Need A Good Lawyer In Chiangmai

[Finnish]

Yippieeeeeee , my first posting and I know its been answered a thousand times .

I have read all the previous postings but the lists I have seen here and on the embassy websites are not that great.

Can anyone give me a good personal recommendation based on experience for a Lawyer in Chiangmai . E-mail me if you want . I have visited a few offices and either been chased around the room by cockroaches or been forced to sit in child sized seats while the receptionist gets on the phone and says the word " Farang " a thousand times to her boss.

English speaking , Real Estate knowledge and a semi respectable office

Thanks

[Ulysses G.]

Sunbelt Asia is sponsor. They speak English and they know a LOT about real Estate!

[RagingBrit]

I am an english lawyer specilising in English and Thai law.

Expert in Thai real estate, free advice. Tell you all you wish to know.

Message me if you like.

[heybruce]

I went home with the waitress

The way I always do

How was I to know

She was with the

Russians, too?

I was gambling in Havana

I took a little risk

Send lawyers, guns and money

They'll get me out of this, hyeah

I'm the innocent bystander

Somehow I got stuck

Between the rock

and a hard place

And I'm down on my luck

Yes I'm down on my luck

Well I'm down on my luck

I'm hiding in Honduras

I'm a desperate man

Send lawyers, guns and money

The sh*t has hit the fan

---Warren Zevon

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[MTW]

I've been to several lawyers in Chiang Mai and was not impressed. I didn't have the problems you mentioned, but people who seem to lack analytical skills and the ability to take in the whole picture. This has been my experience with many Thai "specialists" in whatever area, they want you to tell them what to do.

And one farang legal business here, was slightly misleading in my opinion, because the "lawyer" I met with, was not a lawyer, but a "legal advisor," and they wanted about three times the money compared to other real lawyers.

If you are buying a house, doing a lease, and all the other various paperwork you may want to protect you, you can know that any lawyer with experience is not writing every contract especially only for you, they have written them before and just need to change the names, dates, addresses, etc. So maybe, in this case, a legal advisor has all the info you need, but in this case they should be charging you less, not more. In the US we call these people paralegals and they earn considerably less than a lawyer, much like a doctor compared to a nurse.

Anyway, I finally went to see a lawyer listed on the Chiang Mai pinned thread. He is Akarawath Intanant, in Palms Springs Village, Phone 01-5686865, and he seems pretty good.

Good Luck

[BlackArtemis]

I used Akarawath for Marriage prenups and it went pretty well also.

[p1p]

I used Akarawath for Marriage prenups and it went pretty well also.

I have used him several times over the years for both business and personal matters including some quite complicated international law relating to Thailand, the UK and USA.

He is currently handling some particularly nasty litigation for me.

I have only had good experiences with him, however my only comment is that he tends to get on with the job and presents you with a fait accomplie. I tend to worry and need a bit more feedback than he sometimes supplies, (unless I call him myself, when he never fails to fill me in.)

Note: he has a highly competent partner who handles most cases in front of a judge. This is because both he and his wife are judges and he has to excuse himself from pleading cases.

I trust him implicitly, hense my personal recommendation in the pinned thread and elsewhere.

[ProThaiExpat]

We must all remember that most Thai lawyers are undergraduates with undergraduate law training. That training is not similar to the training of lawyers in the U.S. or the U.K. who are trained by the Socratic Method.

US and UK law are based on Common Law, or an evolution of law expressed by legal precedent.

Thai law is statutory by nature. While there are many statutes in the U.S. and UK, these statutes have been tested legally, in most cases for years and a lawyer searches these cases for both the common law and the interpretation of the statutory law before he acts in a case, assuming he is a good lawyer.

In Thailand, looking up the statute and very little case law is all that is required of a lawyer. So an undergraduate degree may be sufficient. However, there is no substitute for experience and "connections" if the lawyer goes to court, so we shouldn't expect the same level of legal expertise here in Chiang Mai as in the West, unless we get an experienced lawyer who has handled many similar cases and has in fact tried a few, so he knows how the judges decide the issue presented.

Akarawath sounds like a winner to me from the cogent recommendations he has received.

Lawyers who are trained only in "code law" ie statutory law would not have the training to be imaginative and adept at intuitive thinking which is an essential for a good lawyer in the West. Doesn't mean there aren't a few, but my guess is they are far rarer than in the West.