Future Lawyering Research Portal

The Future Lawyering Research Portal serves as a one-stop facility and first port-of-call for all research papers and articles relating to issues concerning the future of the legal profession. Members of the Law Society of Singapore can benefit from accessing insights on topical issues affecting the legal sector, amongst other resources. These include research papers and commentaries previously published in the Singapore Law Gazette

  • Topic

  • Publication Type

Table of Contents This article examines salient aspects of a recent UK decision on the use of a novel automated facial recognition technology by the police and considers how they may shape or reshape discussions on the ethics of artificial intelligence. Introduction In the 2004 Hollywood science fiction movie, I, Robot, set in 2035 A.D., […]

Read More… from I, Lawyer and the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

The Law Society’s forum on ‘Witness Preparation: Where to Draw the Line?’ was held as a live webinar on 6 August 2020 and attended by over 400 members of the Law Society. Against the backdrop of the Singapore Court of Appeal’s 2018 decision in Ernest Ferdinand Perez De La Sala v Compañia De Navegación Palomar, […]

Read More… from Truth Be Told: Navigating the Intricacies of Witness Preparation

Table of Contents Jennifer Lim Wei Zhen & Andrew Wong The advent of alternative legal service providers (‘ALSPs’) has disrupted the traditional legal service delivery model globally and burgeoned into a multibillion-dollar industry in recent years. Whilst the emergence of ALSPs has provided legal service consumers with options that often come at reduced costs and/or greater efficiency, ALSPs have […]

Read More… from The Regulation of Alternative Legal Service Providers in Singapore

Table of Contents Nicholas Poon Talk about overhauling the practice of law in Singapore has been around for years stretching back to 2000. In truth, the landscape has changed but not by much, until very recently. The catalyst? The COVID-19 global pandemic. Overnight, law practices have been forced, by nature, to overhaul technology systems, work […]

Read More… from Law Practices and the Future of Work

(OR THE CREATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF WORKING REMOTELY FOREVER) Table of Contents Faith Sing In this paper, we argue that a distributed law firm model has advantages that will become more important for Singapore law firms in light of prevailing theories on the ‘future of work’ and, more broadly, the ‘next normal’ world.We do this by […]

Read More… from The Distributed Law Firm – A Model for Singapore Law Firms in a Next Normal World

Table of Contents Alvin Chen The megatrends of technology, artificial intelligence and globalisation (together with an unexpected ongoing pandemic) threaten to overwhelm the global legal profession, as lawyers seek to rejuvenate and reinvigorate the future of legal work. The long-standing resistance to non-lawyer collaborations is beginning to fall in the United States, while the United […]

Read More… from Resistance is Futile? – The Inexorable March Towards Liberalisation and Flexibility in the Future of Legal Work

Table of Contents Josh Lee Kok Thong & Tristan Koh Ly Wey The increased interest in artificial intelligence (‘AI’) regulation stems from increased awareness about its risks. This suggests the need for a regulatory structure to preserve safety and public trust in AI. A key challenge, however, is the epistemic challenge. This paper posits that […]

Read More… from The Epistemic Challenge Facing the Regulation of AI

Jennifer Lim Wei Zhen & Lee Ji En The advent of new technologies has presented (i) legal technological tools which assist lawyers in dispensing legal services (e.g. Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’)-powered eDiscovery, contract review and legal research tools); and (ii) technologies which shaped the type of legal services lawyers offer or adopt (e.g. smart contracts, online […]

Read More… from The Evolution of Legal Ethics with the Advent of Legal Technology

DESIGN THINKING: PERSPECTIVES, POSTURES AND PROCESSES FOR THE FUTURE OF THE LEGAL INDUSTRY Table of Contents Yu Kexin Design thinking can be a useful toolkit for lawyers to be the drivers – rather than the victims – of change in the industry. It encourages innovation by focusing on the ‘value’ to be achieved, i.e. the […]

Read More… from Design Thinking: Perspectives, Postures and Processes for the Future of the Legal Industry

Table of Contents Clare Tan The past decade has witnessed a wave of technology transformations across various industries, including the legal industry. This paper will first explore the technological disruption occurring across the various industries, reflect the viewpoints of both the disruptor and the disrupted and analyse the legal challenges faced by both groups. It […]

Read More… from A New Kind of Lawyer For A Different Kind of Time