CEBU CITY, Philippines — Many lawyers take the path to the legal profession early in life, whether due to family expectations or childhood ambitions of standing in courtrooms and banging gavels.
But for Kristian Jacob Lora, a Visayan human rights advocate, the journey to becoming a lawyer was anything but linear.
Lora did not grow up dreaming of becoming a lawyer. As a child, he once imagined himself entering the priesthood.
At the turn of the millennium, as more households Philippine households took to using personal computers, his interest shifted to technology.
Like many young Filipinos of his generation, Lora became fascinated with computing and dreamed of becoming a software engineer.
He carried that dream into college, enrolling in BS Computer Science at the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu and graduating with the Class of 2013.
Even then, however, signs were already pointing him elsewhere.
His National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE) results showed a strong interest in “investigation and law,” a finding he fully appreciated only years later.
“In retrospect, my NCAE results were accurate,” Lora said.