The legal profession remains a well-esteemed and lucrative career. While private law firms can be found throughout the Philippines, Makati is a particularly popular address. Anchored in the southern part of the capital city, Manila, Makati is the financial capital of the Philippines. It was one of the first cities in the country to be considered globalized. Moreover, it is situated in close proximity to the main entrance of the airport. The strategic location of Makati makes it an ideal venue for regional and international events. Even compared to other cities, Makati has a greater concentration of some of the country’s best law firms. FCB Law Office, one of the leading law offices in Makati, offers expert legal services tailored to meet your needs with a team of experienced professionals.
Even with the current trend towards paralegal outsourcing being introduced, the community of law offices in Makati provides opportunities for lawyers to collaborate, network, and refer clients to specialists in other practice areas. There is a substantial amount of legal reform and policy work completed in Makati. While Makati’s concentration of legal firms can be advantageous, the city does have its share of challenges and issues. The competition in Makati is fierce. More and more law firms vie for potential business and fight to be as accessible and connected as possible. As talented attorneys, we are now compelled to provide legal services to serve individuals and corporations in the city. Not only do we have to be excellent attorneys to be both streamlined and commercially feasible, but we also have to deliver exactly what our clients want. In other words, our company’s strategic direction must not only be client-centered, but it must also consider the fast-paced legal sector in which we work.
The Legal Landscape in the Philippines
The Philippines has a pluralistic, harmonized legal system characterized by a blend of civil law and common law traditions. Spanish colonial laws and indigenous laws heavily influenced Philippine laws before the Americans expanded the influence of U.S. law. Presently, the Spanish legal background mainly manifests in special spheres, such as family and land laws. The fundamental law of the Philippines is the Constitution promulgated in 1987. This empowers the creation of statutes at the national and local levels, executive orders, administrative orders and regulations, and local ordinances.
While the Philippines does not recognize international law as part of its domestic law without its transformation into a treaty, it holds international law in high regard. Domestic statutes give primacy to the various international conventions to which the Philippines is a party. The judiciary plays an important role in the development and adaptation of law. A number of challenges are faced by the legal profession in the Philippines. Law has been and continues to be a semi-liberal profession. However, most of the professions under the liberalized residency requirement for the practice of professions are significantly more liberal. Some laws that regulate the practice of law have been declared unconstitutional on the basis of undue restraint of trade. As such, laws are generally dynamic and responsive to societal changes. Agencies constituting the government roles are mandated to implement laws and make administrative decisions. Supreme mandates are made up of all courts of law, which are mandated to interpret and apply the law. Non-governmental entities may be deputized to determine issues of fact for quasi-judicial bodies. This text finds that it is important to understand these points in order to appreciate the fundamental legal philosophy and approaches in determining legal cases.
Key Aspects of the Legal System
The following are contextual aspects of the legal system in the Philippines: The Philippines is a civil law jurisdiction under the Spanish tradition and is ranked lower in the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index compared to other ASEAN countries. One of the sources of Philippine law is statutes, which emanate from the legislative branch of government, the Congress. Another important source of Philippine law is case law, particularly Supreme Court decisions, which serve as precedents in the resolution of subsequent cases. The Philippines also recognizes as law customs which are considered to have the force of law. Upon separation from Spain, the Philippines adopted the Spanish Civil Code, which is continuously in effect today.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the Philippines. However, when a particular version of a statutory law runs counter to the Constitution, the former will be nullified. Also, the Supreme Court itself is empowered to declare all acts of the three branches of the government to be null and void if it is found to be unconstitutional. The judiciary is composed of the Supreme Court and lower courts known as family courts, metropolitan trial courts, municipal circuit trial courts, municipal trial courts, and regional trial courts. The Supreme Court is not a court of trial or appeal, but a court handling cases that involve constitutional law and is also the highest arbiter of justice in the Philippines if the case is appealed from the Court of Appeals. The adversarial system of justice is applied in the Philippines. The concept of an adversarial system implies that it is the parties in litigation who are the determiners and shapers of the trial processes and outcomes. Among those shaped by the parties are judicial decisions. The primary sources of a typical trial process include the Philippine Rules of Court and the Revised Rules of Court.
Role of Law Firms in the Philippines
Law firms in the Philippines are mainly responsible for providing clients with legal advice or counsel and representing them in various cases or court disputes. Their clients are primarily individuals, including business entities and enterprises, because they are usually the ones who involve themselves in legal controversies. Other clients of law firms include political institutions, government agencies, and other non-state actors. Law firms also help facilitate access to legal advice, defense, and justice, as well as contribute to the cautious enforcement of the rule of law in various societies. There are many different areas or fields of law, and legal practitioners in the Philippines are allowed to specialize or limit the scope of their legal practice to focus on any one or a select few of these areas. The practice of law in the Philippines has long been subject to various legal and judicial reforms and changes. In order to keep up with these ever-evolving legal practices, legal practitioners also participate in legal education and academic reforms. One vital aspect of the operation of law firms in the Philippines is their relationship or interaction with government agencies, such as the courts, prosecution services, and other similar governmental units. Most of the time, a person avails himself or herself of government legal aid, and the government matches them with law firms in order to handle their cases. By shedding light on the various roles and functions that law firms in the Philippines perform, we provide the reader and researcher with a more comprehensive understanding of their operations and the general legal landscape or ecosystem within which the researchers and their law firm operate.
Extra Judicial Settlement
FCB Law Office specializes in extra judicial settlement, providing efficient and amicable resolutions to disputes without the need for court intervention. In resolving disputes, there are avenues that are less adversarial compared to litigation. One of them is extrajudicial settlement, which is defined as “an agreement by all of the heirs of a deceased person to act with respect to the former estate of the latter person according to the terms of such agreement. It is an agreement whereby a person, with the present assurance of ownership or other dispositions, has the absolute right of disposition, becomes entitled to the specific property to be set aside, delivered, conveyed, paid, or transferred to him in consideration of such absolute right and as the inducement or subject to his obligation to do the initial act.
Extrajudicial settlement may be entered into with or without public decree for the same. The dynamics of settlement negotiation and mediation are, however, different from extrajudicial settlement. For an uncontested extrajudicial settlement, it is essential that the parties have negotiation and mediation skills. Fortunately, these are two of the strengths of the principal and lawyers involved. In extrajudicial settlement, parties typically draft the terms and conditions of the final agreement, while some agree on the terms of the same but would want the same to be known to the world through a public document. They, therefore, execute the public deed of extrajudicial settlement that is required to be published in a newspaper of general circulation and registered at the Registry of Deeds.
Definition and Importance
In the context of Philippine law, extrajudicial settlements refer to the out-of-court conflicts and their subsequent resolution among parties to a pending or anticipated controversy, with the aim of avoiding the court process. The essential characteristics of extrajudicial settlements include (a) their voluntary character. They are reached by mutual agreement, unlike the decisions of legal experts, which are effectively agreements imposed on the parties as decisions; (b) their informality. They do away with the rigors of quasi-judicial proceedings and the paraphernalia of the legal system on which judicial semi-proceedings are based; and (c) their potential for greater confidentiality when compared to court processes. The operation of the courts, relatively detached from how disputes are resolved elsewhere in the community, means that the reach of the justice system is curtailed. However, law in action occurs, with non-court parties entering into private settlements or agreements. The reach of law can be expanded whenever the official legal process or system operates harshly, or people do not see the legal system as relevant to them. A majority of court judgments are based on unsustainable default judgments, underpinned by weak evidence. These factors help limit court congestion. A wealth of jurisprudence on extrajudicial settlements demonstrates that a considerable portion of cases have been and continue to be resolved outside of court. Indeed, extrajudicial settlements are a well-known safeguard against long-drawn litigation. Furthermore, there are some good policy reasons for reducing court congestion. For example, the enforcement of bargains by courts has system-maintenance properties that enhance access to justice and trust between parties.
