Sydney lawyer Raymond Zhai offers legal advice on Tik Tok
Caught with drugs? Your car being searched? A prominent Sydney criminal defence lawyer is blowing up on TikTok by posting free legal advice.
Macarthur
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A prominent Sydney lawyer who specialises in criminal defence is blowing up on TikTok by posting videos giving free legal advice.
Raymond Zhai has extensively defended criminals from killers to prominent drug suppliers during his career.
Some of his most prominent matters include Simon Tu, who crashed into police cars while he had more than $130 million of ice in his van, and cocaine dealing couple Whitney and Zo Denham where Mr Zhai fought for them to have a community sentence rather than go to prison.
But now Mr Zhai is turning to TikTok, posting videos giving clear and simple legal advice for common matters such as being pulled over by police to getting into a fight during a night out.
In just a few weeks, the lawyer has managed to rack up more than 8000 followers and almost 60,000 likes on videos.
Mr Zhai’s videos have been viewed more than 750,000 times on the popular video sharing app.
The most popular video is titled “Don’t do this if you get into a fight on your night out” and details the do’s and don’ts of public brawls.
He also talks about buying drugs, issues with restraining orders and what to do if police ask to search your car.
“At the moment, a social media presence seems to be important no matter what business you are in and video content seems to be the predominant way that knowledge is shared and consumes,” Mr Zhai told the Macarthur Chronicle.
“Law is a very traditional profession and generally speaking, hasn’t quite adapted to this new form of communication and as a consequence may not be reaching a large proportion of people that may be in need of their services.”
Mr Zhai said he decided to make videos on TikTok to reach a young audience and to help them “understand the law better”.
He also hopes to make legal advice more accessible to TikTok users.
“I want to change the perception that in order to defend your rights, you have to pay huge amounts of money to big law firms who don’t really make you feel like they are truly there with you through what can be a very scary and life-changing process,” the lawyer said.
Mr Zhai said he has seen an influx of enquiries since his videos have gone viral, with people telling him they appreciate the way he explains things in ways that are “relatable and easy to understand”.
“It’s also helped me reach a wider audience during a time when face-to-face interaction is limited due to COVID,” Mr Zhai said.
He has had an “amazing” response to his videos, despite the trolls here and there, which Mr Zhai describes as “entertaining”.
Mr Zhai plans to do more with his account and create content in Chinese and Spanish, both of which he is fluent, in order to reach a wider audience.
His final piece of advice: “To all the aspiring law students and future lawyers out there, keep going at it! And for everyone else who‘s accused or charged, remember: ‘No comment’.”
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