The Honourable Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon announces FLIP!

We were very excited to be announced by The Honourable Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon during his Welcome Address at the Singapore Academy of Law Appreciation Dinner 2017!

He talked about preparing the legal sector for the future, the Legal Technology Vision, and the Future Law Innovation Programme.

"At last year’s Appreciation Dinner and at this year’s Opening of the Legal Year, I spoke about how the technological advancements could significantly disrupt existing legal practice models, and why our lawyers must respond strategically and effectively."

"The Academy will also soon launch the Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP). This looks to give form and substance to the Legal Technology Vision by helping to develop “the model for the delivery of legal services in the future economy.” A committee headed by Justice Lee Seiu Kin has been hard at work developing FLIP, which is scheduled for launch in the fourth quarter of this year. Let me touch briefly on the aims and the key features of FLIP."

"FLIP will prepare our legal community to become future-ready by implementing the Adopting, Improving, Adapting and Inventing model within the Legal Technology Vision. FLIP will :

(a) assist law firms in integrating baseline technology into their processes;

(b) facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas between the tech and legal sectors and help law firms to free up resources that can then be channelled into business innovation; and (c) organise and develop Singapore’s legal technology ecosystem.

FLIP will execute its objectives by a three-phase innovation roadmap with three key components:

(1) Co-Working Space

First, to establish a hub for legal innovation, FLIP will establish a co-working space offering shared services and facilities. This will be at Collision 8, an innovative serviced office located at High Street Centre just opposite the Supreme Court. Collision 8 is currently home to start-ups from various other sectors. The co-working space will provide the platform for participating law firms to boost productivity by helping them to lighten their back-end operations and move towards paper-light processes. The resulting savings can then be channelled into more productive uses. 7 14 The Academy will work with Collision 8 to customise the working space for lawyers and to supplement the generic business support services that are already provided to other tenants with the baseline legal technologies and law firm-focused support services. The initial response in informal consultations has been encouraging, and in the coming weeks, the Academy will step up the promotion of this initiative. The Academy also intends to tap on the expertise of the large law firms and English barristers’ chambers to address issues of confidentiality that may affect law firms using shared services.

(2) Virtual Community Platform

Second, a culture of collaboration is essential for innovation. To enable this, the Academy aims to set up the Virtual Community Platform (VCP), a virtual extension of the physical FLIP community environment. This free online platform will serve as the nexus for legal professionals to engage one another as well as external stakeholders (such as public and non-legal entities) and service providers. The platform will allow participants to set up an online profile, try out new legal technology tools, access training and mentorship, subscribe to legal support and legal technology services and seek opportunities for collaboration. This will be open to all stakeholders in the legal community, including practitioners, in-house counsels, academics and students. 8

(3) Accelerator

Finally, the Academy hopes to promote Singapore’s first legal sector-specific accelerator to groom promising legal tech start-ups and to incubate new business models or services conceived by law firms. This bespoke accelerator for legal tech start-ups and other Future Law enterprises will address an existing gap in the way that new ideas for delivering legal services are commercialised, which exists in part because investors often overlook legal tech start-ups. The Academy will look to link promising legal tech start-ups with law firms, the general counsel community, technology leaders and curated investors. The Academy will also provide experienced business mentors and work with SPRING to help participants commercialise and internationalise their start-ups. Through the accelerator, the Academy hopes to catalyse an investment ecosystem to support legal tech and future law ventures.

Value for law firms

What then is the value proposition for the firms involved? For the larger law firms, FLIP will provide the opportunity to extend their in-house innovation efforts to the wider legal community and even the technology community. The larger firms will be able to exercise leadership through mentoring and investing in legal tech start-ups. For the smaller law firms, FLIP will help them adopt technologies that will make them more efficient and productive. All this promises to be most exciting, though there is much work yet to be done."

If you wish to read the whole speech, please got to www.sal.org.sg

#lawyer #innovation #Legaltech #disruption #FLIP