances. “So which one is yours?” you ask the usual icebreaker to the guy on your right. He leans closer, points to a tyke in a Spiderman costume, and says “Ampon namin ‘yan.” The “parent” makes the hushed declaration with mixed pride and fear. “Pinalagay namin sa birth certificate na kami ang magulang niya.” You nod and take a bite from the hotdog-and-assorted-marshmallows-on-a-stick you were saving for your son.
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If you’re a seasoned lawyer (I’ve always had trouble with that adjective; feels like whatever noun it modifies is ready to be cooked), then you’ve had your share of writing pleadings. You know what that basically entails: reciting the facts of your case and citing the laws and decisions that apply to your facts.
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