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