After a long hiatus, the Rizal Memorial Colleges (RMC) has reopened its school of law, which will start classes on July 3.
Prominent lawyer Ramon Edison C. Batacan, managing partner of the Batacan Montejo Vicencio (BMV) law firm, has been appointed dean of the school. Batacan, a law professor of the Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU) of long standing , is a past Davao City chapter president and eastern Mindanao governor of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines.
Batacan said RMC recently received notice from the Legal Education Board (LEB) that its application to offer a law course has been favorably considered.
8 law schools
With the reopening, there are now a total of eight colleges offering legal education in the Davao Region – four in Davao City, three in Tagum City, Davao del Norte and one in Digos City, Davao del Sur. They are Ateneo, University of Mindanao (UM), RMC and Jose Maria College in Davao City; UM-Tagum, St. Mary’s College and St. Thomas Moore in Tagum City, Davao del Norte; and Cor Jesu Colleges in Digos City, Davao del Sur.
Six of the schools recently produced more than 100 new lawyers who successfully hurdled the 2016 Bar examinations, the area’s biggest “harvest” on record.
Admitting it is the biggest challenge of his professional life,
Batacan said being dean of the newest law school is a gargantuan task. “However, I have no doubt I can hurdle the challenge with the tremendous support of the school management,” referring to Leo A. Magno, RMC chairman of the board, and his mother, Evelyn Abellera-Magno, its president.
New building
Upon formal receipt of the LEB certificate, RMC will also break ground for the construction of a four-story building to house RMC’s schools of law and business.
Batacan, who is also RMC’s corporate board secretary, said the new law school will adopt the mentoring style of teaching, deviating from the traditional Socratic system, wherein the law professor as the sole authority in the classroom lords it over the learning process like a dictator. In the “mentoring” system, he said, there is open communication between professor and students and they are encouraged to form themselves into groups to freely discuss the subject matters, instead of the professor spoon-feeding and sometimes “terrorizing” the students.
RMC’s law alumni
Before its closure in the 80’s, RMC had produced some of the most prominent lawyers in Davao and elsewhere in the country, according to Raul Tolentino Sr., a law practitioner for five decades now and who had studied in RMC from Grade 1 to second year Law until he transferred to San Beda College, the alma mater of President Rodrigo R. Duterte.
Tolentino, whose three children are also lawyers, two of them judges, identified some of the RMC law school alumni as Judge Roberto “Kid” Q. Canete, Judge Guillermo Clarin, Judge Jose Majaducon, Judge Antonina Escovilla, Cabinbanan
Mamukid (retired regional director of the Office of Muslim Affairs), Jose Goyo, Vidal dela Cruz, Irineo Benavides, Eddie Laurente, Ramon Garay, Romeo Tomas and Reynaldo Nolasco.
The last dean of the old RMC college of law was the late Jose Arro, retired judge of the Court of First Instance, forerunner of the Regional Trial Court (RTC), Tolentino said.
