Lawyers have to be legally strong and digitally fluent to thrive in future: Edwin Tong

Lawyers who want to thrive in the future will have to be legally strong and digitally fluent to navigate the changes brought about by artificial intelligence.

In a speech on March 6, Law Minister Edwin Tong said AI is among the most significant disruptors facing the legal profession.

Mr Tong noted that up to 44 per cent of legal tasks can be automated by AI, which can do them faster and better. He said lawyers will have to double down on what AI cannot replicate.

“AI cannot build trust with clients. It cannot exercise moral judgment. It cannot advocate with wisdom. It is not accountable, at least in the traditional sense.

“This means training lawyers to develop ethical reasoning, empathetic client engagement, judgment in situations of real ambiguity, and sometimes, the moral courage to tell clients something they do not want to hear,” said the minister.

He was speaking at an event that saw more than 850 members of the legal community, including lawyers, in-house counsel, law academics, practice trainees and law students, attend to discuss the future of the profession.

The event, held at the Raffles City Convention Centre, marks the first gathering of the entire legal community at such a scale, coinciding with the bicentennial of Singapore’s modern legal system.

Mr Tong, who is also Second Minister for Home Affairs, said there is a need to rethink the education and training lawyers receive.

He added that the ministry is prepared to invest alongside law firms as they adopt AI.

He acknowledged that each firm will face different challenges, depending on its size.

Mr Tong said the concern that certain roles may no longer exist is understandable, but preserving inefficiencies just to preserve work is not sustainable.

“Clients will inevitably demand better,” he said.

As part of the ministry’s broader efforts to support transformation and digitalisation, Mr Tong launched a guide on using generative AI (Gen AI) in the legal sector.

The guide is based on three principles: professional ethics, confidentiality and transparency, where legal professionals are told they should consider informing clients of the use of Gen AI, particularly where its use is substantial in producing legal work.

In his speech, Mr Tong outlined his vision for a first-class legal system powered by a top-class legal profession, noting that Singapore’s system is highly ranked in various global reports.

Referring to Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s Budget speech in February, where AI was identified as a national priority and a strategic advantage for Singapore, Mr Tong said the same is true for the legal industry.

Following the speech, Mr Tong moderated a discussion with panellists, who provided perspectives on how emerging trends and challenges in the tech space impact the legal industry.

One of the lawyers who attended the event, Ms Vanathi Ray, a director at Providence Law Asia, said her firm is trialling two different AI tools.

She said she hopes AI can help to ease the burden on young lawyers so that legal practice becomes more sustainable.

“What is being automated a lot of the time is the low-value work that people didn’t want to do anyway.

“Nobody wants to be reading through 100 documents to find one answer, you know, and since that pressure is taken off, hopefully practice will become more sustainable,” she said.

Mr Philip Fong, managing partner of Harry Elias Partnership, said his firm is already subscribed to an AI service provider and has set up an AI policy.

The tools are essentially used for research and sometimes to refine arguments and contracts.

“It’s actually doing things that people don’t like to do which are time-consuming and low-value, and it frees us to do more high-value work like critical thinking, strategic thinking,” he said.

The challenge would be how to make it part of the work process in a more formal setting, he said, adding that law firms are grappling with how much to charge for the use of AI to each client.

Mr Fong said the guide on the use of Gen AI is very timely, given that lawyers have been taken to task by the court for submissions containing fake legal citations generated by AI.

He said lawyers ultimately have the responsibility of checking AI-generated work.

“AI has its limitations and it tends to hallucinate because AI cannot say no to a question. It will try to answer, even if it does not have the answer,” he added.

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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