A Taste of Alternative Lawyering: My Glad to be Globe Story

A tunnel of a Kamote Miner (Small-Scale Miner)

Never has my summer been so exciting and fulfilling than this year’s summer, thanks to Globe. If there is one adjective that could describe my summer experience, it is peripatetic.

Sometime in April this year, my schoolmate from law school texted, asking me if I was interested to join the Alternative Law Groups Summer Internship Program for Law Students. If so, he said, I had to submit my résumé, ASAP.

Yes, I said. But the problem was at that the time I received the text I was in the middle of a friend’s birthday party. I had my netbook with me. I had a copy of my old résumé which only needed a little tweaking. There was, however, no way that I could send the résumé because there’s no Internet connection around.

I asked my friend if she has a broadband. Fortunately, she has a Globe Tattoo 4G Flash. She lent me her Globe Tattoo. So fast was the connection in no time I was able to send my résumé. A few days later I received an e-mail, saying that I got accepted into the Internship Program.

Giving lecture to the Mansaka Tribe

From the lectures to the reading assignments, almost everything we do in law school is aimed at passing the Bar Exam. Law school drills students into learning the basics of the law, but provides little opportunity for us to see what the world is beyond the Bar Exam. For the whole school year, students are so engrossed learning the law that they know little about the situation outside the walls of law school.

During the two-month Internship, however, I was given the opportunity to do what is referred to as Alternative Lawyering, an opportunity other law students didn’t have. I reached places which never figure in any tourist’s itinerary. I met fellow law students in Cagayan de Oro. Together with other Interns, I lived among the B’laan tribe in Columbio, Sultan Kudarat. We also interacted with the Mansaka tribe in Brgy. Mainit, Maco, Comval Province, when an NPA insurgency had just fizzled.

Vignettes of the immersion. Photo courtesy of Mark Penalver.

Each of those experiences is a speck of the vast range of activities that Alternative Lawyers do. There’s a lot more, but all seek to make the situation better for the poor and the marginalized sector.

If it weren’t for the Globe Tattoo, I wouldn’t have sent my résumé, and I wouldn't have been accepted into the Internship. I wouldn’t have experienced sharing my meager knowledge of the law to the B’laan or Mansaka Tribe. I wouldn’t have been part, albeit swiftly, in such a noble endeavor as Alternative Lawyering.

I don’t have to borrow anymore a Globe Tattoo because now I do own one. I’m, well, glad to be Globe.