SOME NECESSARY SKILLS IN LEGAL AID
To effectively provide legal aid, legal aid providers must note the following skills:
1. Documentation skills
In order for the communication session to be effective and suitable for local people, community officers need to collect information, documents, stories, evidence, and illustrations to make it easy for people to understand and visualize. These documents can be legal documents, articles, research papers, news reports, programs, reports, videos, clips, etc. When creating documents, it is necessary to pay attention to selecting necessary issues, main content, and conciseness. To attract listeners, all parts of the speech must be related to each other. For example, from the provisions in the legal document, it is related to the actual rights and obligations of people or what they need to do to enjoy the legal rights and benefits according to the regulations.
When developing documents, community officers need to pay attention to identifying the following requirements to develop appropriate documents and ensure quality:
- Identifying the audience that needs information and communication : researching, evaluating, and clearly identifying the audience will help community officers prepare enough documents and build content suitable for the audience .;
Identify and understand the communication audience through factors such as:
- Number of participants: to prepare location, room, tables, chairs, speakers...;
- Components (workers, farmers, children, students, youth, women, ...);
- Ethnicity (are there any ethnic minorities, what ethnic groups, do they understand Mandarin, do they need an interpreter to hire or ask for an interpreter...);
- Educational level (for people with low educational level, it is necessary to create concise documents, using easy-to-understand words, if there are videos or illustrative images, it is even better);
- Local customs (for example, there were customs of shifting cultivation in some areas in the past; slash-and-burn agriculture; wife capture...);
- situation at the grassroots level; awareness of law enforcement and the need to learn about the law. (For example, people in this locality have better awareness of law enforcement than other localities; in this area, there are emerging issues of land, early marriage, divorce and property division, etc.).
(ii)
Document content :
- Focus on essential issues, commonly encountered in daily life, of interest to many people ; for example, land use rights; inheritance division, property division upon divorce, policies for ethnic minorities, etc. Collect case documents, case examples, and illustrations.
- For the content on legal aid, the communicator needs to have a firm grasp of the general provisions of the law and the provisions of the law on legal aid : for example, it is necessary to understand what legal aid is, the category of people entitled to legal aid , the procedures, methods, and documents to request legal aid ... You can find articles and information on legal aid cases. have been successfully implemented, especially cases in their locality to introduce to people to increase the persuasiveness of the communication session.
In the process of learning about TGPL information, community officers can regularly contact the local TGPL Center for detailed and updated information and support in providing documents when necessary.
(iii)
Document layout : build a clear, logical, concise document layout; easy-to-understand language, avoid ambiguous writing.
(iv)
Document format : documents need to be presented clearly, beautifully, with moderate font size and easy to read; moderate thickness, convenient for users to read and carry; should have illustrations for easy understanding.
2. Skills in gathering the masses to serve communication work on legal aid
Gathering the masses plays an important role in implementing the communication of the Party's guidelines, policies, laws of the State, socio-economic development programs, security, national defense... of the locality in general and communication on legal aid work in particular. Community cadres need to be equipped with skills to gather the masses. To do this well, community cadres need to:
- Grasp the situation of the people, especially ethnic minorities, religious people, remote and disadvantaged areas;
- Pay attention to building open, close relationships and regularly visit and encourage local people;
- Grasp their needs and aspirations and promptly help them when they encounter difficulties in life, thereby creating trust, a trusting and close relationship, creating favorable conditions for gathering the local people when there is a need to convey information.
- Strengthen mass mobilization work (especially before communication sessions); take propaganda, education and persuasion work combined with the work of caring for and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of the people as the goal;
- After each incident or communication campaign, it is necessary to continue to visit, encourage, solicit feedback, suggestions or express the needs of local people.
3. Presentation skills
Presentation skills are the ability to convey information effectively and attractively to listeners. The presenter needs to aim to help the listener understand what he is saying, solve a problem of theirs, or simply receive new information. Community officers are people who play an important role in the locality, especially for the local ethnic minorities; can guide the behavior and compliance with the law for many local people. Therefore, to present effectively to the people, community officers Attention should be paid to the following factors:
Maintain a natural, comfortable, and friendly demeanor with the audience: the presenter should choose a suitable standing or sitting position to feel most confident and comfortable; show a cheerful facial expression and smile friendly...
Look at all the participants: don't look at one place for too long, don't read the documents carefully, but observe the whole picture to see if people are interested in listening or not.
Opening and ending the presentation creates an impression, attracting the attention of the audience: community officers can open the presentation by asking questions or talking about unrelated things or with a story, unexpected state,... this makes people curious about what is about to be presented, and creates initial attention for the content of the presentation.
Simple and easy-to-understand presentation structure: to make the presentation easier to convey information, community officers need to list the main ideas before starting the presentation; the presentation should follow a simple and easy-to-understand sequence and arguments; in addition, it must stimulate curiosity by emphasizing important ideas.
Moderate, easy-to-listen, slow, clear, inspiring voice: community officers need to present content clearly and fluently, emphasizing important content or issues so that people can follow the presentation more easily and understand the content.
Interact with people: listen actively (listen attentively, do not interrupt, do not look away, can nod slightly to show understanding and sympathy...); respond positively to people's questions (can ask questions to clarify; answer correctly the content people ask or need to know; if there are any issues that are unknown or uncertain, write them down and clearly state that you will contact the agency or competent person to ask for clarification and will answer later...); can interact with people by asking questions, suggesting some content related to the communication content, thereby attracting people's attention and participation.
Provide useful information: should choose concise, selective information to convey to people, avoid spreading out information that lacks focus, making it difficult for people to grasp; avoid long-winded, unfocused presentations, rereading all the content that has been presented or is already in documents and slides.
Appropriate presentation time: choose a presentation time that is appropriate to the intellectual level as well as the psychological characteristics of each group of people. Do not present continuously for a long time (from 1 hour or more). Between presentations, there should be time to discuss the introduced content or discuss case studies or group interaction activities.
Before presenting, the presenter needs to prepare appropriate clothing, review the documents; if the documents are slides or videos, it is necessary to test the projection; check the presentation support equipment (e.g. speakers, projectors...); can practice before presenting to be coherent, fluent, avoid confusion, avoid having too much or not enough time.