The CLE program at CMU (Chiang Mai University) is initially focusing on teaching to marginalized people at various community settings throughout Chiang Mai, as well as building on the already existing in-house consultation clinic center. CMU has 16 active law students involved in the CLE program. The students are currently learning the methodology and the importance of informative and interactive lessons. They have recently had a week of workshops that have been highly interactive allowing the law students to become comfortable with CLE methodology and creating their own lesson plans. They are been encouraged to be creative and informative when teaching the law with an emphasis on achieving their outcomes to community members with a low of education. The students will begin teaching in the women's prison, the juvenile detention centre and a community centre located in a lower socio-economic are of Chiang Mai. Teachings will begin on March 31, 2007.
The Chiang Mai University Faculty of Law hosted 2 professors from the National University of Laos to attend the workshop. The professors from Laos are very enthusiastic to implement a CLE program into their curriculum and were pleased to be included in the training workshop and exposed to the CLE methodology. BAB has supplied them with a lot of resources and materials which it is believed will be of great help in having their administration approve a clinical legal education program.
Faces are blanked out in these pictures to protect
the individuals' identity.
Law Clinic
Faculty of Law
Chiang Mai University
Background:
The Chiang Mai University Law Clinic, otherwise known as the Legal Community Project was founded in 1994 by the CMU Law Division. The founding of the clinic was based on a proposal initiated by Dr. Panarairat Srichaiyarat when the first group of law students reached their third year. The fundamental objectives of the clinic were to instill the idea of a public service obligation into the minds of law students, as a part of their legal education, in addition to providing free legal counseling to the community to fulfill the University’s community service commitment. The clinic was operated by the CMU law professors and law students on a volunteer basis and its main service was providing counseling to walk-in clients.
In 2006 the CMU Law Division was upgraded to the Faculty of Law by the CMU Council. At the same time, the Law Clinic also reached a new phase. With technical assistance and financial support from two international
not-for-profit organizations, Bridges Across Borders and the Open Society Institute, the clinic has extended its services to include community teaching, as well as providing an internship program for law students to fulfill their degree requirement. A more significant focus has been placed on working with socially vulnerable and marginalized individuals and communities. Both volunteer and intern students play significant roles in providing legal counseling and teaching services under the close supervision of CMU law professors, using a structured educational approach. The clinic’s present objectives have also been extended and now include the following:
Objectives:
- To instill within the students an ethic and obligation to engage in public service and social justice actions while at the University and throughout their lives.
- To provide free legal counseling and community teaching services to people of all economic and social status, especially to those of limited financial means.
- To create a source for legal counseling and education, which guarantees trustworthy, reliable and quality client-centered services.
- To provide law students an arena to learn law by working in real life situations, and with real people, in order to increase their legal practice skills using interactive, reflective, educational, student-centered methods.
- To create a positive societal attitude and image toward the legal education system and the legal profession.
Operation Hours:
Monday - Friday (9 am - 4 pm)
Closed on Holidays
(The clinic’s operational hours are varied and are set according to student availability and class schedule. Making an appointment in advance by phone is recommended)
Phone: 053- 943589
E-mail: cmulawclinic@gmail.com
Website: http://cmulawclinic.googlepages.com
Office Address: 2nd floor, Faculty of Law, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai 50200
Clinic Committee: Dr. Panarairat Srichaiyarat, Mr. Sakchai Jinawong, Mr. Boonchoo Na PomPhet, Ms. Lukana Pobromyen, Ms. Suthasinee Supa.
Clinic Advisor: Mr. Bruce A. Lasky
Bridges Across Borders Director
Launch of the New BAB CLE 2008 Legal Internship Program - Application and Information Available Here.
Bruce’s Legal Internship Workshop
-Remalie Comport
On a very early Thursday morning we all reluctantly gathered at the BABSEA office to commence a training workshop by Bruce and Wendy. As Bruce’s booming voice filled our ears with “Right…I need a power point presentation set up, whiteboard, markers and a suitable space where you can all gather and see the projector. Make it happen” We all sighed inwardly as this would be a typical BABSEA workshop and that meant participant involvement was not just expected but inevitable, so all hopes of napping during a two hour video presentation were in a split second shattered.
Bruce started the workshop with an assumingly easy question to answer, ‘what are comfort zones and how would you explain the term to those who are not native English speakers?’ As we discussed this issue, the simple question soon spiralled into a full blown discussion of individual comfort zones. A pattern emerged of how our comfort zone was influenced by a number of factors such as our upbringing which encompasses society, culture, religion, education and our own individual experiences. The story of Ainul and Ahmad was then introduced.
‘Ainul and Ahmad are very much in love. Unfortunately, they are separated by a river, in which there are crocodiles, and neither is a good swimmer. Ainul sees Hasan standing next to his boat on her side of the river. She goes to Hasan and asks him to take her across the river so that she can be with Ahmad. Hasan replies that he will do so only if she sleeps with him. Desiring to remain faithful to Ahmad, Ainul refuses. Looking around, she sees Ahmad’s friend Abu nearby, and goes to ask him for help to get to Ahmad. She tells Abu the situation, but he turns and walks away saying that he is too busy to become involved. Still wanting to get across the river to be with Ahmad, Ainul returns to Hasan and pleads with him to take her across the river, but he stands firm. Finally, Ainul relents and sleeps with Hasan, who then takes her safely across the river to Ahmad. Ainul then relates the story to Ahmad. When Ahmad learns what has happened, he tells Ainul that she has prostituted herself, and he wants nothing more to do with her; and he walks away. Ainul is brokenhearted. As she is walking home reflecting on her experience, she meets her friend Baharom. He asks her what is wrong, and she tells him the whole story. Baharom is incensed. He finds Ahmad and beats him up.’
After relating this story Bruce proceeded to ask us to rate the behaviour of each character from worst to least worst. The same pattern emerged that had occurred when talking of comfort zones; surprisingly every one’s opinion differed. Once the discussion was opened good behaviour was then correlated to ‘good law’. This was then swiftly linked to laws and how laws differ in separate countries and how the making of laws seemed to reflect the same issues that form our comfort zones as well as our opinion of good behaviour. The idea of morality was then brought up as morality is suggested by many to be the unspoken laws, as can be seen in AV Dicey’s writings of the Rule of Law and his general discussions of the written constitution. Here he suggests that morality and the idea of fairness are unspoken laws that govern civilised societies and that form the basis to most written constitutions. Obviously there have been many critiques but this workshop in particular strengthens Dicey’s argument as when the strength of our morality is questioned a necessity for the laws to be written down emerges.
After being given a scenario we were then asked to rank the characters from worst to least worst in their actions. This proved to be difficult on many levels as we found perceptive and approaches to the problem in hand differing greatly among us. This can be reflected in again the same topics that affect our comfort zones. A common question in such activities arose, ‘do we look at it from a legal or moral perspective?’ to which Bruce refused to lead the way. It seems that many people took the moral view and ranked the characters from highest to lowest depending on how much responsibility to the problem they had. It is interesting to note that if we focused solely from a legal stand point then the ranking order would be very different. The task opened our view of character and raised the questions of how laws and values intersect, but also how self opinion can be swayed. In our discussions we had to be aware of other’s opinions and be flexible in our own thoughts as everyone came from different environments and even if we disagreed with their opinion we learnt to respect it. At the same time this task gave us an opportunity to stand our ground if we felt strongly about a view in particular. From the workshop we have not only gained a greater understanding of teaching methods that Bruce discusses in his booklet, but also a greater understanding of each other’s comfort zones and a wider view of the immense topic law and morality.
Chiang Mai University Clinic Mock Trial Summer 2009
HIV & AIDS in the Workplace
Remember the movie Philadelphia? It was that movie about a bright and successful lawyer, Mr. Beckett played by Tom Hanks, being fired from the big corporate firm because he has HIV. By societal standards he would be the archetype of a young successful lawyer except for the fact that he was gay and he was positive for HIV.
In that movie Mr. Beckett, unable to find a lawyer in his rolodex to help with his wrongful termination suit goes to his last option, Mr. Joe Miller Esq. played by Denzel Washington, a slightly-unscrupulous and homophobic personal injury attorney. Before Mr. Beckett is invited into Mr. Miller’s office Mr. Miller is meeting with a potential client gathering the unbelievable facts for a negligence claim against the city. Mr. Miller with amazed-disbelief recognized that the man had a claim and took the client on contingency. But when Mr. Beckett walks in and tells Mr. Miller that he was wrongfully terminated because he has HIV the possibility of a remedy looks grim. This scene was one of the most poignant moments in the film because it exposed the absurdity of a legal system where frivolous tort claims had a better chance of succeeding then cases like Mr. Beckett’s where a person is denied their right to earn a living because they have HIV or because of their sexual orientation.
Bruce, possibly inspired by a memory evoked from a day dream about Denzel’s performance in Philadelphia, introduced a case fact scenario to his students at the CMU Clinic that involves the wrongful termination of a mother with HIV, Ms. P, from an auto parts manufacturer. To insure his lesson plan is comprehensive Bruce enlisted a team of vigilant interns, representing the finest legal minds of their respective nationalities, to create a mock trial featuring Ms. P’s case.
Although it is an arduous task our team pulled together. We all had the “AH! HA!” moment when we met to complete our task. All of us heard a diaphanous voice from above saying, “right now it’s hard to understand. Trust us we know what we are doing. This two month training/hazing creates skills you will use for the rest of your professional career.” All jesting aside he was right. Learning how to create a lesson plan for mock trials, although at some times laborious, has given our team the opportunity to contribute to CLE in Thailand. The teaching methods, lesson plan creations, group collaboration and organization are invaluable skills I can use to create and improve CLE in my own community.
In addition to the skills we have learnt during our hazing period our mock trial team has an understanding of basic administrative, criminal and civil procedures and laws within Thailand. Because our mock trial group is multinational we enjoy the insights of many legal systems. We have had dialogue about the workings of common law and civil legal systems. We’ve benefitted from the unique opportunity to learn about the legal values and traditions of the United Kingdom, Poland, Russia, the United States and Thailand. Lastly, we have had the opportunity to research and have learnt the ability to interpret and apply Thai law.
-Jeff Haywood
After the majority of the interns left as well as my Mock Trial team at the end of summer I took over the coordination of the Mock Trial Lesson plans that Bruce was to teach at Chiang Mai University Legal clinic. To my surprise it was not as smooth sailing as I had initially anticipated. Yes, we had a very good syllabus but no it was not perfect. There were materials missing, witness statements that had spelling errors and lots of imperfections with the law. So I raced to perfect all the materials before Bruce needed them for his lessons. I learnt to be more vigilant when proof reading and to think outside the lesson plan to ensure there was no other method of teaching that may be more interesting or easier for the students to understand, this involved putting together power point presentations not previously arranged and adding or changing method in the lesson syllabus.
 
Fortunately I had the privilege of not only attending the lessons with Bruce and Jane but participating and teaching them as well. This was inspiring in many ways as I had pushed beyond the boundaries of my comfort zone and reached new levels of experience that I had never expected. Teaching a University class is very intimidating not just because the majority of the students are the same age or older than myself but also because they may know areas of the law, especially Thai law better in more depth, the fact I did not speak Thai was an added barrier. But despite my reservations the lessons were all a success and the students not only enjoyed them but also understood them. They understood why Mock Trials are important, how they help and the value they have in society and in their own learning.  
This was almost three months of my time as well as two months of the summer interns time so overall a five month project, all came down to one day. And on the day I felt the pressure. A couple of mistakes were made such as the judges walking out of court before hearing closing speeches from the lawyers, but minor errors are to be expected as this is the first time that the Chiang Mai University has put a Mock Trial together. Overall I was overwhelmingly pleased with the result.
After many hours of work, I can happily say that now the Chiang Mai University Legal clinic has a Mock Trial Pack that they can just ‘pick up off the shelf’, go through and complete and I am very pleased with what has been produced. Plus the students, despite having to take a Saturday to play out the Mock Trial looked like they were really enjoying themselves and as everyone at BABSEA knows you learn more when you’re having fun!
-Remalie Comport
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