By Michael Yee, Incoming Trainee ‘23

Technology has been a game changer in the way law firms operate.

 If there is one good thing that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that it has demonstrated the importance of digitisation in ensuring business continuity for the legal industry. Additionally, it has proven itself to be an efficient and effective way of rendering quality services to our clients while operating remotely.

The Ministry of Law (“MinLaw”) and the Law Society of Singapore have successfully concluded a virtual fireside chat on Friday, 13 August 2021 from 4.30 PM to 6.00 PM.

The session endeavoured to support and encourage law firms to, amongst other things, adopt technology as an integral tool to improve productivity. This includes MinLaw’s latest Legal Technology Platform Initiative (“LTP”). The LTP Initiative aims to equip lawyers with the necessary digital tools to operate in an efficient manner and free up lawyers for more complex and value-adding tasks.

Our very own Executive Director, Mr Mark Teng (profile), moderated a panel discussion during the virtual fireside chat, comprising of the following distinguished speakers:

• Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Second Minister for Law, Mr Edwin Tong S.C.;

• President of the Law Society of Singapore, Mr Gregory Vijayendran S.C.;

• Director of OTP Law Corporation, Mr Lim Seng Siew; and

• Managing Director of Eden Law Corporation, Ms June Lim.

To paraphrase Minister Tong’s opening message, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how technology is essential for business resilience, advancement and growth. To stay competitive, technology can help us streamline processes and allow lawyers to focus on more higher-value added tasks.

Minister Tong laid down 3 main goals that he had for the LTP:

1. Building resilience amongst the legal fraternity. Minister Tong noted that the majority of a lawyer’s time is spent on non-billable, back-end work such as HR, business development, paperwork and filing. The LTP was thus envisioned to tackle the fundamental challenge of freeing up a lawyer’s time to engage instead, in front-end, high-value work as a means of ensuring resilience in business continuity should there be another widespread disruption.

2. To increase productivity in a way that better meets the needs and expectations of clients. As clients become more sophisticated and demand faster turnaround times, our processes similarly need to be improved to meet these demands.

3. LTP is an opportunity to improve the legal practice in Singapore by developing an infrastructure for the entire legal industry. MinLaw has thus collaborated with Lupl, an open industry software platform for legal matters management to achieve this goal. MinLaw will retain full ownership of the “uniquely Singapore” Lupl developed infrastructure so as to fundamentally serve the needs of Singapore law practices as much as possible. The platform will be developed and rolled out in stages with each stage having an informative feedback system.

Most importantly, Minister Tong provided his assurance that it is not MinLaw’s intention to profit from this system. While actual figures are not yet available, the upfront cost and funding to curate the platform will be borne by MinLaw and subscriptions will be made available to all law firms at the lowest cost possible.

Key Features of The Legal Technology Platform

1. The LTP seeks to ensure a single view of client communications across different platforms. What this means is that the likes of Microsoft Teams, Slack, WhatsApp and e-mail are all integrated onto the Lupl platform, making it seamless for instructions to be stored and retrieved. Think of a time where you had to look for instructions that you gave a client 2 years ago. Not only would you have to look through 24 months’ worth of correspondence but decipher on which platform did you render that specific advice. The LTP thus acts as an orchestration of these communication platforms, bringing all these various modes of communications in a unified system.

2. The LTP promotes enterprise collaboration within the firm as a means of keeping each other updated on the platform. Task assignment and Zoom call links can be integrated into one gateway for easier management. Through this, partners will be better able to manage and track what various employees in the firm are doing at any specific point in time. This ensures greater efficiency and prevents any possibility of double work being incurred inadvertently.

3. The LTP will be able to integrate with a firm’s current Practice Management System (“PMS”) and Document Management System (“DMS”). What this means is that firms will be able to synthesis PMS systems such as Tessaract.io and DMS systems such as Microsoft’s SharePoint. In the event a new firm decides to adopt LTP from the get-go, several baseline systems will also be put into place for the firm. In essence, LTP is meant to be a system for all. For existing law firms, LTP is a modular platform that has the capabilities of integration so that law firms need not abandon their current practices. For new firms, it provides a baseline system for new law firms to simply plug and play. This baseline service will be curated based on the feedback from future engagements similar to the one that was concluded on Friday. Whether the baseline system includes capabilities such as creating client accounts, billing or time management systems, is dependent on the feedback given to MinLaw through industry engagement sessions to come.

4. The LTP system will be built around Singapore-specific workflows such as creating new matters and file reporting systems that would otherwise have taken more time due to switching multiple platforms. In doing so, the LTP project is likely to help to facilitate information sharing and raise the overall standards of technology adoption for law firms across the board in Singapore.

5. Perhaps most uniquely, the LTP will seek to connect government services that lawyers typically use into one centralized system. For example, manual costs are currently incurred to synchronise information maintained on the Court’s e-Litigation for civil cases and the Integration Case Management System for criminal matters.

To put things into perspective, the purpose of the LTP is to build a system that lawyers are willing and capable of using out of the box. As mentioned, the system will be modular – capable of being customised to create what firms deem as best practices to operate in an optimal manner. By integrating various systems, legal firms and lawyers will have the competitive advantage to spend more time doing client-facing work, as opposed to back-end management.

In sum, the Ministry strives to put all firms on an even field through the use of the LTP. By wholly developing and owning the system that is uniquely Singaporean, the Ministry has assured us that the system is sustainable in terms of cost as well as maintenance with updates from time to time. Adoption of the LTP is optional but encouraged as a way to stay ahead of the global competition in an ever-changing world.

Minister Tong made a poignant observation that technology and lawyers are like “oil and water… they don’t mix”. As part of ensuring that the system remains sustainable, a 24-hour troubleshooting helpline, amongst other things, will be made available for firms to seek the necessary help that they need.

In time to come, Lupl will provide more information as well as a video demonstration to show the LTP’s capabilities and functions.

At That.Legal LLC, we share a similar passion with MinLaw in using technology to increase our productivity and to ensure that our clients receive nothing less than the best services we have to offer. As a beneficiary of technology, we applaud MinLaw’s efforts in encouraging law firms to use technology to better their services. Whether you are in a big or small firm, it is undeniable that technology has been more help than a hindrance. The question now is the ease with which these technological platforms are capable of use.

In closing, we are heartened to receive this kind compliment from Minister Edwin Tong S.C.:

"Thank you to our moderator, Mark… you really stood out as being someone who is a tech entrepreneur - very much using tech in the way in which you do business, which in some ways, is the model that we are trying to encourage... an example for other lawyers to emulate..."

If you have any questions, do feel free to drop Mr Mark Teng a WhatsApp message. He’s always happy to help.