Two Decades of Experience in Providing Legal Academic Services in Chiang Rai Province: An Analysis of the Model and Development Guidelines

Abstract

The provision of legal academic services pro bono to the community is distinct from other forms of academic service. It involves providing academic services to society to assist the public in improving their quality of life through beneficial legal guidance. This serves as a form of social immunization or legal guidance to legitimize civil society movements. It can be said that providing legal assistance to the public is a way to uplift people and transform them into citizens of the state. In this academic article, the author presents their experience of providing legal academic services to the community in Chiang Rai province over nearly two decades. The aim is to highlight the problems and approaches to providing academic services to the community using legal principles as a tool.

The results revealed that Issues such as geography and ethnic diversity contribute to the difficulty of communicating legal knowledge. in the future, there should be additional policies to manage the provision of legal academic services to the community in Chiang Rai province in a more suitable manner, such as increasing channels for providing legal academic services, including online channels, to broaden the reach of legal aid services and make them more accessible to the public. Additionally, there should be preparations for communication in local languages by providing experts in local languages to facilitate communication and disseminate legal knowledge to ethnic minority groups. Furthermore, there should be continuous budgetary support for projects or the provision of services in the area.