Transforming Legal Practice with AI

May 9, 2023
Opportunities and Challenges Ahead As technology continues to advance, the legal industry remains no exception to its effects. Law firms are now turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with tasks such as contract drafting, legal research, and even predicting case outcomes. While the use of AI in the legal field is still relatively new, it has already shown promising results in increasing efficiency and reducing costs. However, as with any new technology, there are also concerns about the potential risks and drawbacks. Interestingly, this introductory paragraph (along with its cautious acknowledgement of AI risks) was not written by me at all, but by ChatGPT – itself an AI chatbot tool developed by OpenAI and launched in late 2022. Its release, together with other natural language processing models like Google Bard and Bing AI, have dominated headlines by making generative AI widely accessible with exciting opportunities for application in fields such as law. The use of AI in the legal profession is, of course, not new. For instance, it is reported that Shearman & Sterling have used a wide variety of AI tools, including Kira for due diligence, while White & Case is reported to use tools such as Brainspace and Relativity to assist with document review for discovery. However, this new wave of innovative AI platforms represents a potentially steep upgrade on previous tools with widescale adoption predicted. Indeed, hot on the heels of the ChatGPT release came Allen & Overy’s announcement in February 2023 of its global integration of “Harvey” – an AI platform founded by a team of former lawyers, entrepreneurs and engineers and built on...

Remodelling The Legal Workforce

December 20, 2022
Simmons & Simmons Adaptive introduces us to their Alternative Legal Service Offering in Hong Kong Simmons & Simmons is one of the latest law firms to establish an alternative legal service offering in Hong Kong – Simmons & Simmons Adaptive. Their flexible resourcing model aims to connect the best lawyers and business professionals with best-fit client assignments. We sat down with Sarah Thompson (Partner and Global Head of Adaptive), Victoria Moore (Hong Kong Resourcing Manager) and Jonathan Hammond (Partner and Head of Asia) to discuss. What prompted the move to HK? Sarah: Adaptive launched in the UK in 2014 and our reason for the initial launch is no different to our reason for setting up in Hong Kong (and why we’re looking at other jurisdictions as well) – our clients struggle with resourcing and increasingly look to their partner law firms to offer a solution. Simmons & Simmons, as a law firm, no longer just does law. We are expected to be a business partner and to solve many more things for our clients. Adaptive was the brainchild of Jonathan. We had been seeing our clients become leaner, needing to do more with less, and having more project work. You need only to look at the regulatory space and the sheer number of projects over the last five years to really understand that cry for help: “We need quality resources!” We have that same issue in our own firm – how do we access the right people, where and when we need them?  At the same time, we were recognizing that talent was changing. How people want to work,...

Legal Tech and Innovation Giving the Age-Old Profession a Long-Awaited Revamp

December 20, 2022
As humans, we are thought to be cognitively hardwired to resist change. As lawyers, this predisposition has been reinforced through years of adhering to precedent and defending the status quo – lending the profession a reputation of conservatism.  Shogo Osaka, Managing Director, Legal at FedEx Express North Pacific region, recognizes this characteristic of the occupation, but is optimistic about its potential for development. “We are too busy with traditional legal work to spare time for learning and practicing technology which has yet to be valued as our profession’s core competency,” he said. “But given our profession’s strong logical thinking skills, I believe lawyers are capable enough to catch up with technology if so motivated.” Daniel Walker, Chief Commercial Officer of Zegal, an ‘end-to-end platform for the legals smaller companies need’, shares similar sentiments. “From my view,” he said, “it’s not that lawyers are against technology, it’s simply that they are very focused on the law and anything outside of that is less important. Legal tech has highlighted the inefficiencies of the traditional law firm structure and now clients are asking for a more efficient, less expensive structure.” Pandemic Shake-Up While technological innovation may have received a cool embrace by the sector pre-pandemic, COVID-19 has forced a shake-up within the legal profession.  Change became our constant as we moved to lockdowns and working from home. Courts were disrupted and the business travel we loved to hate was cancelled (although see this issue’s article by Ban Jiun Ean of Maxwell Chambers on why it may yet come back strong). Up sprang both new solutions and those which had quietly been sitting...

Recent Trends in Interim Legal Resourcing

July 7, 2022
  As we emerge from the impact of Covid-19, one of the many decisions for GCs is how to resource the in-house legal team effectively. The combination of permanent headcount freezes, rising salary costs and a competitive market has made it more challenging to recruit, especially in some locations and specialisms. Even where recruitment is possible, it can take many months to on-board the right person, which doesn’t solve the immediate need created by ever increasing workloads. This is why we are seeing a growing number of GCs turn to interim lawyers as they consider what the structure and size of the team should be over the next 18-24 months. Since the start of 2021 and continuing into 2022, our legal resourcing teams across Asia, the UK and US have seen demand for interim lawyers grow significantly. Breaking this down further, we are seeing the following trends: The highest demand in the UK and Asia is for interim commercial lawyers, followed by transactional banking and derivatives lawyers, driven by the large IBOR transition program and other regulatory change projects within banks and financial institutions. We are also asked frequently for technology, data protection and employment lawyers. In the US, in addition to the traditional demand for commercial interim resource, we are seeing an increase in requests for attorneys with data privacy and IP experience. A lot of requests are from the financial services sector in the UK, US and Asia, which is not surprising given the relative size of some of the teams and highly regulated environment. However, we have also seen increased demand across all other sectors. Clients...

Ransomware – Options before India Inc.

February 9, 2022
Ransomware is a type of malware from an attacker that threatens to publish the victim’s data or block access to the data unless a ransom is paid. Ransomware usually encrypts the victim’s files and makes them inaccessible and demands ransom payment to decrypt them. Ransomware is an ever-evolving form of malware and the attacker tries to trick the victims through unsuspecting ways. The victims range from government entities, critical infrastructure organizations, corporates to individuals. The ransomware attackers sometimes threaten to sell or leak the data to competitors or outsiders if the victim does not pay the ransom. The attackers not just threaten to sell that data but also threaten to publicly naming and shaming the victims for extortion purposes. How Does Ransomware Happen? Ransomware attacks are usually carried out using Trojan which tricks the victims to download or open the attachment usually sent by the attacker through emails. The innocent victims thinking it to be a legitimate attachment downloads or opens the attachment sent from a disguised known/unknown email address. Once, the attachment is downloaded the virus locks or encrypts the data stored in the network. It blocks the data and the user cannot access the data. The Impact of Ransomware Attack The intention of a ransomware attack is to cripple the victim’s day to day operations. The operational and critical files are blocked/encrypted and victims sometimes pay the ransom demanded by the attacker to recover or decrypt the files. But it should be noted that paying the ransom does not always ensure that the victim recovers the files. Recovery process may be difficult process and sometimes the victims...

Learning To Work Within The New Normal

September 29, 2021
A new era for large scale project delivery? Brett Aubin, Konexo Head of Projects, analyzes the trend of decentralizing traditional management… We have all adjusted to the world that COVID has wrought. Some of these adjustments have been existential – I think here of the lockdowns and the impacts on health, education and hospitality. Other adjustments though have been more nuanced and carry just enough of the “old world” in them that we are lulled into overlooking how they have changed our behavior. I think here of having to wear a face mask and how this has increased awkwardness in our social interactions. In the professional domain, I would suggest that the wholesale delivery of projects from home is another example of where nuanced adjustments in behavior, have begun to manifest. The ‘projects’ focus in early March 2020 was characterized by a ‘can do’ attitude. There was a scramble to do things like source extra laptops, reinforce home cyber security and think through productivity monitoring. And although this was a little bumpy, nothing felt beyond the wit of common sense and determination. Without time to think or complain, we transitioned into a fully remote way of working. It was late Autumn though when one of our clients started to talk to us about nuanced behaviors within their larger project teams and follow-up conversations with our broader client base confirmed that these observations were indeed more widespread; this triggered us looking into the matter further. No surprise but the elephant in the room turned out to be that we were no longer working in close physical proximity to each other....