Category: Legal Innovation Page 15 of 21

Legal Technology in Singapore

On 21st October 2018

In Access to Justice, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Contracts, Cybersecurity, Dispute Resolution, E-Discovery, Events, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, Legal Research, Legal Technology in Singapore, Legal Technology Manual, Online Dispute Resolution, Policy, Regulations, Smart Contracts

Reading time: < 1 minute

Written by Amelia Chew, Jennifer Lim Wei Zhen, Josh Lee Kok Thong, and Tristan Koh

The LawTech.Asia is proud to publish the first-ever detailed outline of the legal technology sector in Singapore (as far as we are aware)!

This article is the result of a months-long project to map out the root, state and outlook of the legal technology sector in Singapore, and furthers LawTech.Asia’s fundamental purpose of improving awareness, knowledge and interest in legal technology. It is hoped that this article will be a helpful piece for legal professionals, legal technologists and law students to have a bird’s eye-view of legal technology in Singapore, and to assist in the building of a thriving legal tech community in Singapore.

While intended to be extensive, the article does not purport to be exhaustive or authoritative, or to express the position of any particular organisation or initiative. This article will be a “living document” that will continue to be updated as more news comes to the fore.

To access the article, click here!

At the outset, the authors wish to express thanks for the innumerable sources of information available online, without which this project would not have been possible. Any mistakes herein remain the authors’ own.

Asia Law Network Launches Practice Management Software

By Marc Chia

On 8th October 2018

In Access to Justice, Law Firms, Legal Innovation

Reading time: 4 minutes

Written by Marc Chia | Edited by Amelia Chew

Legal marketing platform Asia Law Network recently launched an end-to-end practice management solution for lawyers called Tessaract. In line with the industry push for adoption of legal tech, most recently through the Tech Start For Law Programme, the ALN team is offering a special limited time promotion of only $10 per user per month until 31 October 2018 for law firms. The promotional price represents a drastic fall in cost of adoption even before taking into consideration the availability of grants or subsidies.

What is Tessaract

Tessaract is one of the four practice management solutions featured by the Law Society of Singapore, alongside CLIO, Affinity and CoreMatter. Each system supports the day-to-day operations of legal practice in varying ways.

Tessaract purports to handle all aspects of legal practice starting from the first meeting with a client all the way till billing is completed. Tessaract’s cloud-based solution not only includes workflow management, client management, and knowledge management but also includes a whole suite of tools such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls, designed to address the most most pressing pain points of law firms.

#LexTech18 Quick Chats: Aditya Shivkumar, Resolve Disputes Online (RDO)

By Josh Lee

On 30th September 2018

In Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Contracts, Cybersecurity, Dispute Resolution, Events, Interviews, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, Online Dispute Resolution, People, Smart Contracts

Reading time: 3 minutes

Interview by Jennifer Lim, Josh Lee, and Ong Chin Ngee | Edited by Josh Lee

Organised by Malaysian legal tech startup CanLaw, LexTech Conference 2018 is an APAC-wide regional legal technology conference taking place from 25 to 26 October 2018 in Kuala Lumpur. LexTech Conference 2018 aims to drive legal tech adoption in the region and strengthen the regional legal tech community. In the lead-up to LexTech Conference 2018, the LawTech.Asia team will be bringing to you regular interviews and shout-outs covering prominent individuals who are involved in the conference.

LawTech.Asia spoke with Aditya Shivkumar, Co-Founder of Resolve Disputes Online (“RDO”), about smart contracts and online dispute resolution (“ODR”) – a topic that Aditya will be speaking on at the LexTech Conference.

What are smart contracts, and what sort of transactions can it be used for? How specifically do you think smart contracts can be applied in ODR?

Smart contracts are not your conventional paper-based contracts. It actually consists of lines of code. There are multiple coding languages for smart contracts, such as Solidity or Bamboo (if one is executing a smart contract on the Ethereum network). Smart contracts utilise blockchain technology. The former is the front-end, while the latter is the back-end.

#LexTech18 Quick Chats: Fareez Shah, Fareez Shah & Partners

By Amelia Chew

On 29th September 2018

In Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Events, Interviews, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, Regulations

Reading time: 4 minutes

Interview by Amelia Chew | Edited by Huiling Xie

Organised by Malaysian legal tech startup CanLaw, LexTech Conference 2018 is an APAC-wide legal technology conference taking place from 25 to 26 October 2018 in Kuala Lumpur that aims to drive legal tech adoption in the region and strengthen the regional legal tech community. In the lead-up to LexTech Conference 2018, the LawTech.Asia team will be bringing to you regular interviews and shout-outs covering prominent individuals who are involved in the conference.

LawTech.Asia spoke with Fareez Shah, Managing Partner at Fareez Shah & Partners (FSP). Since the inception of FSP, Fareez Shah has represented and acted for various startups and social enterprises with various types of work, which includes setting-up, fundraising, compliance and risk management. In this interview, Fareez shares about his experience in implementing tech solutions within his practice.

Broadly, how would you characterise the legal tech scene in Malaysia? Are Malaysian law firms embracing machine language, artificial intelligence and cloud-based services?

I can’t speak on behalf of other law firms, but I can share my firm’s view of the legal tech market in Malaysia. Fundamentally, as I believe that the implementation of new technology is meant to improve productivity and in turn improve the quality of work and revenue, I will look at the ROI before investing in new tech. For a small firm like ours, we would love to adopt and embrace more technologies such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud-Based Services. However, most of the off-the-shelf products are either (a) too expensive (e.g. Clio, Tessaract, KIRA) and/or (b) not suitable for local usage (e.g. ROSS and eBrevia). A good example is MailChimp, which we use to automate some of our routine emails. However, as MailChimp is a platform built for e-commerce, it is not a full solution for us and we have to use it in combination with platforms for other services such as payment collection.

2018 UNCITRAL Emergence Conference

By Amelia Chew

On 1st September 2018

In Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Dispute Resolution, Events, Interviews, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, Policy, Regulations, Smart Contracts

Reading time: 5 minutes

Interview by Amelia Chew & Ng Sock Cheng | Edited by Irene Ng

Interview with Luca Castellani, Secretary of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group IV (Electronic Commerce)¹

The Emergence Conference 2018, jointly hosted by the UNCITRAL Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific and the Asian Business Law Institute (ABLI), took place on 25 July 2018 in Singapore.

The conference took stock of emerging global and regional developments relating to the harmonization and convergence of international trade and commercial law, with a focus on their impact on regionalisation, especially for Asia. It provided a platform for experts and scholars to examine the impact of these developments and to consider various areas of political interest for UNCITRAL and ABLI from a regional perspective.

We sat down with for a chat with Luca Castellani, a legal officer in the Secretariat of the UNCITRAL, where he discharges the functions of secretary of UNCITRAL Working Group IV (Electronic Commerce) and promotes the adoption and uniform interpretation of UNCITRAL texts relating to sale of goods and electronic commerce.

What are your views on the discussions held at the Emergence Conference today?

This is the third such conference we’ve had and the first of its kind in Singapore. The goal of this conference is to elicit new views on different aspects of international trade law and international business transaction laws. I find it very interesting and particularly useful that many of the presentations are related to current developments in business and law. These presentations are welcome as they are not mere speculations and have practical application in the real world.