Bar 2025 topnotcher Jhenroniel Sanchez: An engineer and now a lawyer too

MANILA, Philippines – Jhenroniel Rhey Sanchez deliberately tuned out to avoid any Bar exams-related news. He said he wanted to deal with the news on whether he passed or failed at his own pace.

On the way home on January 7, one of his friends called him with news he was prompted to check out. He turned on his Internet connection and saw for himself what his friend was talking about: he had topped the 2025 Bar Examinations with a rating of 92.70%.

“Honestly I just wanted to pass my subjects before and when I failed civil procedure, I just wanted to clear that. I just wanted to graduate from law school,” 31-year-old Sanchez said in Rappler Talk interview.

“My entire intention was to pass the Bar. So this is why I keep repeating that finding out that apparently I was ranked 1 in the Bar exam came completely out of left field for me,” he added.

The topnotcher from the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law leads the 5,594 passers out of 11,420 takers who hurdled the examinations chaired by Associate Justice Amy Lazaro Javier. Sanchez is the second consecutive examinee from UP to rank first after Kyle Christian Tutor’s feat in the 2024 Bar.

For him, following what he calls a “framework of laws” is important if lawyers are to remain faithful to their oath to protect people. This entails prioritizing the prompt delivery of justice instead of resorting to dilatory tactics.

Being a lawyer, he said, is not solely about the “person of the lawyer,” but is more about the “person of the lawyer in relation to society.” Incoming lawyers like him, he added, should not forget the principles etched in the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability, or the code of conduct for lawyers.

“Because, as the Supreme Court has mentioned, it is a privilege to become a lawyer. And it is up to the person given such privilege to exercise it responsibly and in accordance with the oath, that he or she, they, had sworn to when they [entered] the profession,” he said.

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From engineering to lawyering

Before taking up law, Sanchez studied electrical engineering at UP Los Baños. A native of Laguna, he completed his secondary studies in the same province.

He became a licensed engineer, but decided to pursue law studies in 2019 at the UP College of Law.

Law school was not a breeze for Sanchez because he also worked as an assistant researcher at the UP Law Center. For a brief moment, he also worked under Taguig City’s safety task force during the pandemic. Later on, he settled as a paralegal at a Makati-based firm, where he worked until his law school graduation.

Sanchez said it was his engineering ethics class in college that ignited his interest in law. He found lawyering to be fascinating because it’s a profession “mostly regulated by law.”

“It was really just interesting to me that you have a profession, you define a profession by law and then you regulate it by law because when you’re not really aware of these things, you just take it as a fact,” he said. “So it’s just really fascinating…[that] there’s an external structure that needs to be created first before something is a profession.”

After that realization, he looked more closely at the legal profession and decided to take the Philippine Law School Admission Test and the UP Law Aptitude Examination.

“And I was like, well, nasimulan na natin, tapusin natin (we already started it, might as well finish it). Essentially, it’s kind of funny to say, but it’s very simple. I went through law school because I wanted to be a lawyer,” the topnotcher told Rappler.

His engineering background came in handy for his law studies, according to Sanchez.

He explained that in engineering, students are required to solve an equation and then explain their work. This practice gave them the ability to trace things — from the concepts given to them up to the solution to the problem at hand.

Sanchez said this training helped because it allowed him to digest readings using a step-by-step method, enabling him to understand cases better.

“Also, I suppose engineering also taught me that problems may be difficult, but you can find a solution for them, which helps, certainly, on the really tricky questions. You can conjure up a solution if you have a relatively firm understanding of the basics, and that’s worth a shot in law school because sometimes it’s not about having a right answer, but it’s how you arrived at your answer which would garner you more points,” the topnotcher shared.

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An ‘average’ student

Sanchez was a quiet student in law school who wasn’t really much into extracurricular activities. In class, the topnotcher said he was just an average student who did his best to pass all his subjects.

He said he never aimed for any honors or to be at the top of the class. In his years of studying, Sanchez learned that intelligence really does matter to survive, “but there is an outsized contribution [of] tenacity or grit.”

“A lot of studying is really just an endurance game. So, you’ll just have to keep pushing…but not to the point that you’re already self-destructing,” the topnotcher said.

Like other law students, Sanchez knew how to manage his time well. During work hours, his job was his only focus. Since he was a working student, he attended evening classes until around 9 pm and would study up to 11 pm or 12 am, then rest. For him, around five to six hours of sleep, although not adequate to restart the body, was already a luxury.

Although Sanchez described himself as an “average” student, his law school run was not a smooth one. He faced a setback when he failed his civil procedure subject, generally considered one of the toughest subjects in law school because of its rigidity and rules attached to it. He surmised that the reason he failed it at first try was because he was not good at interpreting and applying rules in civil procedure.

Sanchez learned a thing or two from it, especially the importance of not dwelling on mistakes. Him being in evening classes also helped, he said, as the day’s quick end helped take his mind off these missteps.

He said, “You will have a bad result. You will have a bad day. You will have a bad exam. And I think this is a little bit of an advantage [for those in the] evening classes. You’ll realize that all of these bad moments is only for that day” and there’s no point in dwelling on them the next day.

Work the following day which required his focus forced him to move on. His takeaway? “Don’t dwell on [setbacks] too much, but still acknowledge that you may have done something wrong.”

Law students and professors alike agree that law school is not easy. Sanchez’s advice to aspiring lawyers is for them to accept that law school will be tough and will present a lot of challenges that they will need to hurdle.

“But if you personally don’t think that you can do it, then maybe it’s time to reconsider. However, there is no shame in that because figuring out what you want to do is a very complicated question,” he said.

“But then if you decide that, ‘Yes, this is for me. I want this.’ Well, congratulations as well. You also made a decision regarding yourself and you’ll just have to grit your teeth and bear it,” the topnotcher added. – Rappler.com