Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing whether or not foreign legal advisors in Thailand are operating illegally. Now this probably seems like a strange question for me to be asking but let me preface this by saying I am Thai, I am a naturalized Thai citizen so yeah it doesn't apply to me. I am not considered a foreign legal advisor. I am not a Thai Attorney. I have never made that claim. We have Thai Attorneys here at the firm. I mostly operate dealing with American legal issues and occasionally I will kind of act as an intermediary between foreign clients or where foreign legal issues intersect directly with Thai Law I may be involved, but I am not licensed to practice law here in the Courts of Thailand. 

There seems to have been a lot of gray area out there with respect to this whole issue and a lot of people both legally qualified, legally educated in other jurisdictions as well as just outright frauds, there are all shades of this here in Thailand. There was a fairly recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com that actually provided some clarity on this whole issue so I decided to go ahead and make this video. The article is titled: Foreign Workers Granted Permits to Work except in 40 Prohibited Occupations. Quoting directly: "Department of Employment Director General Suchat Pornchaiwisetakul explained that professions prohibited to migrant workers comprise 40 occupations. These are categorized as 27 occupations prohibited for foreigners and 13 occupations permitted for foreigners subject to conditions. Occupations for foreign workers are divided into four accounts as:

Account 1 and if you look down here at No. 27. Legal Service is specifically in there. Now to further quote in that same article. Quoting directly: "Employers and organizations are required to strictly act in compliance with the legal regulations. If any violation laws found the employer hiring the foreigner without Work Permit or allowing the foreigner to work beyond their lawful rights will be fined 10,000 to 100,000 Baht per illegal foreign worker." Quoting further: "Repetition of violations of law is subject to a sentencing to 1 year imprisonment or being fined 50,000 to 200,000 Baht or both" and that is for both the worker and possibly the employer. Quoting further: "Such employers are prohibited from hiring foreign workers for 3 years and the foreign worker without Work Permit or working beyond their lawful rights will be fined 5,000 to 50,000 Baht and be deported to their country of origin." Now when you say "beyond their lawful rights", you will oftentimes see folks that may have a Work Permit that says whatever it says and then they call themselves a legal advisor, that is beyond their lawful rights. They are not permitted under the terms of their Work Permit to operate or engage in that occupation clearly because it is specifically prohibited. 

So I thought I would go ahead and make this video. This isn't some kind of vendetta. Frankly I have had a number of cases here recently which came from people that were essentially impersonating lawyers because they didn't even have any background whatsoever to qualify them and it led to a lot of real problems for people that were kind of unwitting dupes to the whole thing who didn't really know what they were getting into. On top of that they didn't even realize that under Thai Law it was completely illegal so just food for thought. Be wary out there when you are dealing with folks that may be kind of "fly by night" operators.