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Alex Toh LawTech.Asia

People: Alex Toh, Masters in Law, Science and Technology at Stanford Law School

Reading time: 9 minutes

Interview by Amelia Chew & Stella Chen

Alex Toh is currently pursuing a Masters in Law, Science and Technology at Stanford Law School. After graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Law in 2007, Alex started his legal career with the Litigation & Dispute Resolution department of Drew & Napier, and worked as legal counsel for Asia Pacific at American semi-conductor company Xilinx. Alex was a committee member of the Singapore Corporate Counsel Association (SCCA), and founded their young lawyers committee – Peers.

In this interview, Alex shares about his own experience searching for what he wants to do, how he ended up at the intersection of law and technology, and how law students should approach their future careers.

How Technology Is Changing Your Future Careers

Reading time: 6 minutes

Written by Amelia Chew | Edited by Stella Chen

 

How is technology transforming the legal industry and the practice of law today?

What does this mean for a young lawyer starting out in practice?

More fundamentally, why does it matter?

These are the questions that confronted the panellists at How Technology Is Changing Your Future Careers, co-organised by alt+Law, Asia Law Network and the Centre for Future-Ready Graduates at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Law and held on 26 October 2016. Moderated by Co-Founder and CEO of Asia Law Network, Cherilyn Tan, the event saw a diverse panel comprising:

Lee Ee Yang, Managing Director of Covenant Chambers LLC;

Nuraziah Aziz, Legal Associate at Via Law Corporation;

Patrick Dahm, Partner (Foreign Lawyer) at RHTLaw Taylor Wessing;

Andrew Barnes, Financial Controller of the Lantern Legal Group (Skyping in from Australia); and

Alex Toh, General Committee Member of Singapore Corporate Counsel Association (SCCA) currently pursuing a Masters in Law, Science and Technology at Stanford Law School (Skyping in from the United States).

Here, we condense the 1.5-hour session into 5 key takeaways.  

People: Andrea Loh

Reading time: 10 minutes

Interview by Amelia Chew & Lee Ji En | Edited by Stella Chen

Andrea Loh is a Sales Manager at legal tech start-up Dragon Law. After graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Law in 2011, Andrea was a commercial litigator at Harry Elias Partnership, emerged as the runner-up under AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes in The Apprentice Asia and joined a start-up in India for 2 years before returning to Singapore early this year. In this interview, Andrea shares about her experience progressing through an incredibly non-linear career (at least to the outsider’s eye), the challenges that she’s faced along the way, and how she makes sense of all of it. 

Four Species of Endangered Lawyers

Reading time: 4 minutes

Written by Lynn, David Ho & Lee Ji En

Littered everywhere in the Singapore media is a doomsday prophecy for “young lawyers”. Even if they manage to beat the odds of getting a job amid the ‘glut’ of young lawyers, they are now told to hold off the self-congratulations as junior lawyers’ jobs are on the verge of being cannibalised by artificial intelligence. Last October, the newspaper headline “Technology could oust junior lawyers” brought home the existential threat to young lawyers, through the words of Law Society President Thio Shen Yi SC in the Law Gazette:

“Soon, innovative legal services which mass produce legal solutions may not only be cheaper alternatives to lawyers, but may also become better alternatives as they gain economies of scale.”

But why should the line be drawn between ‘junior’ lawyers and their seniors? In fact, Mr Thio, in his article, explicitly mentioned that “senior lawyers will not be spared either: the development of predictive analysis software has meant that the experience and intuition that we value can now be replaced with a computer’s predictions as to the outcome of a case or its likely settlement value” (read the original article here ). We tend to agree too.

So instead of panicking over the rise of legal tech, or the “glut”, let’s dig deep into how to future-proof our careers — starting by identifying the potential pitfalls if we insist on inertia.

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