By Atty. Clarisse Faith G. Buday
Dear Young Dragon Lawyer,
Today is the first day of the rest of your life as a lawyer: “Atty.” or “The dot,” so they say.
I wrote this letter because I know it will help you as you embark on this new “side quest.” This letter is from the UA&P lawyer you have become and are becoming, writing to the UA&P lawyer you are yet to be.
It is something I hope you will reread and look back on in the future. I am deeply curious how you’d react reading this years from now. Maybe you’ll laugh about it, or regret writing this to begin with, as whimsical as you are, but mostly, I am excited for who you will be. My only prayer is that you never lose that whimsical spirit.
For now, let me start with “I want to assure you….”
Isn’t that word, assurance, something you found so comforting? Hold on to it. I know you will need it in so many moments throughout your journey.
I want to assure you…that it is perfectly okay to feel a little vulnerable and quiet on a day like this. I know you’re probably not celebrating the way people expect you to be. You’re tired. Relieved. Grateful. You’re holding it together more than you’re expressing it, and that’s okay.
You’ve always processed big moments silently. That is something I always admire about you. You celebrate in silence as you pay close attention to the practical details, simply savoring the humility of the achievement.
And now, you have arrived. But… I urge you… look back.
Indeed, this is the answered prayer of the village that raised you to be a competent, cultured, and values-driven lawyer.
A few years ago, you transitioned to law school. You always have a knack for making difficult choices. At 16, you left home—the small but progressive Iloilo City—for college at UP Diliman, and became a working student when your father passed. You have carried that weight all the way through, balancing scholarships and survival. It was your way of honoring the generosity of all the people who believed in you and raised you in their own ways. Thank you very much.
The same went for law school. As you liked to say: “Same trailer, different park.” You entered this journey not just as a student but also as a working professional.
You were a social science researcher by day, a law student by night. But later, you learned that your “being” should not be compartmentalized.
You learned that in UA&P, your home for those few but defining years of your life.
You were a social scientist by day, working side-by-side with one of the framers of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, Dr. Bernardo M. Villegas. Unbelievable, but true. You were rubbing elbows with history while trying to build your own future.
And at night? You learned from a roster of esteemed professors, luminaries who challenged you to be better, but you learned most especially from those who believed in you.
The author with Dr. Bernardo M. Villegas, co-founder of the University of Asia and the Pacific.
You found a home that believes in formation: in being whole, not compartmentalized – the unity of life.
I thought continuing with that belief was an important choice to make at a time when university education is becoming increasingly synonymous with the highly focused training of professionals, where you are trained to learn the jargon and obtain certification.
But you found a university where Liberal Education is not just a curriculum-filler. In a time when liberal education seems to have no place in modern universities, at UA&P it not only has a space: it IS the space.
It is the very air the University breathes. It is an education designed not only to create technical and competent professionals but also to inculcate a deep capacity to dream of better futures. An education that will not just foster critical thinking but also nurture hope, inspire others, and ultimately, develop wise human beings.
It is the refusal to separate the lawyer from the human being. Ah, such vehemence!
In that tight-knit community in Pearl Drive, Ortigas Center, you learned not to agree with Plato. Pretty audacious, isn’t it? But don’t fret. That ability to reason, even to the point of disagreeing with philosophers, is the “Ultimate Skill” you unlocked in the Disputatio in Law class of Dr. Jose Maria Mariano. And armed with that skill, you realized this: perhaps, “Greatness is not eternal.” Perhaps, there is truth in the words of St. Josemaría Escrivá, who spoke of “greatness in the ordinary.” The sanctity of the little things. The holiness in the work well done.
Greatness is here and now, in the humble, ordinary things you often overlook, but when performed with love and integrity, they become extraordinary.
These lessons run contrary to the very being you have lived your whole life: rushing for practical reasons, surviving the grind, moving from one crisis to the next. But a liberal heart says, “Do not rush.” Rushing is not the right way to proceed.
So, you learned how to live tired. How to function when your body wants rest and your mind wants escape. You learned how to keep going without certainty. How to study without confidence. How to perform without feeling ready. You learned how to endure with grit and with the grace of God.
Somewhere along the way, you stopped trying to be brave and simply became steady. You became disciplined. You became consistent. And that carried you through more than intelligence ever could.
You must treat this journey as a side quest on how to be a better human being. It is an open world out there, not an RPG with linear levels to beat. It is perfectly fine to…forget the plot.
Law school should not define you. It is a time to find you, and to discover what it means to be fully human.
It is a time to listen to and cultivate your inner self. So, do not give up your hobbies. Pursue your love for films and photography! Capture the humanity around you. With the injustices you see every day, these snapshots will matter and re-ignite the fire within you. You made it so personal, you chose photography as a thesis topic, and you obsessed over it for years. It took a long time, but you did great, and I know that if you could change anything, you wouldn’t have it any other way. You owe that deep gratitude to the patience of your thesis adviser, Atty. Emma Cariño Francisco, and your mentor, Commr. Gloria Victoria Yap Taruc.
Please know that you are very blessed that there are too many others to thank and name individually. Keep being grateful; thanking them is the least you can do.
So again, thank all the people for letting you see the law through this lens: not just doctrines and provisions, but people. Confused people. Afraid people. Tired people. People who don’t understand what is happening to them. Systems that feel heavy. Processes that feel cold. Institutions that feel distant.
You learned how to explain. How to listen. How to slow down. How to be calm when others are overwhelmed. How to carry responsibility without making it about yourself, but the common good.
But please, take care of your body. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of an excellent meal. So they say: eat, pray… and for the love of God, sleep. Do not let the system consume your rest.
Of course, there will be moments when you feel a sense of inadequacy or wish that you had chosen a different path. But remember that everyone is learning and finding that confidence too.
We are all in the same boat. You are not alone in this galleon.
If you feel overwhelmed, your family and friends are just a call away. Honor your family: your mother, father, and brother. And, the cats! Video calling the cats, even if you don’t speak the same language, is therapeutic. It will save your life, many times… perhaps, you will survive and live more than nine lives.
I know that you always aim modestly, but you have to reward yourself for every small achievement. You owe it to yourself. Celebrate you, but most importantly, celebrate others.
#HaveFaith in yourself. Your name has Faith in it. So live it.
You might not agree with this at first, but do not hesitate to ask for help. You will be surprised how compassionate people can be… all you need to do is ask. There is a true friend in the most unexpected places. Because of this compassion, you will find friends, the best kind, and hopefully, you will become that kind of friend as well. I am now more than convinced that being fully human is to believe in the capacity of another to be compassionate.
And like in any quest, it is better to stray into a new terrain than to stay with the immediately manageable and familiar. That is where you will find unexpected treasures. The same principle applies to any intellectual work and practice.
People will often ask you, “What practice of law will you go into?”
Lately, you have found yourself enjoying some novel areas of law, which are not considered traditional practice, like data privacy and compliance within a university setting. But know that by doing so, you are serving back the same spaces that formed you. You are serving the university that taught you to be fully human.
You are honoring the people and the community that believed in you: all your colleagues at the Center for Research and Communication (CRC) who supported you through it all; Mr. Danny Reyes, who believed in you enough to endorse you for a scholarship; the UA&P Law School, and the entire UA&P community.
You are now practicing in spaces where law meets humanity, ethics, and institutional accountability. Essentially, you are living the promise of the UA&P Law School of lawyering beyond the courtroom. Trailblazing, indeed.
Perhaps you are on the right trail. If you don’t know exactly where this path leads yet, that is all right. You have the rest of the “dot” lifetime to find it, or better yet, blaze one.
More important than getting that “Atty.” is being fully human: a happy and fulfilled one.
With faith and whimsy,
(still) A Young Dragon Lawyer
P.S. Welcome to the first day of the rest of the “dot” life. You are more than just a “dot,” so you keep those dots coming.
To be continued… (yes, you may read this as dot dot dot…)
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Atty. Clarisse Faith Gangoso Buday recently passed the 2025 Bar Examinations. A working student throughout her journey, she worked full-time as Senior Operations Officer at the Center for Research and Communication while pursuing her Juris Doctor degree as a UA&P scholar. She currently serves as the Data Protection Officer at the UA&P Legal Office.
(first photo) Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky on Unsplash.
(third photo) Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash.
(fourth photo) Photo by Esra Afşar on Unsplash.
Banner photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash.
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