Category: Access to Justice Page 6 of 8

TechLaw.Fest 2019 Quick Chats: Mark A. Cohen, Legal Mosaic

On 26th August 2019

In Access to Justice, Interviews, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Innovation

Reading time: 5 minutes

Interview by Ong Chin Ngee, Sanjana Ayagari, Utsav Rakshit | Edited by Josh Lee

TechLaw.Fest 2019 will take place from 5 to 6 September 2019 in Singapore, bringing together the movers and shakers in the space of law and technology. In the weeks leading up to TechLaw.Fest, the LawTech.Asia team will be bringing you regular interviews and shout-outs covering prominent speakers and the topics they will be speaking about at TechLaw.Fest.

This week, LawTech.Asia received the exclusive opportunity to interview Mark Cohen, CEO of Legal Mosaic. Legal Mosaic is a legal business consultancy providing strategic advice to various stakeholders in the legal industry. Mark is also a regular contributor to Forbes, and is widely recognised as a global thought leader in legal technology. He also serves as the inaugural Singapore Academy of Law/LIFTED Catalyst-in-Residence, and the Chief Editor of the forthcoming SAL/LIFTED Global Partner Network initiative white paper on future legal skills.

At TechLaw.Fest 2019, Mark will be moderating a panel titled, “Innovation Journey Dialogue for In-House Legal Departments”, which features leading prominent GC’s who will be sharing insights for in-house counsel looking to embark on digital transformation. Here, Mark shares his view on the role of technology on legal services delivery, the future of legal education, and what he believes are the crucial characteristics for future law firms.

Disruptive Legal Technologies – Is Ethics Catching Up?

By Josh Lee

On 25th June 2019

In Access to Justice, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, Regulations

Reading time: 6 minutes

Written by Alvin Chen and Stella Chen (Law Society of Singapore)

Editor’s Note: This article was first published in the August 2018 issue of the Singapore Law Gazette, the official publication of the Law Society of Singapore. Reproduced with permission.

In December 2017, DeepMind, a leading AI company, sent ripples through the AI world when it announced that it had developed a computer program (known as “AlphaGoZero” or “AlphaZero”) which learned the rules of three games – chess, Shogi and Go – from scratch and defeated a world-champion computer program in each game within 24 hours of self-learning.¹ What was remarkable about DeepMind’s achievement was the program’s “tabula rasa” or clean slate approach which did not refer to any games played by human players or other “domain knowledge”.² Yet, DeepMind’s program was able to develop an unconventional and some say, uncanny,³ methodology in surpassing current computer understanding of how to play the three games.

Referring to an earlier version of DeepMind’s program (“AlphaGo”) which defeated the (human) world champion in Go in 2016, the legal futurist Richard Susskind considers such innovative technologies to be “disruptive”. In his international bestseller Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future (“Tomorrow’s Lawyers“), Susskind defined “disruptive” as something that would “fundamentally challenge and change conventional habits”.⁴

#LegalHackers Profile: Kanan Dhru, Legal Hackers India

By Amelia Chew

On 21st April 2019

In Access to Justice, Events, Interviews, Legal Hackers, Legal Innovation

Reading time: 6 minutes

Interview by Swathi Bhat | Edited by Amelia Chew

In November 2018, LawTech.Asia co-organised the inaugural APAC Legal Hackers Summit alongside Singapore Legal Hackers and the Singapore Academy of Law’s Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP), bringing together Legal Hackers chapter organisers in the region to share insights on legal innovation across APAC. Legal Hackers is a global movement of lawyers, policymakers, designers, technologists, and academics who explore issues and opportunities where technology can improve and inform the practice of law, and where law, legal practice, and policy can adapt to rapidly changing technology. In this series, we profile Legal Hackers chapter organisers who are driving legal innovation in their cities.

LawTech.Asia had the chance to catch up with Kanan Dhru, Founder of Lawtoons, LawForMe and Research Foundation for Governance in India, and chapter organiser at Legal Hackers India, who was not able to attend the APAC Legal Hackers Summit due to work commitments. Here, she shares her insights on LegalTech projects in India and the role of technology in the legal sector.

Hacking Through the Gordian Knot – The LIT Hackathon 2019

By Josh Lee

On 15th March 2019

In Access to Justice, Automation, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, Legal Research

Reading time: 9 minutes

Written by Josh Lee | Edited by Jennifer Lim Wei Zhen, Wan Ding Yao

Introduction

It is a classic Gordian Knot. A legal industry that is highly risk-averse, and heavily reliant on precedents and traditional ways of work. Lawyers who are too occupied with work to generate innovative ideas, let alone implement them. Technology that is believed to be too inaccessible and alien to a profession that is beginning to struggle with disruption. All these, with the backdrop of rising costs, inefficiencies (and long hours), and barriers to access to justice.

The legal industry’s solution to this? The hackathon.

Zegal 2.0: Product Report

By Josh Lee

On 20th January 2019

In Access to Justice, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Contracts, Interviews, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, People, Uncategorized

Reading time: 6 minutes

Written by Tristan Koh, Utsav Rakshit | Edited by Josh Lee

Introduction

Zegal is a collaborative cloud-based legal technology platform that aims to transform the way legal services, such as document generation and legal workflow management, are delivered. Formerly Dragon Law, it has come a long way from starting off purely as an automated contract generation software. Today, the platform integrates automated contract generation seamlessly with legal workflow management in the cloud.

LawTech.Asia was given a chance to meet with Zegal Singapore’s Co-founder, Stephan Hablutzel, and view an in-depth product demo of Zegal’s latest product, Zegal 2.0.

Stephan formerly worked as a top-level executive in several MNCs. From his frequent use of legal services in the past, he and the Zegal team have used their deep understanding of common pain points in legal services to create a product that is client-centric. In particular, Zegal makes legal services far more accessible to small and medium-sized companies and eschew the traditional reservation of full-scale legal services for large corporations.