A new Government scheme to support lawyers to adopt technology in law practices is launched today (27 Feb).
A joint statement from the MinLaw, the Law Society of Singapore (LawSoc) and Spring Singapore, said the 2.8 million Tech Start for Law program will fund up to 70 percent of the first-year’s cost for technology products in practice management, online research, and online marketing for Singapore law firms.
LawSoc president Gregory Vijayendran said, “Embracing these basic technologies will help firms improve their productivity and deliver better legal services to their clients.”
“The large firms can make changes and ride on the disruption (of technology), but the smaller sized firms may need help to step up,” Mr Vijayendran said
A recent study brought by LawSoc has found that only 9 percent of the small- and medium-sized firms here used technology-enabled productivity tools. Mr Vijayendran said one of the key reason for the low technology adoption rate was cost.
Five technology products have been identified jointly by the Law Society and SPRING Singapore as basic technologies that would help law practices perform their essential day-to-day tasks more efficiently.
The five technology products identified under the scheme typically cost between $3,000 to $30,000 to adopt. These products include:
- CoreMatter, Lexis Affinity, and Clio, the practice management systems;
- Intellex, a tool for online legal research; and,
- Asia Law Network, an online marketing tool.
The technology program aims to help around 850 smaller law firms in Singapore. Outreach efforts will be lined up in the next few months, including a legal technology road show in March, the statement said.
Law firms can apply according to their needs to use up to three of these products. The allocated $2.8m will be able to help fund up to 380 units of these tech solutions.
