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The title of this video is "So what are you?" and I have used that preamble, that has been the preamble to these videos for some, I don't know how many of these videos we have made at this point. It has been a long time. Our producer, the editor here who helps with these, I can't tell you how many of these we have been standing staring at each other over the past few years. I have done that preamble a lot. I was talking to a viewer who just sort of bumped into me. We were sitting around and he basically put a pretty fine point on it. He said: ""So what are you?" You are an American attorney; you are a Thai, so what are you?" It is a good question so I decided to go ahead and make this video. 

Yeah, I am an American Attorney with Thai nationality is probably the best way to put it. And then as he brought up he said, "So you can do what you do in Thailand and they don't have any issue with it?" This is kind of more the nuance that confused him but I thought it was worth a video. Long story short, NO, I am not a Thai Attorney. I have never claimed to be that. Thai Attorneys, they operate in the court system here obviously. I hesitate to make fully make this analogous to Barrister, Solicitor in the British system. But yeah Attorneys could be viewed as Barristers although it is more I think in a way just like everything in Thailand, it is its own thing, it is unique but it is sort of flavoured if you will, or nuanced a little bit by practices in other places. So you can see kind of like looking at a jewel if you will, you can see all the different facets and you can compare them; you might see the reflected light or refracted light if you will of other jurisdictions the way that they do things. So I wouldn't say it is directly barrister/solicitor because solicitors in the UK there is much more sort of a certification requirement, it is kind of akin to and a lot of people are not aware of this, there is a difference between an Attorney and a Lawyer in the United States. So an Attorney obviously is an Attorney. They go to Court you go to court, they do what Attorneys do, they represent clients. Lawyers, in America this can get pretty dicey. I remember going through Legal Ethics, the first year of law school, in the first speech on the first day of law school we had this old Judge who said "Well, you are all already lawyers because you are studying the law. That is what a lawyer is", and in kind of a very basic sense that is not incorrect. However lay people in the community when you say "oh I am a Lawyer", they take that a certain way. They don't view that in the very nuanced, very precise way that you are stating it. So I mean in a sense I guess you could say I am a Legal Advisor in Thailand to the extent that I advise maybe on Comparative law with respect to other jurisdictions most notably the United States; matters pertaining to for example the Treaty or Immigration in the sense of to or from Thailand and to or from the United States. Now as far as substantive Thai Law, I have never really claimed to have any major expertise in that other than again on the periphery with respect to sort of Comparative law or how it may interact with for example American International Trade Law or the Treaty of Amity here in Thailand.

So long story short, yeah, I am exactly what the preamble says. I am an American Attorney here in the Kingdom of Thailand. I am the Managing Director. I view myself these days in much more of a managerial function here quite frankly. I am sure the Thai legal team here will tell you or maybe they won't tell you with me in the room, but they would say that yeah we can get along fine doing legal work without Ben particularly being around but yeah in a managerial sense, I am definitely the Managing Director of the firm but yeah I am an American Attorney of Thai nationality.