Abstract
The purpose of the research is to examine what constitutes professionalism amongst Thai legal practitioners and consultants. By use of simple random-sampling, the 332 legal professionals were surveyed by use of a 72-item, 7-level Likert type agreement scale questionnaire on the study’s four constructs. A confirmatory factor analysis was run prior to the structural equation model, with analysis of the data undertaken by use of LISREL 9.10 software. The results showed that ethics was viewed as the most important aspect by Thai legal professionals (x = 5.71), which was only slightly ahead of the legal consultant’s experience (x = 5.64). Opposite to this however, the legal consultants’ themselves felt that client satisfaction (x = 4.95), and quick solutions (x = 4.84), had minimal importance. Overall results also showed that the latent variable of communications skills (0.67) was most important, followed by competency (0.33), and knowledge management (0.17).
Highlights
Over the past few decades, the reputation of Thai private legal practitioners was not as lofty as those of their western colleagues, with common Thai opinion viewing individuals within this industry as being low on the social and economic status ladder (Chaimungkalanont, n/d)
Results from the study showed that competency was determined to have had a direct (0.60) and positive affect (p ≤0.01) on knowledge management, which supports hypothesis H1, which is supported by research from Casner-Lotto and Barrington (2006), which indicated that competency is the ability to use knowledge, facts, and data to solve workplace problems
Trade and commerce has been at the core of the debate, which has greatly benefited Thailand as a nation, but at times challenged the legal profession in terms of ethics, corruption, and the general public’s perceptions of the what a legal practitioner and consultant is or should be (Chaimungkalanont, n/d; Mahakun et al, 2017)
Summary
Over the past few decades, the reputation of Thai private legal practitioners was not as lofty as those of their western colleagues, with common Thai opinion viewing individuals within this industry as being low on the social and economic status ladder (Chaimungkalanont, n/d). With the increase of Thai legal consultants providing information and recommendations on matters from international business operations to legal migration, one might think that this would have been a targeted profession by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) when the mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs) were established for eight professional services. This was not the case, and legal services and lawyers were not included (Fukunaga, 2015)
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