Harnessing Gen AI for Legal Excellence - Insights from TechLaw.Fest 2024

The international legal technology market is set to double in size due to generative AI by 2027, as forecasted by Gartner’s Top Legal Trends in 2024. As the new darling of the legal techscape, generative AI has been touted to enhance the effectiveness of various legal functions - from the efficiency of legal research and contract analysis, to the accessibility of legal services, streamlining of legal workflows, and providing better client outcomes. 

While traditional providers of digital transformation solutions for legal practice have laid the groundwork for technological adoption sector-wide, the rise of legal tech heavyweights such as Harvey, Casetext’s CoCounsel, NexLaw, and Robin AI signifies a new era. These companies have carved a niche in building fully AI-enabled legal solutions, while established players like LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters are integrating AI into their existing platforms with new offerings like Lexis+ AI and CoCounsel Core, respectively.

At TechLaw.Fest 2024, organised by the Singapore Academy of Law and the Ministry of Law, this global shift was on full display. The event was a nexus of legal innovation, with exhibition booths by leading legal tech giants showcasing their latest AI-driven solutions. Both the Main Conference Stage and the dedicated Tech Talk Stage for legal tech solutions, were dominated by discussions on AI's transformative yet insidious impacts on the legal industry. Whether addressing compliance, AI governance, legal complications, or practical demonstrations of AI-powered legal research tools, the industry is aligning itself with a future driven by digital innovation, albeit cautiously. 

While the industry’s technological facelift is a welcomed one, law firms are also taking a measured approach to AI, anchored by concerns over data privacy, ethics, job replacement and the integrity of legal work. 

The Global State of Legal Technology Adoption

Globally, law firms are falling in line with the upward trend of generative AI adoption. In the Future of Professionals Report 2024 by Thomson Reuters, 79% of surveyed law firm employees anticipate that AI will significantly impact their work within the next five years, a 10% jump from 2023. 

In Southeast Asia, Singapore appears to be leading the charge. Since October 2023, the country’s Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) have launched the Legal Industry Digital Plan (IDP), which addresses AI solutions and its potential applications and measures for Singapore Law Practices (SLPs) to consider. 

In his keynote at Mass Call 2023, Singapore’s Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon underscored the transformative potential of generative AI and the complications of lawyering in this new age. While advocating for the uptake of these technologies to enhance legal services, he also stressed the need for the legal profession to adapt responsibly and uphold ethical standards in its use, highlighting risks such as hallucinations and automation bias. Addressing the legal community, he said, “Generative AI and other emerging digital tools will present significant challenges for our profession, but they will also offer many opportunities…in navigating the evolving landscape, you should take our core values as a learned and honourable profession as your constant lodestars.”

With AI steadily weaving its way into the fabric of the legal profession, the question is no longer whether to adopt the tools, but how to do so without compromising the ethical tenets of the practice and cannibalising the lawyers upholding them.

Key Insights from the Panel Discussion: Challenges of Adopting Gen AI in Legal Practice 

We, at Straits Interactive, addressed these uncertainties at TechLaw.Fest 2024 by taking to the stage with two impactful sessions that highlighted the adoption of AI in the legal profession. Our first session, a panel titled “Challenges of Adopting Gen AI in your Legal Practice – A Firsthand Perspective from Legal Professionals”, was moderated by our Co-founder, Alvin Toh, and provided a regional perspective on the barriers and opportunities of Gen AI integration.

The panel featured the following speakers, ranging from the highest flanks of the supreme court to in-house compliance & legal counsels.

Former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, emphasised the psychological resistance lawyers face when adopting new technologies, particularly AI. She noted, “Lawyers fear being replaced by AI. But once they see the long-term benefits of investing time to learn it, they become willing.” 

As testament to the benefits of leveraging these technologies, Rachel P. Follosco, a partner at FMH, shared her firm’s experience using Capabara for internal legal research. Highlighting the dramatic reduction in research time for labour law cases, she stated, "An initial research and drafting task that took our junior associate 2.85 hours to do, was completed by generative AI in just 58 seconds. The opportunity to achieve greater efficiency can't be ignored." However, she pointed out that "human oversight and review remains at the core of responsible AI usage," particularly in ensuring the accuracy and contextualisation of AI-generated outputs.

Syed Isa Alhabshee, Head of Consulting and Legal (Singapore) at Straits Interactive, corroborated this notion, addressing the balance between generative AI efficiency and human expertise. "AI can get you 60-70% of the way, but it's the lawyer's job to cross the last mile and get it to 100%..It’s not about the technology replacing you." His perspective punctuated the importance of maintaining a “human-in-the-loop” approach, where AI supports legal professionals in accelerating processes, but the final responsibility—and judgement—remains with the lawyer.

On the compliance aspect, Seah Teck Meng, Regional Data Protection Officer at ManpowerGroup, discussed his experience championing generative AI adoption in a multinational corporation. He stressed that maintaining data confidentiality and ensuring compliance with multi-jurisdictional privacy regulations is crucial when implementing AI solutions. Calling attention to the delicate balance between leveraging AI for efficiency and ensuring robust data protection and AI governance, he shared that "AI platforms must provide a secure environment for data…If something goes wrong with an AI-generated output, there must be a form of risk mitigation in place so that we can remedy it before the output is public."

Capabara: Our Answer to Secure, No-code Adoption of AI Capabilities 

Building on the insights from this panel, our second session titled "Elevate Your Legal Practice with AI: A Step-by-Step Guide for Implementing Gen AI", provided a comprehensive look at how legal professionals can implement AI-driven solutions without extensive technical expertise. It was led by Kevin Shepherdson, CEO of Straits Interactive, and Alhabshee.

The session featured a case study on the industry’s first AI-enabled Data Protection Officer (DPO) Assistant, showcasing how Capabara can simplify compliance management and client interactions. One of the highlights was also a demonstration of how to build a custom AI chatbot using Capabara, even with zero coding knowledge. 

Capabara offers AI-enabled solutions across business functions in the legal industry and beyond. As mentioned by Follosco, her Philippine law firm FMH had successfully integrated Capabara into their practice, reaping significant efficiency gains. This adoption exemplifies how regional collaboration and innovation can drive AI adoption in the legal industry forward beyond just Singapore. Capabara’s secure yet flexible environment are helping SMEs and local organisations adopt AI in a way that is both safe and sustainable.

As we look towards the future of law, it is clear that generative AI will soon play a larger role in reshaping legal practice. For law firms and corporate legal teams, the challenge will be in balancing the reaping of AI’s productivity gains with the need for human oversight and expertise. By staying committed to ethical standards, investing in technology, and fostering a mindset of collaboration, we can collectively shape the outlook of the legal industry towards a healthy partnership between machine and mind.

Capabara, our Next-Gen AI Capability-as-a-Service platform allows your organisation to adopt Gen AI instantly without additional infrastructure. Explore Capabara’s versatile suite of tools that can empower your organisation to run at the speed of business, safely, securely and sustainably. Visit capabara.com to learn more, and follow our CAPABARA Linkedin page for regular updates about the platform. 

This article was first published on The Governance Age on 27 Sep 2024