SPEECH BY THE HONOURABLE JUSTICE KWEK MEAN LUCK
CHAIR, LAWNET TECHNOLOGY SERVICES
TECHLAW.FEST 2024
12 SEPTEMBER 2024
1 Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning.
Importance of collaboration
2 Collaboration lies at the heart of many innovations.
3 In 2003, Singapore built Biopolis. During its planning, which I was involved in, we spoke to top scientists. They shared that they were more creative, when they had opportunities to speak to scientists from other disciplines. Informal conversations, whether in the park, or by the water cooler, could spark ideas in new directions. Biopolis was thus built to facilitate such cross-conversations and collaborations. It situated in one location, scientists from different fields, together with industry. The convergence between science and engineering, between research and translations, has led to many breakthroughs.
4 The importance of collaborative capacity, can also be seen in an area that is closer to Tech that we are familiar with. The generative AI developments we see today, is made possible by continued improvements in the capacity of semiconductors, extending the shelf life of Moore’s Law.
5 A key process in semiconductor manufacturing, is lithography. This uses light to produce circuit patterns on a silicon wafer, the size of a couple hundred nanometers. The cutting edge lithography technology now, is extreme-ultraviolet lithography (“EUV”). EUV today is critical to manufacturing cutting edge semiconductors.
6 The EUV machine was developed by a Dutch company, ASML. It commercialized technology pioneered in America and draws on components from companies in America and Germany. It is a complex machine, made possible, only by drawing on the strengths of different parts, from different parties, under one collaborative effort.
7 It is this same spirit of collaboration, drawing on a diversity of perspectives and capabilities, that we need in our legal industry today. Technology is one of the biggest drivers of change in how we deliver legal services. It offers opportunities. It has allowed legal services to be provided digitally, remotely and around the clock. It also poses challenges, as expectations increase about the efficiency and costs of legal services.
8 We need to prepare our lawyers and law firms, to ride on the technology wave to move forward. We will do so, collaborating with different sectors and organizations, tapping on a diverse range of strengths and capabilities. We will work together, to ensure that we leave no one behind as we ride the digital wave, and to ensure that we position our law firms in a place of strength and advantage.
LawNet AI
9 The Singapore Academy of Law (“SAL”) has been helping our lawyers work more effectively, through LawNet. This was introduced in 1990. It was revolutionary in its time as computers were not widely used in law offices. Over the years, we have upgraded LawNet with new content and more functionalities, keeping up with developments in technology, to match the changing needs of the legal profession.
10 The SAL and LawNet Technology Services (LTS) will endeavor to ensure that LawNet continues to draw on the latest technology. Last year, LTS started to look at enhancing LawNet with Generative AI capabilities. Today, we are pleased to unveil LawNet AI. This is our first step in integrating Generative AI to provide new features in LawNet. Through LawNet.AI, AI-powered services will be progressively available on LawNet.
11 The first of these AI-powered services, is case summarisation, enabled by GPT-Legal. GPT-Legal is a new large language model (LLM) co-developed by the SAL and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). It is trained using the catchwords and headnotes from the Singapore Law Reports (SLR). It will make AI-generated summaries for LawNet’s vast repository of legal content a reality. We have started to generate case summaries for more than 15,000 Singapore unreported judgments. These summaries will adopt the structure of SLR: catchwords, facts and holdings. We will progressively produce such summaries, for unreported judgments, as well as the tribunal decisions that LawNet provides access to. This will be a major boost to legal research.
12 At the same time, there are understandable concerns about accuracy and hallucinations. This is especially so, in the legal sector, where lawyers are trusted professionals in the administration of justice.
13 Trust and safety features have therefore been specially designed in LawNet AI. Case summaries will be linked to source paragraphs in the written decision. Sentences that contain probable hallucinations or which may not accurately reflect source paragraphs, are also highlighted. Later this year, each summary will also have a score – much like search relevancy scores – to help legal researchers. We want to keep improving, and so have provided a mechanism for you to give a thumbs up or thumbs down for a summary, and to provide comments.
14 I pause at this point to add a reminder: please continue to read the cases. Don’t rely entirely on the summaries.
15 We will build on this capability to introduce more features. We see GPT-Legal being used beyond LawNet in the future. Legal tech companies may be able to use the LLM to upgrade or build new products. The SAL will engage with the legal profession and technology firms, to improve GPT-Legal and benefit SAL members.
E-Apostille
16 The SAL also offers a suite of trust services, such as stakeholding and wills registry. One of the biggest users of our trust services, are members of the public. Today, more than 900 transactions are handled over the SAL office counter each day, involving the legalisation of documents for use overseas.
17 From 2025, instead of coming to the SAL counter with physical documents, users can submit them online. The SAL will verify the electronic document and generate an e-Apostille. This will be attached to the electronic document and emailed to the applicant. The recipients can then verify these documents on the SAL Legalisation Portal at their convenience. Businesses and individuals will benefit from faster turnaround and reduced administrative burdens, through this new system.
18 In its initial phase, the e-Apostile system will focus on documents issued by ACRA, such as Business Profiles and Business Certificates (Incorporation and Registration). These documents currently make up nearly half of those submitted for legalization. The new system taps on ACRA’s trustBar verification service, which was launched in 2023, to verify the authenticity of ACRA documents before their legalisation.
Partnerships
19 I spoke earlier of the importance of collaboration in driving innovation. LawNet AI and e-Apostile are just two examples of how the SAL is using collaboration to drive innovative new services for lawyers and members of the public. The SAL could not have done this alone.
20 We are very grateful to the IMDA and the Judiciary, who worked with us on our development and testing for LawNet AI. We are also grateful to A*STAR, AI Singapore, the Ministry of Digital Development & Information, National University Health System, Smart Nation and Digital Government Office and Synapxe, who provided valuable insights.
21 Undertaking this AI development journey has also helped us to better understand the hype and realities of this field and its potential trajectory. We hope that this will in turn, help the SAL to better prepare lawyers for this AI wave, whether through technology services or training programs. The e-Apostille system is also the fruit of collaboration. IMDA and the SAL are jointly developing this system based on the World Wide Web Consortium's Verifiable Credentials specification. This is to enhance the security of the apostille process. ACRA has been a key partner by allowing its documents to be the first issued directly through the new system. With this initial collaboration as a catalyst, we hope to encourage more partners and the public to adopt and benefit from the new e-Apostille system.
22 The e-Apostille system is also the fruit of collaboration. IMDA and the SAL are jointly developing this system based on the World Wide Web Consortium's Verifiable Credentials specification. This is to enhance the security of the apostille process. ACRA has been a key partner by allowing its documents to be the first issued directly through the new system. With this initial collaboration as a catalyst, we hope to encourage more partners and the public to adopt and benefit from the new e-Apostille system.
23 LawNet AI and e-Apostille, which we have introduced today, are two examples of how law and tech can converge to bring benefits, through collaborative efforts. The SAL will continue with this collaborative approach to build more capabilities in LawNet, and will look to engage with lawyers and technology firms to do so.
Conclusion
24 TechLaw.Fest is another manifestation of such collaborative spirit. We have here, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, writers, artists, technologists, lawyers, and policymakers. This is a very rich environment, providing a wide range of disciplines and diversity of perspectives, to challenge our ideas and move us forward, as we come together to discuss and respond to the challenges and opportunities in legal services, brought about technology.
25 I therefore wish you a very fruitful conference.
