Tech first, innovation later for legal sector
LAST week, the Singapore Academy of Law unveiled Accelerate!, an accelerator that will groom legaltech startups and incubate new business ideas conceived by law firms. It is part of the Future Law Innovation Programme (Flip) announced by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon last July, a two-year pilot that seeks to prepare the legal industry for tech disruption.
In many ways, Flip marks a potentially transformative development for Singapore and the conservative legal industry. But to merely praise it for fostering innovation in and future-proofing yet another industry in today's "innovate or die" era would be superficial. The legal sector, as it turns out, is a unique industry for which innovation may now not be the best prescription.
The potential of Flip
Nonetheless, Flip is a worthwhile initiative. Lawyers are known to be slow adopters of technology -- and one of Flip's objectives is to encourage tech adoption across the industry. Helping lawyers to be aware of and use tech to do their work better will lead to productivity gains, higher-value services and lower legal fees - though this will take time and a mindset shift.
Hugh Mason, co-founder of JFDI, the corporate accelerator that will run Accelerate!, said: "The result, like in every area of industry, will be for boring repetitive stuff to be done automatically. There really is no point in spending hundreds of dollars an hour to have junior lawyers checking clause numbering."
An in-house counsel for a logistics firm added: "Legaltech is way overdue. Your big four and next five largest firms may say that they are forward-looking . . . but most of the other law firms here still have a long way to go in terms of tech adoption."
Secondly, when Accelerate! launches in April, it will be South-east Asia's first such platform. This signals Singapore's aspirations of being a leader in future-proofing the legal industry. If Accelerate! succeeds in creating a legaltech product that is applicable globally, and in nurturing lawyers who embrace tech and innovation, it could fulfil Singapore's aspirations of being that leader.
Thirdly, Legaltech has only in the last year started to attract serious attention from law firms, technologists and investors. Notably, most legaltech solutions today are lawyer-centric. So it could be rewarding for participants here to focus on client-centric solutions, which will make legal services more comprehensive, accessible and cheaper for clients.
The in-house counsel said: "Legaltech has to be client centric. The ultimate thing is to bring affordable law to the masses. One end of the spectrum is what JP Morgan did with their artificial intelligence lawyers. The other end is what we want to make accessible to the uncles and aunties."
Innovation the cure-all?
No matter the industry, innovation is always good. Or is it not? It is worth examining innovation in the context of the legal industry, after some scepticism arose when Flip was formally launched last week.
A few players in the legal industry noted that their industry is "unique" in that it is not yet at the innovation or "new idea" stage. What law firms need instead is an environment that helps them realise the potential of existing technologies, and not one that encourages new ideas and risk taking.
A 29-year-old lawyer at a Big Four firm said: "Law firms ought to be up to speed with current tech first before they can start thinking about innovating for the future." She said that for example, existing machine learning tools can help law firms process huge amounts of text data contained in contracts and serve up structured information that would be useful to lawyers.
"This isn't revolutionary tech. It's well-travelled ground and doesn't require law firms to rethink their business models. Yet it is still valuable tech that law firms are not fully utilising. There's just plenty of it out there right now that law firms are simply ignoring."
She added that a sense of complacency among lawyers could be hindering the industry's adoption of tech. "There is a lot of ego in law. Historically, some of the brightest people have gone into law. But I'm not sure if most of them really understand or want to understand legaltech yet."
Tan Xing Jian, head of communications at boutique law firm VanillaLaw, said that a mindset change in each of these three entities - clients, lawyers or law firms, and public bodies - is needed for the successful adoption of tech across the legal industry.
"For example, it is important for small to medium law firms to acknowledge that they are small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and approach the running of the firm as such. Many lawyers find it hard, or do not know how, to approach their practice in the same way that any business is run."
The essence of innovation, ultimately, is to solve a real problem in the market. Innovation for its own sake is a waste of time, said Stefanie Yuen Thio, joint managing partner at TSMP Law Corporation.
"However, if the Singapore law fraternity does not adopt and adapt to tech, we will have to deal with the fallout from our competitors who are using it. If we don't use tech to churn out certain routine legal products in a faster and more cost-effective way, the legal service providers delivering their product via a virtual platform will steal our clients."
That said, it is not about embracing "every government-sponsored initiative like it's the best and only solution". While Flip may work well for some law firms and less effectively for others, its biggest benefit is that it opens the door to embracing innovation in legal practice, she noted.
"I remember a time when lawyers didn't want to adopt e-mail because they were too busy dealing with work. The fax machine was quick enough, and e-mail would require law firms to make sure all lawyers had access to computers. That would be impractical and was a passing fad. Enough said?"
