As the legal industry embraces technology at a rapid pace, Singapore’s government is encouraging firms to get up to speed in the hope that it will offer lawyers an advantage in the long run. And firms are responding by devising their own tech strategies.
Pradeep Kumar Singh, admin partner, and Kristie Yeong, chief operating officer, Colin Ng & Partners
Colin Ng & Partners was awarded the SmartLaw accreditation by the Law Society of Singapore in March 2017 at the launch of the SmartLaw scheme. We have systems in place for document management and in our back-office functions such as accounts and admin. We are now exploring a promising technology that offers flexible, cloud-based practice management solutions to integrate the various aspects of the firm’s operations. But we think future-ready is much more than just a technology initiative. It is really about a mindset that thinks in terms of possibilities and opportunities. And to be prepared for challenges of the future – known and unknown, involving technology or otherwise. It is, therefore, the firm’s strategy to promote a culture of excellence - in terms of service delivery to our clients, in the quality of our legal work, and the efficiency of our business processes.
Fundamental to this strategy is the mindset to learn quickly and adapt fast. At the beginning of this year, we encouraged everyone in the firm - from our most senior partner to our youngest secretary – to express their personal growth aspirations and learning plans. Their feedback was shared at our partners’ retreat in mid-January. At the retreat, the partners were challenged to think not only about talent development in their own practice groups, but also how they can help other practice groups to grow. Our belief in active collaboration extends to our business model. For us, to be future-ready is to have a growth mindset and the skill sets to achieve excellence. We strive to be a firm that is open, adaptable and networked, so as to better take advantage of the latest in technology.
Keith Tnee, partner, Tan Kok Quan Partnership
The legal industry faces a lot of uncertainty and disruption in the coming future. Apart from ubiquitous talk about new technology disrupting current legal practice and norms, Singapore is also increasingly attractive for non-Singapore law firms who would like a larger slice of the work here and in the region. These are compounded by wider market uncertainties arising from the shift in trade and globalisation policies of countries such as the UK, U.S. and China.
Our size affords us a high degree of nimbleness and speed in implementing changes to be future-ready. We are constantly on the lookout for new technology that can streamline and simplify the work, which translates into cost savings and more efficient use of both our lawyers and support staff.
Further, with the advent of technology solutions that can take over the routine and mundane tasks, we saw a need to venture into niche practices such as infrastructure and projects given Asia’s huge infrastructure needs.
According to an Asian Development Bank report, Asia needs to invest $26 trillion from 2016 to 2030 if the region is to maintain its growth momentum. But concurrently, and equally as important, we look into investing in our lawyers and levelling them up so that they can provide better and value-added client service.
We believe that the lawyer of the future is one who is able to partner with and guide the client around legal pitfalls, to navigate around them where possible and to deal with them where it is not.
John Lim, managing director, LIMN Law Corporation
To be future-ready in 2019, LIMN has armed itself with critical and essential technology right from the very start, in order to deliver timely legal solutions to our clients.
With our fee earners and support team being the backbone of the business, we have harnessed technology to ensure the team is afforded the flexibility to work seamlessly and remotely with ready access to secured data. This is done by digitalising our documents and making use of secured cloud solutions to ensure that such data is readily accessible at any one point in time.
Our team is also equipped with unified communication mobile system to ensure seamless communication within the team. In addition, we have adopted a practice management system to streamline backend work process and distribution, and to provide clients with a transparent billing structure.
Technology will also continue to play an important role in LIMN’s Business Continuity Plan and in ensuring that in the event of emergencies or disasters, our legal solutions to clients remain undisrupted.
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