What’s with the tree?

Some of you might be asking on why our blog, the Jurists Bar Review Center Cebu blog features a “tree” in its header.

Well aside from this blogspot theme, being one of the best looking themes that we could find, believe it or not there is a story behind the tree that that is also one of the reason why we picked this theme.

The story of the “tree” above, is the story of Jurists Bar Review Center Cebu (JBRC-Cebu). The story of JBRC Cebu began with three close friends, Zigfred Diaz, Alrey Ouano and Noli Dayanan who were buddies in law school. During their law school days, Noli was the chairman of the Review committee, the committee in charge of taking care of the bar lecturers. Alrey was also a member of that committee. Back then Southwestern University college of law had a tie up with another review center.

Noli and Alrey frequently ferried bar lecturers from the airport to their hotels and to the school while Zigfred went along for the joy ride. Their frequent interaction with lecturers from Manila made them establish a certain rapport with the lecturers.

When they were about to enter fourth year, they decided to take enroll in the regular and advance reviews in order that they might be well prepared to take the bar exams. They agreed among themselves that they will review in Baguio City because they believe it will be more “conducive to learning” considering the nice weather.

More than two months before they are about to leave for Baguio, one time Alrey was ferrying Prof. Gafar Lutian to the airport from his lecture. Alrey asked him if he knows of any good review center outside Cebu. Prof. Lutian told him about a different kind of review center, one that conducts mock bar exams, coaching and one that cares for its reviewees. The review center was located in Las Pinas and was called “Jurists Bar Review Center.” Prof. Lutian told Alrey that enrolling in Jurists and staying in Las Pinas is very nice, in fact according to him you will not be disturbed there because “Walang night life doon at. . . ang daming trees doon . . . you can even study under the tree”

Impressed by the trees, Alrey immediately called Zigfred up and told him about it. They talked to Noli about it and three decided to cancel their Baguio plans. Instead they booked a ticket for Metro Manila. After graduation, Zigfred and Alrey went ahead to Manila to check out the place. When they arrived there, they were somehow disappointed that there were no trees in the review center and about the night life, there was even a “Don’t tell mama” bar beside the review center ! The “tree” incident and the “no night life” claim became the butt of their jokes. They were so amused of the absence of the trees that the decided to confront Prof. Lutian about it.

Anyway tree, or no tree they enrolled at Jurists Bar Review Center manila. They were later on followed by Noli.

The trio enjoyed their stay in Las Pinas very much. They were Jurists’ “second” batch out of 100+ enrollees. They never missed a single day of review, nor did they ever miss to take a single mock bar. They were notoriously known to be the “Cebu boys” and were easily identified because they were the only ones that frequently brought with them 5 litter Wilkins Mineral water every time they go to the review site. (Jurists manila at that time was located in the 4^th floor of the STI Las Pinas building, they didn’t want to go down just to buy water)

Because they enjoyed Jurists Bar review Center so much and that they felt so at home with it, they decided to write a tribute about it. Called as the “Jurists Desiderata” it was the brain child of Captain Barbel (a.ka Alrey Ouano, this was his secret identity whenever he sent love notes to a fellow Jurista) who at the time was very much in love with another Jurista. (Somehow this caused controversy and Juristas were scrambling to find out who Captain Barbel was) (The coaches were also very concerned about this considering that the order was to “maintain the status quo”)

The Jurist Desiderata was simply a rephrasing of the regular Desiderata that Prof. Lutian used to present during the opening session. Zigfred also wrote the “Top ten reasons why I love Jurists Bar review Center” while Noli sang “The warrior is a child” during the closing party. The unique system of the three paragraph method, one on one coaching and follow up also impressed them so much that they wished they had something like this in Cebu. They opened this up with the Jurists administration, but initially they administrator’s felt that expanding in another place would be a logistical problem.

When they came back to Cebu, wishing to bring the “Jurists experience” to bar candidates the conducted a “Lex Pareto Notes bar boot camp” in both Southwestern University and the University of the Visayas following the Jurists system of mock bar and coaching. Since this was for free they only gave a 5 question mock bar and limited coaching hours. At the same time they gave several lectures on how to prepare for the bar exams.

The “experience” was received by the students very well. In the meantime, Chief Pros. Petralba found out about Jurists Bar Review Center and she appreciated the Jurists system so much. When she learned that a “boot camp” was being conducted she told them about this wonderful review center in Metro Manila to which they replied that they “graduated” there. She asked them to arrange a meeting with Atty. Hazel Riguera and then the rest is as they say “history.”

And what about the tree? What was Prof. Lutian’s explanation for it? Well they did ask him about it when they came back to Manila to bring lechon to the opening and to give their testimonial. (This is a Jurists tradition all who pass the previous batch who passed in the bar exams will come back and give a testimony in the opening, not to mention that you are suppose to donate something to eat in the opening for the next batch hehehehehe) :-) When they mentioned it in the testimonial, Prof. Lutian just laughed at it and explained that what he meant was that it is the University of Perpetual Help Las Pinas (Tie-up school of Jurists before) that has many trees in fact you could literally study under the trees.

And that’s the story behind the tree, you know ! :-)