The Supreme Court, the Subordinate Courts, the Singapore Academy of Law, the Law Society of Singapore and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore have joined forces to launch an initiative promoting digital tools to aid lawyers during pre-trial discovery, enable productivity gains and lower legal costs.
The e-discovery initiative, which is a the first of its kind anywhere in the world, seeks to enable Singapore to maintain its lead as a regional dispute resolution centre with the ability to handle large scale disputes involving voluminous amounts of documents in a cost- efficient manner. The initiative seeks to provide the legal profession with electronic discovery tools on a Software-as-a-Service (Saas) model; Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) support and capability training. These are designed to optimize the document review process, case management and exchange discoverable documents.
A steering committee chaired by the registrar of the Supreme Court and comprising members from other legal authorities and bodies has been formed to provide guidance and direction to the programme. Proposals will be invited from private sector service providers to offer solutions to undertake the e-discovery initiative by end of 2011.
The pilot phase is expected to commence by mid-2012 and will involve 35 local law firms. After the pilot phase, the service will be made available to all law firms from mid 2013.ALB
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