WongP first Singapore law firm to embrace AI

Singapore

IN THIS age of digital disruption and data explosion, woe betide the organisation that fails to harness available technologies to its advantage.

Relatively young local Big Four law firm, WongPartnership (WongP), has not let such opportunities pass it by; the firm is the first in its sector to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to support its service offerings.

WongP, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in October, is partnering Luminance - a leading, London-based AI platform for the legal profession - to deploy its AI technology to enhance the firm's due diligence processes for merger and acquisitions (M&A) transactions.

The aim is not to replace its lawyers with robots or a technological interface, as some might think. Rather, it is to optimise legal services for WongP's clients.

The firm will use Luminance's advanced machine learning techniques, which can automatically sort, cluster and classify a data room - pinpointing even subtle differences between contracts - so that hidden risks can be uncovered early on in a transaction.

The platform's ability to detect patterns across large volumes of contracts means that WongP's lawyers can focus their review on key documents from the outset.

"Technology is changing the way law is practised and, as such, technological innovation must be a cornerstone of our firm's future growth," said WongP's managing partner, Ng Wai King.

"Luminance's solution will enhance our lawyers' ability to conduct due diligence and other contract review processes more effectively and efficiently."

He stressed, however, that while the firm has determined that AI technology can facilitate and improve the way a lawyer does his or her job, the intention is not for the technology to replace the lawyer, either now or in the longer term.

The firm took its time to determine what would work best for its lawyers in this space, given the state of the legal technology over the past few years.

Says Mr Ng: "We tested a few similar AI products before we settled on using Luminance. The trial process amongst our M&A lawyers revealed two things.

"First, that there is a lot of hype around legal technology and AI, (and) the products don't always do what the marketing folks say they will do. And, second, our lawyers are not going to be replaced by machines anytime soon; the current products are not perfect and human intervention in machine learning is still required for a proper review to be done."

But, "despite the fact that much of the current technology presents challenges in terms of usage and optimisation, the response from our lawyers in the different trials was the same: they would like to have a new technology as a tool on their desktop."

Such a view echoes opinions voiced elsewhere in the world - where the adoption of AI to improve legal offerings has gained more traction than in the local market.

A recent report, AI: The new wave of legal services, produced by Legal Week Intelligence and international law firm Bird & Bird, looked at how AI was arguably the most significant emerging technology in the provision of legal services today, not least because of the benefits it promises to deliver in cost and efficiency for law firms, alternative service providers and their clients.

In the report, KPMG general counsel Jeremy Barton was quoted as saying that AI should be a catalyst for law firms and their clients - in the form of in-house counsel, for example - to work more closely together. "We pay law firms too much for doing basic research . . . You could easily envisage getting to a stage where the only law firms you really want to deal with, as in-house counsel or general counsel, are those who share a platform with you, or are prepared to use your platform so that your collaboration is supported by technology that is common between you and the law firm."

Mick Sheehy, general counsel of finance, technology, innovation and strategy at Australian telecoms giant Telstra, added: "(Training machines to read basic legal agreements) makes a lot of economic sense rather than an individual legal department doing this journey by themselves."

Within the Singapore market, WongP has managed to secure the first-mover advantage by being the first law firm here to adopt such technology.

Mr Ng says: "As a relatively young firm, when you compare us to our peers, our success as lawyers has been premised on doing things differently and challenging some of the norms of how law has been practised.

"When you consider the fact that we had to be more innovative than our peers as a younger firm, a growth strategy that embraces technology is just another step we have to take in our journey as a law firm. This is not unlike all the initiatives that we have undertaken in the past."

He adds, however: "We did not embark on this legal technology journey to simply become a first mover. Whilst we are happy to say that we have moved ahead of other Singapore law firms on legal technology initiatives, the more important point is to work with clients to take advantage of how technology improves the way we deliver legal services to them."

Importantly, WongP also recognises that innovation is just that - it cannot remain static and has to continually evolve with the times; and so, the firm is not content with just sitting back and admiring what it's achieved with Luminance but is already planning its next steps.

"Innovation must remain at the core of our firm's DNA," Mr Ng says. "When you look at the adoption of legal technology by our peer firms outside Singapore, you have to believe that a law firm cannot sit still and assume that nothing will change. We cannot assume that our cognitive ability to exercise judgment on a legal issue will always trump the need to change the way we practise law."

WongP has already adopted another AI platform, in the form of Thomson Reuters' document automation solution Contract Express - being again, the first local law firm to do so. Contract Express offers modern digital document drafting, by allowing lawyers to automate templates inside Microsoft Word by using a simple mark-up function, streamlining the process of document creation so that they can engage more efficiently with clients.

Mr Ng also shared that the firm is currently evaluating other types of legal technology, and expects to partner with its clients to find out what works best for them.