The Singapore Academy of Law has now formally launched its Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP) and will work with the Singapore Management University (SMU), among others, to drive change.
FLIP initially will run a two-year pilot programme to encourage the adoption of technology, drive innovation and ‘create a vibrant ecosystem for legal technology‘ in the important SE Asia legal and business hub.
As a good model for other countries to follow, FLIP comprises three components:
- a Legal Innovation Lab located at the Collision 8 co-working space across the road from the Supreme Court.
- a virtual collaboration platform called LawNet Community.
- South East Asia’s first legal tech accelerator to groom promising legal tech start-ups, (which will be launched in April 2018).
So far 23 entities have signed up for FLIP. These range from large law firms (such as Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP and Dentons Rodyk & Davidson), small law firms (including ECYT Law LLC and Consigclear LLC), to local and international legal tech enterprises like SingaporeLegalAdvice.com, LexQuanta, MyLawyer and Zegal (formerly Dragon Law), as well as in- house counsel from Discovery Networks and BNP Paribas.
Participants may enrol in a maximum of three tracks:
- Lighten-up! – for smaller law firms that want to leverage technology to operate a lean back-end.
- Ideate! – which brings together lawyers and technopreneurs to collaborate on legal innovation.
- Accelerate! – a 100-day acceleration programme to help promising tech-based legal enterprises start-ups scale up their business.