ICLR 2017 Panel: Legal Regulation in the Age of Data

A synopsis of panel session 1, which takes place on 5 October at ICLR Singapore, kindly provided by the session’s moderator, Jane Malcolm, Executive Director, External Affairs, Solicitors Regulation Authority. Conference materials will be made available to ICLR.net members after the conference.

Access to rich data and information is increasingly a given – an expectation shared by  professionals, organisations and service users alike. This session will explore why and how organisations should harness data, what it can do to enhance our understanding and risk management  and  what sort of information regulators can share to help the users of legal services. The format will be short contributions from panellists followed by a moderated open discussion.

David Hardoon – Chief Data Officer and Head of Data Analytics Group, Monetary Authority of Singapore, will be looking at the quality of data itself, how to leverage data for compliance purposes and to make our own  organisations more efficient, effective and targeted. And what might be the implications of information based delivery systems such as Artificial Intelligence?

Janice Purvis – Manager, Practice Support Services, Lawcover, New  South Wales, will be sharing insight into how she uses twenty five years of rich data on professional negligence claims to research the causes, identify risks and drive behaviours.

Paul Philip – Chief Executive of the Solicitors Regulation Authority will be speaking about information for the users of legal services. Regulators are seen as credible, objective sources of information – so how can we use it to support the Rule of Law and access to justice? What should a regulator be publishing and what is for the law firms? And how can we provide context to what can be difficult areas such as complaints or disciplinary findings. The SRA is currently consulting on these issues and details are here(hyperlink to Looking to the Future : Better information, more choice).

The panel will discuss these very different angles on how data and information can transform our work. Making data meaningful, understanding what it is telling us and how best to engage with both the profession and public are common to all the areas we will be covering. And how do we and the legal sector adopt best practice from elsewhere and keep up to date, ensuring a modern, connected legal market?

To support the discussion, the Law Society of Alberta have also provided a paper on Regulating Lawyer’s Information in a Digital Age: Publication and Access to Lawyer Disciplinary Information.

We are hoping for a lively discussion with delegates on what the future may hold and the opportunities and challenges our data rich environment presents.  Conference participants are encouraged to raise questions and share their experiences from the floor. It’s a fascinating subject for the first discussion session at conference.

Brought to you by ICLR.