Determinants of Thai legal professionalism: A structural equation model analysis

The purpose of the research was to examine what constitutes professionalism amongst Thai legal practitioners and consultants. By use of simple random-sampling, a sample of 332 legal professionals were surveyed by use of a 72-item, 7-level, Likert type agreement scale questionnaire on the study’s four constructs. A confirmatory factor analysis was run prior to the structural equation model, with analysis undertaken by use of LISREL 9.1. The results showed that ethics was viewed as the most important aspect by Thai legal professionals (x̄ = 5.71), which was only slightly ahead of the legal consultant’s experience (x̄ = 5.64). Opposite to this however, the legal consultants’ themselves felt that client satisfaction (x̄ = 4.95), and quick solutions (x̄ = 4.84), had minimal importance. Overall results also showed that the latent variable of communications skills (0.67) was most important, followed by competency (0.33), and knowledge management (0.17).