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TechLaw.Fest 2025: Redefining Legal in the Digital Age

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On 26th April 2026

In Access to Justice, Artificial Intelligence, Contracts, Data Privacy, Dispute Resolution, Events, Internet Governance, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Hackers, Legal Innovation, Legal Research, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 11 minutes

Written by Josh Lee Kok Thong and Elizabeth Thomas

To all but perhaps the most casual tech observer, the annual TechLaw.Fest conference is now a staple of Singapore’s law and technology events calendar. (Even if people do sometimes bungle the name – if one were given a dollar for every variant of “TechLaw.Fest” out there, one could buy himself a nice lunch). Few people, however, can recall the conference’s humbler roots: it first began as the “International Conference on Electronic Litigation” in 2011, and only evolved into the TechLaw.Fest we know (and love) in 2015. 

Nevertheless, over its past 10 iterations, TechLaw.Fest has built a name for delving into two simple but complex notions: novelty (what is new or just over the horizon) and foreseeability (what new impacts can we foresee on the world of law and technology). Thematically, the 10th edition of TechLaw.Fest opens perhaps a third dimension – one of re-definition – as TechLaw.Fest 2025 called upon delegates to “redefine legal in the digital age”. 

Every year, it is LawTech.Asia’s privilege to be selected as Media Partner to TechLaw.Fest. In this article, as the legal community gears up once more for TechLaw.Fest 2026 season (expected to be in a few months), we seek to re-capture the highlights of “Asia’s premier forum on all things concerning law and technology”, and bring our readers once more the insights, energy and imagination of TechLaw.Fest 2025. 

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Andrea Christine Suki: Law Reform Paper on Criminal Liability and Generative Artificial Intelligence

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On 20th November 2024

In Artificial Intelligence, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 19 minutes

Written by Andrea Christine Suki | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

LawTech.Asia is proud to collaborate with the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law’s LAW4060 AI Law, Policy and Ethics class. This collaborative special series is a collection featuring selected essays from students of the class. For the class’ final assessment, students were asked to choose from a range of practice-focused topics, such as writing a law reform paper on an AI-related topic, analysing jurisdictional approaches to AI regulation, or discussing whether such a thing as “AI law” existed. The collaboration is aimed at encouraging law students to analyse issues using the analytical frames taught in class, and apply them in practical scenarios combining law and policy.

This piece, written by Andrea Christine Suki, examines whether criminal law should evolve or adapt to mitigate a range of harms posed by generative AI, and seeks to provide recommendations where the existing criminal framework is found to be possibly inadequate.

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An Interview with Professor David B. Wilkins, Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School

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On 20th August 2023

In Access to Justice, Artificial Intelligence, Interviews, Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Innovation, People, Policy

Reading time: 9 minutes

Written by Josh Lee Kok Thong

On 3 and 4 August 2023, the Singapore Academy of Law (“SAL”), in conjunction with the Singapore Management University (“SMU”), organized a conference titled “The Next Frontier in Lawyering: From ESG to GPT”. The conference provided participants with an overview of latest trends in the legal industry, and how these trends posed opportunities and challenges for lawyers and legal professionals. Held at the SMU Yong Pung How School of Law (“SMUYPHSOL”), the conference saw hundreds of attendees learn from global and local legal industry leaders about cutting-edge developments in the legal industry.

One of these global leaders and giants was Professor David B. Wilkins. As Lester Kissel Professor of Law, Vice Dean for Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession, and Faculty Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, Professor Wilkins is a prominent thought leader and speaker on the future of the legal profession, disruptive innovation, and legal industry leadership. He has written over 80 articles on the legal profession in leading scholarly journals and the popular press, and teaches several courses at Harvard Law School such as The Legal Profession, and Challenges of a General Counsel. 

At the conference, Professor Wilkins delivered a keynote address titled “From “Law’s Empire” to “Integrated Solutions”: How Globalization, Technology, and Organizational Change Are Opening “New Frontiers” for Lawyers, Clients and Society”. His address covered how law is becoming a more collaborative enterprise (with other knowledge domains) in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. While law would remain a domain driven by human capital, Professor Wilkins also urged lawyers to learn how to work with and understand technology. At the conference, Professor Wilkins also moderated a discussion on “Technology and the Legal Profession”, which explored how new technologies are transforming how lawyers work and interact with clients. 

Following his keynote address, LawTech.Asia (“LTA”) had the valuable opportunity of chatting with Professor Wilkins on his views on the opportunities and impact of technology on the legal industry, the training of future lawyers, how Singapore could strengthen its legal innovation ecosystem, and how legal technology could be better oriented to serve the underserved and under-represented in society. The interview, which is set out below, has only been edited for readability and brevity. 

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Eugene, Jun Hong and Alexis: Are law schools preparing students for a tech-driven world? 

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On 13th August 2023

In Law Firms, Lawyers, Legal Innovation

Reading time: 7 minutes

Written by Eugene Yan, Yap Jun Hong and Alexis Chun | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

Conversations from the 17th International Conference on Substantive Technology in Legal Education and Practice, held in Singapore in July 2022

In July 2022, SMU Centre for Computational Law (“CCLAW“) hosted the 17th International Conference on Substantive Technology in Legal Education and Practice (“SubTech2022”). The theme for this edition was “Training lawyers (and computers) in the age of Computational Law”, and it explored how legal education, legal practice, and society at large could be supported and improved with the use of technology. Unlike most traditional conferences, SubTech2022 followed an “unconference” format where attendees also had a say in the agenda. To facilitate this, multiple “Birds of a Feather” sessions were held throughout the day, each with its own topic statement which was contributed to by participants.

This article distills the conversations which took place during SubTech2022 on the question of “Are law schools preparing students for a tech-driven world?”

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Victoria Phua: Attributing electronic personhood only for strong AI? 

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On 30th June 2023

In Artificial Intelligence, Policy, Regulations

Reading time: 16 minutes

Written by Victoria Rui-Qi Phua | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong

We’re all law and tech scholars now, says every law and tech sceptic. That is only half-right. Law and technology is about law, but it is also about technology. This is not obvious in many so-called law and technology pieces which tend to focus exclusively on the law. No doubt this draws on what Judge Easterbrook famously said about three decades ago, to paraphrase: “lawyers will never fully understand tech so we might as well not try”.

In open defiance of this narrative, LawTech.Asia is proud to announce a collaboration with the Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law’s LAW4032 Law and Technology class. This collaborative special series is a collection featuring selected essays from students of the class. Ranging across a broad range of technology law and policy topics, the collaboration is aimed at encouraging law students to think about where the law is and what it should be vis-a-vis technology.

This piece, written by Victoria Phua, puts forward an argument for attributing electronic personhood status for “strong AI”. According to her, algorithms trained by machine learning are increasingly performing or assisting with tasks previously exclusive to humans. As these systems provide decision making rather than mere support, the emergence of strong AI has raised new legal and ethical issues, which cannot be satisfactorily addressed by existing solutions. The ‘Mere Tools’ approach regards algorithms as ‘mere tools’ but does not address active contracting mechanisms. The ‘Agency’ approach treats AI systems as electronic agents but fails to deal with legal personality and consent issues in agency. The ‘Legal Person’ approach goes further to treat AI systems as legal persons but has drawn criticism for having no morality nor intent. To address the legal personality in strong AI, Victoria proposes to extend the fiction and concession theories of corporate personality to create a ‘quasi-person’ or ‘electronic person’. This is more satisfactory as it allows for a fairer allocation of risks and responsibilities among contracting parties. It also holds autonomous systems liable for their actions, thereby encouraging innovation. Further, it facilitates the allocation of damages. Last, it embodies the core philosophy of human-centricity.

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