Tag: access to justice

Invitation: HKU LITE Lab Access-to-Justice Virtual Student Showcase 2021

On 20th April 2021

In Access to Justice, Automation, Events, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Hackers, Legal Innovation

Reading time: 2 minutes

Written by Josh Lee Kok Thong

LawTech.Asia is proud to be a partner of the HKU LITE Lab’s Access-to-Justice Lawtech Virtual Student Showcase.

To be held on 21 April 2021 at 6pm HKT, the University of Hong Kong’s (“HKU“) Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Lab (“LITE Lab“) cordially invites industry players and students to learn more about what it is doing to better serve under-resourced impactful organisations in Hong Kong, including co-designing and creating proof-of-concepts in collaboration with Hong Kong NGOs to improve access to justice (“A2J“).

In past years, the LITE Lab@HKU student team EC Bank addressing employment compensation were the Georgetown University Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational 2020 winners, and have since set up Litex as a natural language processing (“NLP“) lawtech startup. LITE Lab’s inaugural A2J lawtech virtual student showcase, with an esteemed panel of invited judges, will decide which of this year’s undergraduate student teams will represent HKU with their projects co-designed with impactful NGOs Equal Justice, Justice Centre and SoCO to assist victims of human trafficking, refugees/ asylum seekers and low income housing tenants utilising document automation, search engines and computer vision.

The A2J Lawtech Student Virtual Showcase will also feature other LITE Lab@HKU supported student initiatives, including A2J lawtech projects created both within and outside the LITE Lab course curriculum that assist with issues such as social and environmental impact measurement, unrepresented litigants, divorce court forms and wills.

The event counts organisations such as Asian Charity Services, PILNet, Pro Bono Hong Kong, the Asia Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association (“ALITA“) and Legal Hackers Hong Kong as its supporting organisations, and welcomes participants to join in on 21 April 2021 (Wednesday) via Zoom as it seeks to grow the A2J Lawtech community in Hong Kong and beyond.

Interested participants should register using the button below.

TechLaw.Fest 2020 Quick Chats: Mark A. Cohen, Executive Chairman of Digital Legal Exchange, CEO and Founder of Legal Mosaic, LIFTED Catalyst-in-Residence

By Josh Lee

On 26th September 2020

In Access to Justice, Dispute Resolution, Events, Interviews, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Hackers, Legal Innovation, People

Reading time: 6 minutes

Interview by Ong Chin Ngee, Lenon Ong and Elizaveta Shesterneva | Edited by Ong Chin Ngee

TechLaw.Fest 2020 (“TLF”) will take place online from 28 September to 2 October 2020, becoming the virtual focal point for leading thinkers, leaders and pioneers in law, business and technology. In the weeks leading up to TLF, the LawTech.Asia team will be bringing you regular interviews and shout-outs covering some of TLF’s most prominent speakers and the topics they will be speaking about.

This week, LawTech.Asia received the exclusive opportunity to interview Mark A. Cohen, Executive Chairman of the Digital Legal Exchange, CEO of Legal Mosaic, and the Singapore Academy of Law’s LIFTED “Catalyst-in-Residence.” Mark will be sharing the stage with Richard Susskind for a special session of their “Uncertain Decade” series. They will be discussing “The Future of the Legal World.”

Announcement of Collaboration: Resolve Disputes Online x LawTech.Asia

By Josh Lee

On 13th August 2018

In Access to Justice, Dispute Resolution, Legal Innovation, Legal Research, Online Dispute Resolution

Reading time: 2 minutesWhat is technology? What can it be? What can we shape it to be?

While we aren’t entirely sure – yet – of what technology is and what it can be, what we know about technology is that it is a force. It knows no boundaries. We also know that it is ever-changing: the dreams of yesterday become the technologies of today, while the technologies of today become the antiques of tomorrow.

Let’s face it too – we all know lawyers secretly can’t get enough of technology.

In this spirit, Resolve Disputes Online (RDO) and LawTech.Asia are proud to announce a special collaboration to answer these questions and share our vision – our vision in which technology can revolutionise the practice of law, and where the law can regulate new technologies for the betterment of society. We also look forward to uncovering for our readers, and ourselves, a little more about what technology is, and its impact on the legal industry.

For both our readers, this means that RDO and LawTech.Asia will be co-writing and co-publishing articles relating to law and technology. Some of the possible topics we intend to explore include:

Online Dispute Resolution (ODR)
Access to Justice
The role of Blockchain in law
AI and the courts
Justice on the go

We can’t wait to get started.

This collaboration had its roots in Singapore (over coffee and kaya toast). As much as RDO is a legal tech company focusing on online dispute resolution – an area LawTech.Asia also covers, we realised that both our teams embraced the philosophy that technology can impact all parts of the legal industry. Advancements in one area of legal technology could easily generate lessons applicable to dispute resolution and ODR. After all, some say ODR is simply the adoption of technology in dispute resolution.

Through our contributions, we hope to foster and create a spirit of togetherness amongst societies, and to leave an indelible impact in the quest to provide a sneak peek into access to justice through ODR.

Look out for us.

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This collaboration is proudly spearheaded by Ms Maryam Salehijam, Head of Content and Blogs, RDO, Mr Aditya Shivkumar, Co-founder, RDO, and Mr Josh Lee and Ms Jennifer Lim, Writers and Editors of LawTech.Asia.

TechLaw.Fest 2018 – Meeting Where It Matters

By Josh Lee

On 27th June 2018

In Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Dispute Resolution, Events, Internet Governance, Interviews, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, Legal Research, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 7 minutesWritten by Josh Lee | Edited by Amelia Chew

LawTech.Asia had the privilege of being a media partner for TechLaw.Fest 2018. The inaugural TechLaw.Fest, held from 4 to 6 April 2018, saw the convergence of more than 1,000 legal professionals, technologists, entrepreneurs and regulators to participate in critical conversations about the future of the legal community. This article shares some of the common themes that emerged across the three days of TechLaw.Fest, highlighting the state of legal technology in Singapore and situating its development in Southeast Asia and the world.

Keynote address by Mr Brad Smith (President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft) at the Law of Tech Conference, TechLaw.Fest 2018 (Photo credit: Singapore Academy of Law)

The state of law and technology in Singapore

In recent years, there has been a growing buzz around law and technology in Singapore. In his opening address at the Law of Tech Conference, Minister-in-Charge of the Smart Nation initiative Dr Vivian Balakrishnan highlighted seven major technology trends making a global impact today:

Declining marginal cost of replicating, storing and transmitting information;
Declining marginal cost of computing;
Accelerated clock speed of technology;
Wide deployment of sensors leading to an explosion of data;
Increasing capacity to analyse data;
Disruption caused by robotics; and
Progress in artificial intelligence.

Minister Balakrishnan observed that these technological trends “interact and catalyse virtual cycles, feeding and accelerating one another”. The interaction and reinforcement of these trends have political and socio-economic ramifications, such as the creation of echo chambers and filter bubbles that threaten to disrupt the fabric of society.