Written by Yiap Siew Fong | Edited by Josh Lee Kok Thong
May 2024 was a particularly eventful month for legal technology in Hong Kong. It marked the return of the FT Innovative Lawyers Asia-Pacific Awards (“FT Awards”) to Hong Kong, showcasing the latest achievements in legal innovation throughout the region. The Hong Kong chapter of Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association (“ALITA”) also hosted a digital innovation roundtable in collaboration with the Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Lab at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law (“LITE Lab@HKU”). Earlier that month, a panel session at Hong Kong Mediation Week titled “Bots v Humans? The Future of Mediation” examined the implications and potential of AI in relation to the field of dispute resolution and mediation. These recent events provide an opportune context to examine the current state of the legal technology landscape in Hong Kong.
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?”
LawTech.Asia is proud to be a partner of the HKU LITE Lab’s LawTech and RegTech Sandbox Student Virtual Showcase 2021.
To be held on 3 May 2021 at 6pm HKT, the University of Hong Kong’s (“HKU“) Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship Lab (“LITE Lab“) invites industry players and students to learn more about how future legal professionals are co-designing proof-of-concepts with legal, compliance and operations professionals to create self-help, triage and document automation solutions for real-world issues.
Legal and compliance departments are increasingly expected to “do more with less” and work “faster, cheaper, better”. As studies like LITE Lab’s report in conjunction with the Association of Corporate Counsel and Eversheds on Illuminating the New Normal: Asia Pacific Counsel in a Time of Unprecedented Change (2020) confirms, however, many in-house lawyers and compliance officers face limited budgets and limited time to learn and implement new tech platforms. Some, alas, are also tech averse.
LITE Lab launched its Lawtech & Regtech Sandbox to allow students to be part of the solution and at the same time develop hands-on experiential and interdisciplinary skills solving real world problems. LITE Lab has been contributing towards the talent development of Hong Kong’s international legal and financial hub status, and is working on innovative collaborations with Hong Kong-based teams of leading companies and financial institutions such as HSBC, FedEx Express, Goodman and Angelhub. LITE Lab’s students are also developing impactful access to justice lawtech tools to assist our ordinary and disadvantaged communities.
LITE Lab counts organisations such as Association of Corporate Counsel Hong Kong, Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Fintech Association of Hong Kong, Asia Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association (“ALITA“) and the Asian Academy of International Law as its supporting organisations, and it looks forward to viewers joining in on 3 May (Monday) via Zoom to witness the growth of the Lawtech and Regtech community in Hong Kong and beyond, together.
Interested participants should register using the button below.
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.
