Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno had simple advice for the country’s newest lawyers on Wednesday: Don’t be corrupt.
Sereno addressed 949 bar passers at their oath-taking ceremony at a special en banc session of the Supreme Court at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City. “It is of no small matter if each of you says it in your heart, that I will not be corrupt and I will not allow anyone to corrupt me,” she says in a Philippine Star report.
She added the newest lawyers should help change the perception that lawyers are corrupt, arrogant, and selfish.
Associate Justice Martin Villarama Jr.,for his part, told the law graduates that “there is a higher law of government, the law of conscience.” Villarama chaired the committee that handled the 2012 bar examinations.
