If you want to be a lawyer in Thailand, you must first complete the lawyer training courses, which are administered by the Lawyers Council under Royal Patronage. Most of the Faculty of Law or Law School in Thailand does not directly teach the subjects required for the Lawyer Examination. Therefore, if graduates want to pursue a legal career, they have to prepare for the lawyer exam on their own. In each exam, less than half of the candidates pass all of the steps and are eligible to register for a lawyer’s license.
1. Study the Process and related Rules.
In Thailand, law graduates who want to pursue a legal career, such as that of a lawyer or barrister, and represent any client in court are required to register for a lawyer’s license, which he or she acquires by passing every step in the lawyer training courses, which are administered by the Lawyers Council of Thailand.
The lawyer training is divided into 2 routes, which are legal training courses and a 1-year internship in a lawyer’s office.
The first route, legal training, is held at least once a year. But there may be more than one event. and the Lawyers Council organizes training courses twice a year. The course training will be held for a minimum of 90 hours without compulsory attendance. The content that will be used for the theoretical exam comes from this training. After passing the theoretical exam, you will enter the internship process for a period of six months, which can be an internship in a law firm or a lawyer’s office. But the important condition is that there must be a licensed attorney who has been a lawyer for a period of not less than 7 years to sign on for the internship. After that, the next step is to take a practical exam. Besides this procedure, individuals who take the second route will eventually, after finishing their one-year internship with the same requirement, end up in the same situation of taking a practical exam as individuals who take the first route.
After passing both the theoretical and practical exams, the next step is an oral exam. These oral exam questions are typically civil and criminal procedural questions. Including the use of laws in various fields, if you has passed the oral examination, then you will have to apply to be an ordinary member or extraordinary member of the Thai Bar Association. And then lastly, attend ethics training held by the Lawyers Council of Thailand. Participating in this training is mandatory; if you do not participate in this training, you will not be able to obtain a Thai lawyer’s license.
2. Choose the Preparation methods and study the material.
As stated, most of the faculty of law or law school in Thailand does not directly teach the subjects required for the lawyer examination. Therefore, the candidate must prepare for the exam on their own. Usually, there are two methods to prepare: self-study or buying a tutoring package, but whatever strategy the candidate chooses, the effectiveness and result of the exam are dependent on the candidate’s effort. Both methods are including study material. The candidate ought to study those materials in every detail and focus on understanding those materials for using them in the future job rather than just remembering them just for the exam.
3. Practice with a Real Exam, Analyst the question and create a strategy
After studying the study material, you should put that knowledge to good use by practicing with a real exam. Or else you might not be able to answer all the questions in the exam, and all the time you studied to prepare for it went to waste.
The Lawyers Council of Thailand published the Question of Previous Examinations up to 20 exams. You should practice with all of the questions they published. Read each question carefully and identify the important facts that will affect the result of your answer.
A small tip for practice is that you should answer more than the question asked. For example, if the question asks six questions, you can answer up to eight because some court documents are in a strict form that does not require any crucial facts from the question, so you can write those documents without understanding any fact from the question. This will help you remember the format of those documents and get used to writing them, which will help you in the exam.
4. Find the connection and Apply for Thai bar association Member
After you complete the theoretical exam, If you score more than 50 points in this exam, you will be able to enter a 6-month internship at a law firm with at least 7 years as a licensed attorney to approve you. The problem is after said attorney signs an approval document. You must hand that document to the Lawyers Council of Thailand within 1 week after you receive the score of the theoretical exam, or else you must wait for the next time the council is open to hand out the approval document, which might be in the next 3 months or more. If you fail to find an attorney who is qualified to approve you in this timeframe, you will waste a lot of time before you can continue to pursue your career. Therefore, you should make a connection with any lawyer who has been licensed for at least 7 years so he or she can approve you beforehand and after you take the theoretical exam and score more than 50 points. You can submit the application letter to the lawyer council within the deadline and begin the internship process.
Furthermore, in order to register for a lawyer license, the individual must be an ordinary or extraordinary member of the Thai Bar Association. Only a student who passes the bar examination will be eligible to be an ordinary member of the Thai Bar Association. The Extraordinary Member is for any law graduate who passes a lawyer examination, but if you are a graduate from one of the five Thai universities (Chulalongkorn University, Thammasat University, Ramkhamhaeng University, Ching Mai University, and Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University), you are eligible to be an Extraordinary Member without having to pass a lawyer examination. It will take around two months to become an extraordinary member. Therefore, if you apply for membership before you complete every step of the bar exam, it will save you a lot of time and help you pursue your career faster.
In conclusion, there are 4 lawyer license exam preparation tips, which are Study the Process and Related Rules, Choose the preparation method and study the material, Practice with a Real Examiner and Analyst the question and find the connection and apply to become a Thai Bar Association member. The lawyer exam is the first step in a legal career and will open up a lot of opportunity on this career path. As a result, you should pay close attention to each step of this training and gain as much knowledge as possible from each session of this training program.
