Love.Law.Robots. by Ang Hou Fu

Law

Feature image

October is drawing to a close, and so the end of the year is almost upon us. It's hard to fathom that I have been stuck working from home for nearly 20 months now. Some countries seemed to have moved on, but I doubt we'd do so in Singapore. Nevertheless, it's time for reflection and thinking about what to do about the future.

What I am reading now

The Importance of Being AuthorisedA recent case shows that practising law as an unauthorised person can have serious effects. What does this hold for other people who may be interested in alternative legal services?Love.Law.Robots.HoufuAn in-depth analysis of a rare and recent local decision touching on this point.

CLM Simplified: Efficient Contracting for Law Departments : Bassli, Lucy Endel: Amazon.sg: BooksCLM Simplified: Efficient Contracting for Law Departments : Bassli, Lucy Endel: Amazon.sg: BooksLucy Endel BassliI earn a commission from purchases made with this link.

  • Do you need a lot of coding or technical skills to use AI? This commentator from Today Online highlights Hugging Face, Gradio and Streamlit and doesn't think so. So have we finally resolved the question of whether lawyers need to code? I still think the answer is very nuanced — one person can compile a graph using free tools quickly, but making it production-ready is tough and won't be free. I agree more with the premise that we need to better empower students and others to “seek out AI services and solutions on their own”. In the Legal field, this starts with having more data out there available for all to use.

Why you don’t need to be an expert to use AI any moreKeeping up with the latest developments in artificial intelligence is like drinking from the proverbial fire hose, as a recent 188-page overview by two tech investors Ian Hogarth and Nathan Benaich would attest.TODAYonline

Post Updates

This week saw the debut of my third feature — “It's Open. It's Free — Public Legal Information in Singapore”. I have been working on it for several months, and it's still a work in progress. I made it as part of my research into what materials to scrape, and I've hinted at the project several times recently. In due course, I want to add more obscure courts and tribunals, including the PDPC and others. You can check the page regularly, or I would mention it here from time to time. I welcome your comments and suggestions on what I should cover.

That's it!

Family Playing A Board Game. An Asian family \(adult male and female and two adolescents, male and female\) sitting around a coffee table playing a board game. Photographer Bill BransonPhoto by National Cancer Institute / Unsplash

At the start of this newsletter, I mentioned that November is the month to be looking forward. 😋 Unfortunately, for the time being, I would be racing to finish articles that I had wanted to write since the pandemic started. This includes my observations from playing Monopoly Junior 5 million times. You can look at a sneak peek of the work in my Streamlit app (if it runs).

In the meantime, I would be trying the weights and cons of using MongoDB or SQL for my scraping project. Storing text and downloads on S3 is pretty straightforward, but where should I store the metadata of the decisions? If anyone has an opinion, I could use some advice!

Thanks for reading, and feel free to reach out!

#Newsletter #ArtificalIntelligence #BookReview #Contracts #DataMining #Law #DataScience #LegalTech #Programming #Singapore #Streamlit #WebScraping

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

This Features article features many articles which may require a free subscription to read. Become a subscriber today and get access to all the articles!

This Features article is a work in progress. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to contact me!

What's the Point of this List?

Photo by Cris Tagupa on Unsplash

Unlike other jurisdictions, Singapore does not have a legal information institute like AustLII or CanLII. Legal Information institutes, as defined in the Free Access to Law Movement Declaration:

  • Publish via the internet public legal information originating from more than one public body;
  • Provide free and anonymous public access to that information;
  • Do not impede others from obtaining public legal information from its sources and publishing it; and
  • Support the objectives set out in this Declaration.

We do have an entry on CommonLII, but the resources are not always up to date. Furthermore, the difference in features and usability are worlds apart. (If you wanted to know what AustLII looked like over ten years ago, look at CommonLII.)

This does not mean that free legal resources are non-existent in Singapore. It's just that they are scattered around the internet, with varying levels of availability, coverage and features. Oh, there's also no guarantee they will be around now or in the future.

Ready to mine free online legal materials in Singapore? Not so fast!Amendments to Copyright Act might support better access to free online legal materials in Singapore by robots. I survey government websites to find out how friendly they are to this.Love.Law.Robots.HoufuAmendments to the Copyright Act have cleared some air regarding mining, but questions remain.

This post tries to gather all the resources I have found and benchmark them. With some idea of how to extract them, you can plausibly start a project like OpenLawNZ. If you're interested in, say, data protection commission decisions and are toying with the idea of NLPing them, you know where to find the source. Even if you aren't ambitious, you can browse them and add them to your bookmarks. Maybe even archive them if you are so inclined.

Data Science with Judgement Data – My PDPC Decisions JourneyAn interesting experiment to apply what I learnt in Data Science to the area of law.Love.Law.Robots.HoufuIt might be surprising to some, but there's a wealth of material out there if you can find it!

Your comments are always welcome.

Options that aren't free or online

Photo by Iñaki del Olmo on Unsplash

The premier resource for research into Singapore law is LawNet. It offers a pay per use option, but it's not cheap (at minimum $57 for pay per use). There's one terminal available for LawNet at the LCK Library if you can travel to the National Library. I haven't used LawNet since I left practice several years ago. From following the news of its developments, it hasn't departed much from its core purpose and added several collections that can be very useful for practitioners.

Source: https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/main/Browse?browseBy=type&filter=10&page=2 (accessed 22 October 2021)

There are also law libraries at the Supreme Court (Level 1) and State Courts (B1) if you're into physical things. There are reasonably good resources for its size, but if you were looking for something very specialized, you might be trying your luck here.

Supreme Court of Singapore

Photo by Vuitton Lim on Unsplash

As the apex court in Singapore, the resources available for free here are top-notch. The Supreme Court cover the entire gamut from the High Court, Court of Appeal, Singapore International Commercial Court and all other courts in between.

The Supreme Court has been steadily (and stealthily) expanding its judgements section. They now go back to 2000, and have basic search functionality and some tagging. Judgements only cover written judgements , which are “generally issued for more complex cases or where they involve questions of law which are of public interest”. In other words, High Courts prepare them for possible appeals, and the Court of Appeal prepares them for stare decisis. As such, they don't cover all the work that the courts here do. Relying on this to study the court's work (beyond the development of law) can be biased. There's no API access.

Hearing lists are available for the current week and the following week and then sorted by judges. You can download them in PDF. Besides information relating to when the hearing is fixed, you can see who the parties are and skeletal information on the purpose of the hearing. There's no API access.

Court records aren't available to the public online. Inspection of case files by the public requires permission, and fees apply.

New homes for judgements in the UK... and Singapore?I look at envy in the UK while exploring some confusing changes in the Singapore Supreme Court website.Love.Law.Robots.HoufuThe Supreme Court may be the apex court in Singapore, but its judgements reveal that there is a real mess in here.

State Courts

A rung lower than the Supreme Court, the State Courts generally deal with more down to earth civil and criminal matters. It long felt neglected in an older building (though interesting for an architecture geek), but they changed their name (from Subordinate Courts to State Courts) and moved to a spanking new nineteen storey building in the last few years. If you watch a lot of local television, this is the court where embarrassed respondents dash past the media scrum.

Unfortunately, judgements are harder to find at this level. The only free resource is a LawNet section that covers written judgements for the last three months.

Written judgements are prepared pretty much only when they will be appealed to the Supreme Court. This means that the judgements you can see there represent a relatively small and biased microcosm of work in the State Courts. In summary, appeals at this level are restricted by law. These represent significant barriers for civil cases where costs are an issue. Such restrictions are less pronounced in criminal cases. The Public Prosecutor appeals every case that does not meet its expectations. Accused appeals every case... well, because they might want to see the written judgment so that they can decide if they're going to appeal. This might explain why there are several more criminal cases available than civil matters. On the other hand, the accused or litigant who wants to get this case over and done don't appeal.

NUS cases show why judge analytics is needed in SingaporeThrowing anecdotes around fails to convince any side of the situation in Singapore. The real solution is more data.Love.Law.Robots.HoufuDue to the lack of public information on how judges decide cases, it's difficult to get a common understanding of what they do.

Hearing lists are available for civil trials and applications, criminal trials and tribunal matters in the coming week. It looks like an ASP.Net frontend with a basic search function. Besides information relating to when the hearing is fixed, you can see who the parties are and very skeletal information on what the hearing is about. There's no API access.

Court records aren't available to the public online. Inspection of case files by the public requires permission, and fees apply.

The State Court has expanded its scope with several new courts in recent years, such as the Protection from Harassment Courts, Community Dispute Resolution Centre and Labour Claims Tribunal. None of these courts publishes their judgements on a regular basis. As they rarely get appealed, you will also not find them in the free section of LawNet.

Legislation

Beautiful view from the Parliament of Singapore 🇸🇬Photo by Steven Lasry / Unsplash

Singapore Statutes Online is the place to get legislation in Singapore. It contains historical versions of legislation, current editions, repealed versions, subsidiary legislation and bills.

When the first version was released in 2001, it was quite a pioneer. Today many countries provide their legislations in snazzier forms. (I am a fan of the UK's version).

While there isn't API access (and extraction won't be easy due to the extensive use of not so semantic HTML), you can enjoy the several RSS feeds littered around every aspect of the site.

I consider SSO to be very fast and regularly updated. However, if you need an alternative site for bills and acts, you can consider Parliament's website.

#Features #DataMining #DataScience #Decisions #Government #Judgements #Law #OpenSource #Singapore #SupremeCourtSingapore #WebScraping #StateCourtsSingapore

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

I have been mulling over developing an extensive online database of free legal materials in the flavour of OpenLawNZ or an LII for the longest time. Free access to such materials is one problem to solve, but I'm also hoping to compile a dataset to develop AI solutions. I have tried and demonstrated this with PDPC's data previously, and I am itching to expand the project sustainably.

However, being a lawyer, I am concerned about the legal implications of scraping government websites. Would using these materials be a breach of copyright law? In other countries, people accept that the public should generally be allowed to use such public materials. However, I am not very sure of this here.

The text steps highlightedPhoto by Clayton Robbins / Unsplash

I was thus genuinely excited about the amendments to the Copyright Act in Singapore this year. According to the press release, they will be operational in November, so they will be here soon.

Copyright Bill – Singapore Statutes OnlineSingapore Statutes Online is provided by the Legislation Division of the Singapore Attorney-General’s ChambersSingapore Statutes OnlineThe Copyright Bill is expected to be operationalised in November 2021.

[ Update 21 November 2021: The bill has, for the most part, been operationalised.]

Two amendments are particularly relevant in my context:

Using publicly disclosed materials from the government is allowed

In sections 280 to 282 of the Bill, it is now OK to copy or communicate public materials to facilitate more convenient viewing or hearing of the material. It should be noted that this is limited to copying and communicating it. Presumably, this means that I can share the materials I collected on my website as a collection.

Computational data analysis is allowed.

The amendments expressly say that using a computer to extract data from a work is now permitted. This is great! At some level, the extraction of the material is to perform some analysis or computation on it — searching or summarising a decision etc. I think some limits are reasonable, such as not communicating the material itself or using it for any other purpose.

However, one condition stands out for me — I need “lawful access” to the material in the first place. The first illustration to explain this is circumventing paywalls, which isn’t directly relevant to me. The second illustration explains that obtaining the materials through a breach of the terms of use of a database is not “lawful access”.

That’s a bit iffy. As you will see in the section surveying terms, a website’s terms are not always clear about whether access is lawful or not. The “terms of use” of a website are usually given very little thought by its developers or implemented in a maximal way that is at once off-putting and misleading. Does trying to beat a captcha mean I did not get lawful access? Sure, it’s a barrier to thwart robots, but what does it mean? If a human helps a robot, would it still be lawful?

A recent journal article points to “fair use” as the way forward

I was amazed to find an article in the SAL Journal titled “Copying Right in Copyright Law” by Prof David Tan and Mr Thomas Lee, which focused on the issue that was bothering me. The article focuses on data mining and predictive analytics, and it substantially concerns robots and scrapers.

Singapore Academy of Law Journale-First MenuLink to the journal article on E-First at SAL Journals Online.

On the new exception for computational data analysis, the article argues that the two illustrations I mentioned earlier were “inadequate and there is significant ambiguity of what lawful access means in many situations”. Furthermore, because the illustrations were not illuminating, it might create a situation where justified uses are prohibited. With much sadness, I agree.

More interestingly, based on some mathematics and a survey, the authors argue that an open-ended general fair use defence for data mining is the best way forward. As opposed to a rule-based exception, such a defence can adapt to changes better. Stakeholders (including owners) also prefer it because it appeals to their understanding of the economic basis of data mining.

You can quibble with the survey methodology and the mathematics (which I think is very brave for a law journal article). I guess it served its purpose in showing the opinion of stakeholders in the law and the cost analysis very well. I don’t suspect it will be cited in a court judgement soon, but hopefully, it sways someone influential.

We could use a more developer-friendly approach.

Photo by Mimi Thian / Unsplash

There was a time when web scraping was dangerous for a website. In those times, websites can be inundated with requests by automated robots, leading them to crash. Since then, web infrastructure has improved, and techniques to defeat malicious actors have been developed. The great days of “slashdotting” a website has not been heard of for a while. We’ve mostly migrated to more resilient infrastructure, and any serious website on the internet understands the value of having such infrastructure.

In any case, it is possible to scrape responsibly. Scrapy, for example, allows you to queue requests regularly or identify yourself as a robot or scraper, respecting robots.txt. If I agreed not to degrade a website’s performance, which seems quite reasonable, shouldn’t I be allowed to use it?

Being more developer-friendly would also help government agencies find more uses for their works. For now, most legal resources appear to cater exclusively for lawyers. Lawyers will, of course, find them most valuable because it’s part of their job. However, others may also need such resources because they can’t afford lawyers or have a different perspective on how information can be helpful. It’s not easy catering to a broader or other audience. If a government agency doesn’t have the resources to make something more useful, shouldn’t someone else have a go? Everyone benefits.

Surveying the terms of use of government websites

RTK survey in quarryPhoto by Valeria Fursa / Unsplash

Since “lawful access” and, by extension, “terms of use” of a website will be important in considering the computational data analysis exceptions, I decided to survey the terms of use of various government agencies. After locating their treatment of the intellectual property rights of their materials, I gauge my appetite to extract them.

In all, I identified three broad categories of terms.

Totally Progressive: Singapore Statutes Online 👍👍👍

Source: https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Help/FAQ#FAQ_8 (Accessed 20 October 2021)

Things I like:

  • They expressly mention the use of “automated means”. It looks like they were prepared for robots!
  • Conditions appear reasonable. There’s a window for extraction and guidelines to help properly cite and identify the extracted materials.

Things I don’t like:

  • The Singapore Statutes Online website is painful to extract from and doesn’t feature any API.

Comments:

  • Knowing what they expect scrapers to do gives me confidence in further exploring this resource.
  • Maybe the key reason these terms of use are excellent is that it applies to a specific resource. If a resource owner wants to make things developer-friendly, they should consider their collections and specify their terms of use.

Totally Bonkers: Personal Data Protection Commission 😖😖😖

Source: https://www.pdpc.gov.sg/Terms-and-Conditions (Accessed 20 October 2021)

Things I like:

  • They expressly mention the use of “robots” and “spiders”. It looks like they were prepared!

Things I don’t like:

  • It doesn’t allow you to use a “manual process” to monitor its Contents. You can’t visit our website to see if we have any updates!
  • What is an automatic device? Like a feed reader? (Fun fact: The PDPC obliterated their news feed in the latest update to their website. The best way to keep track of their activities is to follow their LinkedIn)
  • PDPC suggests that you get written permission but doesn’t tell you what circumstances they will give you such permission.
  • I have no idea what an unreasonable or disproportionately large load is. It looks like I have to crash the server to find out! (Just kidding, I will not do that, OK.)

Comments:

  • I have no idea what happened to the PDPC, such that it had to impose such unreasonable conditions on this activity (I hope I am not involved in any way 😇). It might be possible that someone with little knowledge went a long way.
  • At around paragraph 6, there is a somewhat complex set of terms allowing a visitor to share and use the contents of the PDPC website for non-commercial purposes. This, however, still does not gel with this paragraph 20, and the confusion is not user or developer-friendly, to say the least.
  • You can’t contract out fair use or the computational data analysis exception, so forget it.
  • I’m a bit miffed when I encounter such terms. Let’s hope their technical infrastructure is as well thought out as their terms of use. (I’m being ironic.)

Totally Clueless: Strata Titles Board 🎈🎈🎈

Materials, including source code, pages, documents and online graphics, audio and video in The Website are protected by law. The intellectual property rights in the materials is owned by or licensed to us. All rights reserved. (Government of Singapore © 2006).
Apart from any fair dealings for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted in law, no part of The Website may be reproduced or reused for any commercial purposes whatsoever without our prior written permission.

Source: https://www.stratatb.gov.sg/terms-of-use.html# (Accessed 20 October 2021)

Things I like:

  • Mentions fair dealing as permitted by law. However, they have to update to “fair use” or “permitted use” once the new Copyright Act is effective.

Things I don’t like:

  • Not sure why it says “Government of Singapore ©️ 2006”. Maybe they copied this terms of use statement in 2006 and never updated it since?
  • You can use the information for “commercial purposes” if you get written permission. It doesn’t tell you in what circumstances they will give you such permission. (This is less upsetting than PDPC’s terms.)
  • It doesn’t mention robots, spiders or “automatic devices”.

Comments:

  • It’s less upsetting than a bonkers terms of use, but it doesn’t give me confidence or an idea of what to expect.
  • The owner probably has no idea what data mining, predictive analytics etc., are. They need to buy the new “Law and Technology” book.

Conclusion

One might be surprised to find that terms of using a website, even when supposedly managed by lawyers, feature unclear, problematic, misleading, and unreasonable terms. As I mentioned, very little thought goes into drafting such terms most of the time. However, they provide obstacles to others who may want to explore new uses of a website or resource. Hopefully, more owners will proactively clean up their sites once the new Copyright Act becomes effective. In the meantime, this area provides lots of risks for a developer.

#Law #tech #Copyright #DataScience #Government #WebScraping #scrapy #Singapore #PersonalDataProtectionCommission #StrataTitlesBoard #DataMining

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

Feature image

It turns out that doing three things on the same day is a disaster. On top of listening to this year's TechLawFest, I also took on a Microsoft PowerApps course together with my regular job. Who has the time to attend these multi-day events? Thankfully, many of the events are recorded, so you can still take part in them unless you are hungry for continuing education points.

TechLaw.Fest 2021TechLaw.Fest 2021TechLaw.Fest 2021

As such, hopefully, this post will help you get into the festival's key themes. Even if you can't fork out 30++ hours of your daily schedule going through all the content (including all that recorded waiting time for people to log on), you're going to sound smart with a list like this.

Thing 1: Lots to discuss in the Technology of Law

My favourite parts of the conference are the panel presentations:

This title was far too misleading — you're not going to hear so much about blockchain and whatever, but about what skills and knowledge lawyers today need to succeed in their field.

I liked this panel presentation a lot because of the battling viewpoints. It focuses on service delivery, too, i.e. whether to develop in-house or to outsource. The depth of the presentation will be beneficial if you have never really considered what it takes to implement technology changes in an organisation.

Finally, I was disappointed that the keynote speech did not focus very much on the leadership of firms (that isn't saying that the industry leaders in the Ministry, SAL, etc., are very focused on the issues). So I was glad that they created a space to discuss leaders in a panel. As a Singaporean, I was thrilled that at least one law firm in Singapore gets it. (Then again, Rajah & Tann is at the vanguard of all this.)

In a previous post, I did sound sceptical about the focus of the program, but there is something to take home for everyone. Now I need to find more time to watch all the sessions!

Love.Law.Robots. — 16 August 2021Welcome to another edition of this bi-monthly members-only newsletter. It features mini-articles curated just for members and little personal reflections.Love.Law.Robots.HoufuI previewed the festival a month earlier here. (Free subscription required)

Sometime in October 2020, the Ministry of Law announced a 10-year technology and innovation roadmap, and one of the more concrete plans was a “legal technology platform”. If you want to be sceptical, a platform can mean anything and everything at the same time. A curated list of resources? A one-size-fits-all shtick? Do I have to give up everything to be on this system?

As this appears primarily for law firms, I haven't tuned in to this regularly. So, Wednesday was the first time I had a more concrete idea of this platform. In one word — Lupl. Artificial Lawyer recently wrote about it as well.

So, the gist is that you can bring your service onto the platform and use them in an integrated manner. You would then unite information silos from other technology platforms onto a single platform, looking at matters instead of disparate strands of communication.

UntitledSource: Lupl (https://www.lupl.com/how-it-works)

I initially thought the idea was lame. I couldn't understand how being able to view everything on one platform helps anyone. (There is already a platform that lawyers use all the time — it's called a laptop.) However, the conference has reduced my scepticism a lot. Seeing some screenshots, I think the unifying concept is “Tasks”, so it is more value-added rather than a supercharged Zapier.

For law firms in Singapore, the game-changer will be integrating with government services, especially eLitigation, ACRA and other government searches. Astute readers might be upset. Shouldn't the Ministry develop APIs to allow access to these government services instead of creating or working exclusively with a proprietary platform? Hopefully, public APIs become a collateral benefit of the platform, rather than the Ministry putting the cart before the horse.

The parties who are likely to benefit the most from this platform are small law firms. If I have the same dream as the Ministry, law firms with no legal technology (Microsoft Outlook and Word don't count) will “tech-celerate” substantially by getting the whole package on this platform.

However, for small firms, evaluating the costs of this platform may be tricky. The platform's competition isn't other platforms or products but the status quo. As I understand it, charges will be based on interactions with the platform. Small law firms wouldn't have a clear idea on a quantitative basis how much they interact with technology and can't compare the costs and benefits of being on the platform. Many would have to jump in on a leap of faith. Many more wouldn't be bothered because they can't demonstrate the usefulness in their small businesses with thin margins. Hopefully, the Ministry will provide support to make this work.

Thing 3: Selling skills will be very challenging for the innovative lawyer

Business timePhoto by Marten Bjork / Unsplash

The usual paradigm for hiring lawyers is PQE (years of experience) and the areas of law in which you have expertise. These metrics are still crucial when you are hired for your substantive knowledge. However, things get somewhat dicey once you move past these traditional metrics.

It's all well and good to be well-versed in the legal issues of stuff like cryptocurrency, blockchain and artificial intelligence. The reality is that while technology law will be alive to lawyers on the cutting edge, the pie isn't big enough to hire so many cutting-edge lawyers. Not everyone wants to live on the bleeding edge, either.

As one of the speakers on the panel noted, having an e-commerce platform isn't only a TMT or IP issue. Issues like foreign investment, international trade law and contract law have a place. It isn't easy to imagine which area of law to focus on when you are a student. Indeed, there are subjects in law school I wished I had studied on, and others I never touch these days.

Furthermore, every lawyer should focus on his lawyering skills, not his tech skills. I have not heard of someone willing to hire a lawyer because of his coding skills. If I wanted a coder, I'd hire a coder! The competitive edge of a lawyer (even against robots) is always going to be lawyering.

Do coders need to learn to law?A course in the Singapore Management University aims to deliver the best of both.Love.Law.Robots.HoufuIf you're a coder who wants to law, you have options. (Free subscription required to read)

While I know software development and networking as an interesting person, I never use this in my day-to-day work. In any case, writing code for production is quite different from doing it for fun. So even if I know my way around the code, I would rely on a software developer for my software. Your first instinct is to get the tools required (software, people or consultants) to resolve your problems rather than build these tools yourself.

So there are specific skills that are important in a new technological age — managing a project, managing a team of lawyers and (gasp) non-lawyers, and process thinking and design. Above all, even when thinking about new technologies like blockchain, you will need imagination, curiosity, and entrepreneurial spirit. Technology and projects aren't always going to work in your favour — you will need resilience too.

How does one include “imagination” or “resilience” in his CV? When lawyers have been judged all their lives by their experience, recognising other skills and experiences that set them apart will be the real challenge in this new age. If the industry truly appreciates these skills, it will require them when they look for hires. That's when we can reasonably expect law students to do this technology thing.

Conclusion

I adore TechLawFest and am always trying to increase my participation every year. It wasn't easy to be involved when I was practising as you are always doing your day job. I'm thankful we will still have these events, and maybe next year, we will be there in person!

Enjoyed this post? You can read more about law and technology on Love.Law.Robots. and continuing to support my work by subscribing today. I post at least once a week and subscribers get a free members only newsletter. Thank you!

Subscribe to Love.Law.Robots. today!

#tech #TechLawFest #TechnologyLaw #LegalTech #Singapore #Law

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

Feature image

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed many things, including a sudden prevalence of free online talks and seminars. If you're an introvert or have no qualms to stay up till late to catch what the other side of the world is doing, this is a boon.

I am afraid those days may be numbered. Once restrictions are rescinded, the push to go online would not be strong anymore. It's challenging holding an online event effectively, so many events may prefer to stick to its “core” audience.

When one window closes, perhaps one should look for others. Something old school still exists — books. They can deal with depth and complexity. At possibly a hundred dollars or two at most, books also seem fairly efficient in delivering information, compared to recorded videos.

A primer on technology law struggles to get on the same boat

I was excited about the forthcoming “Law and Technology in Singapore” book by the Singapore Academy of Law. Its mission felt ambitious:

This primer by experts in their respective fields offers students and practitioners an overview of the relevant technologies, a survey of their impact on the content of law today, and a window into future issues that may arise – as well as some of the potential solutions. The text is meant to be accessible to students and practitioners, as well as to interested laypersons. The authors have strived to be clear and avoid unnecessary jargon – simple, but not simplistic.

I managed to download the first chapter, which expands on the explanation quoted above and provides a roadmap of the book. If you want to know what's in the book, that chapter will be illuminating.

Lawyers are supposed to be wary of semantics, but I believe this needs highlighting. It's a book on the law and technology. Based on the road map in the first chapter, you're probably going to hear lots about technology and lots about law, but not much on practice. The road map spends three paragraphs on one chapter on legal education, which might not be surprising considering how many professors flood the list of contributors. One sentence mentions process automation and innovation in law practice in a chapter co-written by four professors. Thankfully though, it counts a founder of Rajah and Tann's digital arm as its other co-author.

Esplanade_whiteskyPhoto by OpticalNomad / Unsplash

I will be pessimistic and recount all my fears about what this book is going to be. Unlike most primers I am aware of, this book will be thick, heavy and impossible to finish in one night. Like almost every book that the Singapore Academy of Law publishes, it will have end to end walls of text. For lawyers on innovation, this might be an interesting reference book. Students will learn a lot from the text.

For innovative lawyers, I suspect that this book is not going to be helpful. If you are motivated enough to go through a hefty tome, you don't need more convincing that technology has a profound impact on the law. Substantive law is an essential aspect of a lawyer's toolkit, but this book's emphasis seems particularly heavy.

It's unfair to criticise a book on technology law for not having much content on the impact of technology on law and the changes facing the legal profession. Smart contracts, AI and the Internet are minor characters in the legal innovation story. In legal innovation, it's all about People , Process and Technology. The contributors list and the topics chosen don't reflect this.

A short aside: Books I recommend for the innovative lawyer

If you're an innovative lawyer and you want to do technology as opposed to talking about it, these books are far cheaper and contain much more actionable advice.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made on the books linked here.

I've already reviewed “Sign Here” by Alex Hamilton. I remarked in the review that the book contains excellent insights and actionable advice on the interaction of technology and contracts, an essential aspect of law practice.

Five things I wish I learnt from “Sign Here” by Alex Hamilton“Sign Here” is great for anyone who wants to improve their contracting process, but it came too late for me.Love.Law.Robots.Houfu

If you want a real primer on legal innovation, I recommend Lucy Endel Bassli's “The Simple Guide to Legal Innovation”. ALSPs, alternative fee arrangements, legal operations, project management and a dozen other concepts feature here at a level lawyers of all levels of familiarity and students can grasp. Its reflections on the state of legal innovation in the States might appear alien in Singapore, but you'd still find enough here to make yourself the most thoughtful person in #matchworking.

I liked Bassli's book so much I am excited about her new one: “CLM Simplified: Efficient Contracting for Law Departments”. It touches on topics that aren't regularly featured, like a legal department's contract review policies. 😮 I'd preorder soon.

Buying a digital book shouldn't cause this much angst

I am quite certain there is no Kindle version. (Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel / Unsplash)

Whatever views I may have, I will still buy “Law and Technology in Singapore” because I like technology, I like law, and I like the depth and breadth of the book.

However, I am still dithering on the preorder because I couldn't decide whether to get a “digital” version for an extra $15. The page has no information on the “digital” version, so I emailed the Academy for details on what I could get. I wasn't about to pay $15 for a DRM laden PDF (even if I ignore my deep hatred for PDFs).

The reply I got was quite cryptic:

The digital version ID will be emailed to you once when our platform is ready for it's release in mid-October. [ sic ]

It gave me palpitations. I imagined a web page where you can click on the right column, and the page will animatedly “flip” to the other side. Other than that piece of magic, you will need an internet connection to access it, and you can't copy or search the book. Furthermore, if the Academy doesn't want to support the website anymore, it can flush your digital book down the drain. It's worse than a PDF!

Update (23/9): I have a slightly better idea of what will be provided during TechLawFest. Thankfully, it won't be as lame as a flipping book, but still...

Anyway, I ordered the book with the digital version because I had a lot of Academy credit to burn. Hooray for COVID!

Are books the best solution for this age?

The issues regarding the delivery of this product (a heavy tome partnered by a possibly DRM-laden web platform) dampened my enthusiasm for this book.

These issues are pretty ironic considering that authors wanted the book to be accessible. As mentioned in the chapter, they have consciously made it cheaper and provided a digital version.

However, to be fair, if they considered my wish list, I would have wanted it free as in free beer , and free as in libre.

To take their goals further, I even wonder whether a book is the best medium to provide a fast reference for practitioners and a deep primer for students. Books aren't searchable, take up space on a cupboard and can't be shared. Considering that the book will get outdated really fast, it will become very expensive too when you always have to get the latest iteration (if ever, if any) .

Wikipedia for desktop A wiki might have been more effective solution, if lawyers wanted to share their knowledge. (Photo by Luke Chesser / Unsplash)

If I wanted to find information fast, what would I do? Evidently for small firms in the UK, Google it. For myself, I like reading Wikipedia. It can be a detailed primer and a fast reference. It can also be searchable. It can even be updated continuously. Honestly, they can take away my Academy credits if they provided this resource free to all Singaporeans.

It's not as if such a project is without precedent. Last week, “Civil Procedure and Practice in Ontario”, Ontario's version of “Singapore Civil Procedure”, became available for free on CANLII. A book that might have cost $1,280 is now available for all, including litigants in person.

Besides an open access e-book, there are probably other ways to make this book more accessible. To cut through the walls of text and overlaps of content across discrete chapters, a chatbot using machine learning might be able to automate the searching of answers. This sounds like a fun project to get my hands dirty in machine learning again. Now to figure out how to scrape this thing once it comes out.

Conclusion

The goals of “Law and Technology in Singapore” are laudable. However, it's readily apparent that it doesn't go far enough. The authors wanted to write a book, and have tried to push it as hard as it can go. Maybe the real lesson is that we haven't grappled directly with the challenges of the medium. So for the innovative lawyer in me, I am always going to appreciate books, but I would always be reminded of what it could have been.

#blog #BookReview #COVID-19 #Law #Singapore #TechLawFest #TechnologyLaw

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

Feature image

There's a conclusion on a case in Germany I have been tracking for a few years. It's one of the very few cases I am aware of where lawyers actually challenged LegalTech and if they have succeeded, killed an industry.

You can read more about the case (in English) on Artificial Lawyer. Basically, lawyers in Germany have been taking Wolter Kluwer's Smartlaw to Court for what they claim to be an unauthorised practice of law. They claimed that by providing an expert system, Smartlaw was giving legal advice, which could only be performed by lawyers (which Smartlaw wasn't). The lawyers had a victory in Cologne. However, the highest court in Germany has now confirmed that Smartlaw does not give legal advice, so the legality of Smartlaw and document generating solutions is now quite safe there.

Wolters Kluwer Wins Landmark German DIY Doc Generation CaseWolters Kluwer has finally won a landmark battle in Germany for the right of people and businesses to download ‘DIY legal documents’ without the input of lawyers, in what was a key test…Artificial LawyerartificiallawyerNo longer verboten indeed.

The reasoning of the Federal Court of Justice is interesting. It held that because there was a lack of an individual assessment of the case's legal merits, Smartlaw provided no legal advice. This appears reasonable — when a programmer creates an expert system, he does not have a particular individual in mind and never knows his “client”. Besides the heavy type which usually accompanies such solutions, most consumers know that the system is not a complete replacement to seeing an actual lawyer.

What does this mean in Singapore?

Singapore City SkylinePhoto by Stephanie Yeh / Unsplash

Germany is pretty far in most lawyers' minds in Singapore. The differences in legal traditions suggest this decision would not have much precedential or persuasive value if a similar case were brought here.

The definitions of an unauthorised practice in Singapore are different from Germany. Based on the “I call it as I see it” approach to this issue by the courts, this could easily have gone either way.

The Importance of Being AuthorisedA recent case shows that practising law as an unauthorised person can have serious effects. What does this hold for other people who may be interested in alternative legal services?Love.Law.Robots.HoufuI wrote about unauthorised practices recently in response to a case in Singapore. (Free subscription required)

On the one hand, generating legal documents based on questions I ask a client is the hallmark of a lawyer's work, so this must be a legal practice. On the other hand, one doesn't write expert systems by imagining how to ask a real client—rules before templates before particular fact situations.

Thus, having a business proposition based on document generation, like a super-charged docassemble in Singapore, is still risky in Singapore if it clashes with lawyer regulation.

Nevertheless, the decision is still pretty relevant here.

This is one of the most vivid and realistic real-world examples of challenges to LegalTech concerning lawyer regulation. Most people imagine a robot lawyer to be a pretty advanced expert system. It's always been tempting to draw a line from “robot generating legal documents” to “legal advice” and finally “unauthorised practice”. The Germans have done it, and their highest court has answered definitively that they are not illegal. Even if there is a legally persuasive reason in our jurisprudence, it would be odd if we were an outlier.

Furthermore, while the result is satisfying, the reasoning does not give much comfort. The fine line of an “individualised assessment” might be relevant in Germany's context, but another jurisdiction like Singapore might regard the individualised assessment as necessary to protect consumers. For example, do we really want consumers to go away with printing a document that they execute wrongly? The shocking consequence of a failed will may be too much.

Who wants to do an E-Will?COVID-19 offers an opportunity to relook at one of the oldest instruments in law — wills. Is it enough to make them an electronic transaction?Love.Law.Robots.HoufuAn earlier post considering the electronic execution of wills explains why change is prolonged here (free subscription required).

Honestly, I think our authorities would take the pragmatic approach. There's no denying that such expert systems explore a gap that lawyers don't or can't fulfil. An “individualised assessment” may be too expensive in several cases. Many solutions by the authorities and established parties already deploy such an approach and might be dispensing legal advice such as chatbots, wills and court forms for litigants in person. So, killing off this industry or idea at this point seems pretty far fetched.

However, this outcome might be speaking to the current limitations of an advanced expert system. Docassemble can solve many problems, but it can't do everything. On the one hand, it might take us some time to develop a highly advanced expert system, which probably has to be customised for each industry or jurisdiction. On the other hand, there are also user experience issues (clients are distraught and stressed when it comes to legal matters, and a computer asking questions doesn't seem very empathetic).

Divorce HelperDivorce Helper gives you legal information about divorce in Australia. Divorce Helper is free to use and you do not need to tell us who you are.Divorce HelperI find this to be a pretty good (and pretty) example of an empathetic interview.

It's not impossible that a “robot lawyer” will challenge the status quo. Till then, this legal battle might still have a few more stages in it.

#LegalTech #docassemble #Law #Singapore

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

Feature image

A string of high profile acquittals seemed to have shaken the public confidence in Singapore's criminal justice system. First, Parti Liyani's case obtained a parliamentary hearing on what is essentially its fairness. (I wrote about this earlier in the blog) Now, an acquittal of a doctor in a molest case highlights the pain the accused goes through to clear his name. Is there something wrong with the system?

A Focus on Prosecutors

Recently, an Op-Ed from a law professor was published arguing that we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think it offers good insights on the early part of the criminal justice system because of the following reasons:

  • It gives a data-based illustration of how much work a public prosecutor in Singapore does — a prosecutor evaluates nearly 1.3 new cases a day. (Probably worse, because as he mentioned, prosecutors work in teams today).
  • A deeper study into process improvement is warranted. This is also true because criminal law (and the law generally) has become increasingly complex. Furthermore, the Attorney General's Chambers has already gone on a hiring spree, so putting more bodies on the line might have diminishing returns.
  • The ability to pay more attention to a case means that prosecutors have more time to think about whether a case should really move forward. I think that's reasonable.

The best thing about the article is that it highlights the prime importance of prosecutors in the system. Most criminal law students in Singapore quickly learn about the crime control model employed in Singapore. In this model, the accused's rights are less important, and we rely on the police and prosecutor to get the case right to proceed to punish offenders efficiently.

Here’s how Singapore can strengthen its legal processes in light of high-profile acquittalsRecently, Dr Yeo Sow Nam was acquitted of four charges of outrage of modesty, because the “victim” admitted in court that she lied about the allegations against Dr Yeo.TODAYonline

With heavier and complicated workloads and increased public scrutiny, this might indicate that the system needs help.

No Representation without Defence Counsel?

The article then suggests that defence counsel should get involved earlier in the process to make representations. A representation is essentially a letter to the prosecutor highlighting the facts and arguments in favour of the defence. When done correctly. It discourages prosecutors from bringing a case. Since you don't want to write rubbish to the prosecutor in charge of your case, defence counsel is highly recommended to pursue this.

Having early access to defence counsel can be unrealistic because only the savviest litigants will get defence counsel once they have an inkling that they will be charged (this category of people includes doctors and multinational companies). Furthermore, having defence counsel early might impede police investigations, so the authorities will not make this change lightly.

Many more people will take the plea bargain and try to get on with their lives instead of hiring some defence counsel and giving it a fight either using trial or representations. You never get to hear these stories because they have chosen to bear the consequences without considering whether the system got it right for them. If you cared about the fairness of the system, then this would not be comforting.

A New Perspective with Technology

At this point, I wondered what alternatives are available. It was not obvious to me for a long time, but this is a similar problem that DoNotPay was created to solve. In its earliest version, DoNotPay wrote letters to appeal against a parking fine by fashioning a better appeal. A more recent example features CourtFormsOnline.org preparing eviction letters for tenants to make use of the eviction moratorium.

Digital Curb Cuts: Towards an Inclusive Open Forms EcosystemIn this paper we focus on digital curb cuts created during the pandemic: improvements designed to increase accessibility that benefit people beyond the populatiSee all articles by Quinten SteenhuisThis paper deserves far more space on this blog.

The main idea is to provide an online form that asks an accused questions to find potential points which can assist his case and process these reasons into a representation to be sent to a prosecutor. A criminal defence attorney would probably be beneficial in deciding what points should be included in specific cases. Otherwise, you would be repurposing content found in textbooks like Sentencing Principles in Singapore. (Note that the expert system will also have to consider factors going into conviction too.)

There might be problems with such an approach:

  • Defence counsel does lend an air of professionalism to a representation; if an accused sends a letter (whether it's automated using our solution or not), there are significant risks prosecutors would ignore it.
  • Unlike the traffic fine appeals and eviction moratoriums, determining the success rates of such letters is more difficult. At this stage, the prosecutor's powers are highly discretionary. Did the letter work if the prosecutor reduced the charges? Or if the prosecutor offered a plea bargain? If it's hard to sell this product like this. If people feel that it ain't effective, they are not going to use it.
  • I am not sure Singaporeans would pay $15 a month to access these forms (this is DoNotPay's subscription model). Then again, I paid nearly $800 a year for MediShield, so what's the difference, right?

Conclusion

This is an idea that popped up in my head. It would be interesting to hear if it might work. Feel free to let me know your thoughts!

#Law #Singapore #tech

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

Feature image

Introduction

Over the course of 2019 and 2020, I embarked on a quest to apply the new things I was learning in data science to my field of work in law.

The dataset I chose was the enforcement decisions from the Personal Data Protection Commission in Singapore. The reason I chose it was quite simple. I wanted a simple dataset covering a limited number of issues and is pretty much independent (not affected by stare decisis or extensive references to legislation or other cases). Furthermore, during that period, the PDPC was furiously issuing several decisions.

This experiment proved to be largely successful, and I learned a lot from the experience. This post gathers all that I have written on the subject at the time. I felt more confident to move on to more complicated datasets like the Supreme Court Decisions, which feature several of the same problems faced in the PDPC dataset.

Since then, the dataset has changed a lot, such as the website has changed, so your extraction methods would be different. I haven't really maintained the code, so they are not intended to create your own dataset and analysis today. However, techniques are still relevant, and I hope they still point you in a good direction.

Extracting Judgement Data

Dog & Baltic SeaPhoto by Janusz Maniak / Unsplash

The first step in any data science journey is to extract data from a source. In Singapore, one can find judgements from courts on websites for free. You can use such websites as the source of your data. API access is usually unavailable, so you have to look at the webpage to get your data.

It's still possible to download everything by clicking on it. However, you wouldn't be able to do this for an extended period of time. Automate the process by scraping it!

Automate Boring Stuff: Get Python and your Web Browser to download your judgements]

I used Python and Selenium to access the website and download the data I want. This included the actual judgement. Metadata, such as the hearing date etc., are also available conveniently from the website, so you should try and grab them simultaneously. In Automate Boring Stuff, I discussed my ideas on how to obtain such data.

Processing Judgement Data in PDF

Photo by Pablo Lancaster Jones / Unsplash

Many judgements which are available online are usually in #PDF format. They look great on your screen but are very difficult for robots to process. You will have to transform this data into a format that you can use for natural language processing.

I took a lot of time on this as I wanted the judgements to read like a text. The raw text that most (free) PDF tools can provide you consists of joining up various text boxes the PDF tool can find. This worked all right for the most part, but if the text ran across the page, it would get mixed up with the headers and footers. Furthermore, the extraction revealed lines of text, not paragraphs. As such, additional work was required.

Firstly, I used regular expressions. This allowed me to detect unwanted data such as carriage returns, headers and footers in the raw text matched by the search term.

I then decided to use machine learning to train my computer to decide whether to keep a line or reject it. This required me to create a training dataset and tag which lines should be kept as the text. This was probably the fastest machine-learning exercise I ever came up with.

However, I didn't believe I was getting significant improvements from these methods. The final solution was actually fairly obvious. Using the formatting information of how the text boxes were laid out in the PDF , I could make reasonable conclusions about which text was a header or footer, a quote or a start of a paragraph. It was great!

Natural Language Processing + PDPC Decisions = 💕

Photo by Moritz Kindler / Unsplash

With a dataset ready to be processed, I decided that I could finally use some of the cutting-edge libraries I have been raring to use, such as #spaCy and #HuggingFace.

One of the first experiments was to use spaCy's RuleMatcher to extract enforcement information from the summary provided by the authorities. As the summary was fairly formulaic, it was possible to extract whether the authorities imposed a penalty or the authority took other enforcement actions.

I also wanted to undertake key NLP tasks using my prepared data. This included tasks like Named Entity Recognition (does the sentence contain any special entities), summarisation (extract key points in the decision) and question answering (if you ask the machine a question, can it find the answer in the source?). To experiment, I used the default pipelines from Hugging Face to evaluate the results. There are clearly limitations, but very exciting as well!

Visualisations

Photo by Annie Spratt / Unsplash

Visualisations are very often the result of the data science journey. Extracting and processing data can be very rewarding, but you would like to show others how your work is also useful.

One of my first aims in 2019 was to show how PDPC decisions have been different since they were issued in 2016. Decisions became greater in number, more frequent, and shorter in length. There was clearly a shift and an intensifying of effort in enforcement.

I also wanted to visualise how the PDPC was referring to its own decisions. Such visualisation would allow one to see which decisions the PDPC was relying on to explain its decisions. This would definitely help to narrow down which decisions are worth reading in a deluge of information. As such, I created a network graph and visualised it. I called the result my “Star Map”.

Data continued to be very useful in leading the conclusion I made about the enforcement situation in Singapore. For example, how great an impact would the increase in maximum penalties in the latest amendments to the law have? Short answer: Probably not much, but they still have a symbolic effect.

What's Next?

As mentioned, I have been focusing on other priorities, so I haven't been working on PDPC-Decisions for a while. However, my next steps were:

  • I wanted to train a machine to process judgements for named entity recognition and summarization. For the second task, one probably needs to use a transformer in a pipeline and experiment with what works best.
  • Instead of using Selenium and Beautiful Soup, I wanted to use scrapy to create a sustainable solution to extract information regularly.

Feel free to let me know if you have any comments!

#Features #PDPC-Decisions #PersonalDataProtectionAct #PersonalDataProtectionCommission #Decisions #Law #NaturalLanguageProcessing #PDFMiner #Programming #Python #spaCy #tech

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

Feature image

I spent several nights and trips on aeroplanes thinking about how to innovate the contracting process in my company. Though I did do a lot of reading online and offline, it was a lonely journey. I had to separate the puff from the substance and the wheat from the chuff from what I was reading and planning. When I got to action, I realised that having ideas was the easy part; making them work is really tough. Some of that work showed its fruits, but much of it was still unfinished.

Why I would use Excel for my Contract Management SystemHow do I get on this legal technology wave? Where do I even start? A “contract management system” or a “document management system” (“CMS”) is a good place. Business operations are not affected, but the legal department can get their hands dirty and show results for it. If you wouldLove.Law.Robots.HoufuAn early effort. I have mixed views about this post 2 years later.

A tiny book review

At first, I was sceptical about reading another book on the process. ” Sign Here: The enterprise guide to closing contracts quickly “ by Alex Hamilton proved to be different. Alex Hamilton is a founder of Radiant Law, a law firm in the UK that focuses solely on the commercial contract process. They use technology and process improvement to deliver legal services differently. They've been doing it for ten years too, so they are here to stay. I was quite sure I would learn something different from this book.

Unfortunately, the book didn't teach me anything new. Instead, it validated many of my instincts and the conclusion I had reached after pondering the issue for years. That might sound like a nice ending, but I would rather read this from a book than cracking it from some stone and not being sure whether what I had was a real insight or baloney.

So, in short, I recommend the book. It put words to what my instinct and experience were telling me, and I am glad I read it. This is the real deal, in an accessible and practical format that anyone can read.

Sign Here: The enterprise guide to closing contracts quickly : Hamilton, Alex: Amazon.sg: BooksSign Here: The enterprise guide to closing contracts quickly : Hamilton, Alex: Amazon.sg: BooksAlex HamiltonI earn a commission from purchases made through this affiliate link.

Let's Pick Five

If you are not convinced yet, here are five lessons from the book. I think they're wise and spoke to my practical experience.

Thing 1: Speed matters when you're making contracts

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

The legal department is usually viewed as a roadblock. We stop others from making bad mistakes. We are the ones who are going to review the contract you just received from the counterparty. These points are valid, but there's a substantial cost in not acting fast. “Sign Here” raises lost revenue, postponed or even lost value and may even undermine relationships as the cost of delay in the contracting process. “Relationships are indeed being created and grown [as a result of the contract process], but successful relationships are often despite rather than because of the agreement.”

So speed really makes a difference. In my view, there's a customer relationship factor. Your internal customers like to hear a response from you. They can also tell our external customers that they care when they respond quickly.

Thing 2: There is no silver bullet

Photo by Cody Wingfield on Unsplash

“Sign Here” proclaims that despite vendors' claims, no single solution would solve all problems in the contracting process. I've always felt sceptical about silver bullet claims. I also felt unsure whether any completely new platform would succeed given its high costs.

There are two facets of real life that make any “silver bullet” difficult:

  • You don't live in a vacuum. I found several guerilla systems for contracting in the wild in my company. Expecting messy people to fit into your system would probably be a hard task, and I was not sure I was spending my capital effectively forcing people to like my favourite solution.
  • Resources are limited. It's simple. I have no budget, and I am still expected to do my regular work properly. Any innovation used to be nice to have. The amount of work it takes to put in a “silver bullet” solution (if there was such a thing) would have been extremely risky.

So no single solution works. You really have to go in there and figure out a good fit.

Thing 3: Change is a long series of steps

Image by wendy CORNIQUET from Pixabay

Related to the “silver bullet” fascination above is the belief that one solution solves all problems at once. It just doesn't work like that. Even if you had infinite resources and a highly motivated core of customers ready to do your bidding, the solution you have just implemented is not likely to be perfect now or in the future. The time horizon “Sign Here” suggests isn't months or years — it's weeks and then improved again later.

For myself, having users and putting solutions into production meant I had to fix bugs, answer questions and listen to suggestions. With some humility, I realised that these fixes and suggestions made the solution better. It also meant, sadly, that I had to get back to the drawing board.

Corollary to the fact that you will have to revisit your work repeatedly, it also means that you have to learn new things all the time continually. 😰😫

Thing 4: Be Clear and Reasonable

Photo by Timothy Meinberg on Unsplash

Consistent with the aim that contracts are relational rather than transactional, “Sign Here” recommends that terms aim first to be reasonable rather than extract maximum advantage, which is whittled down by mano-a-mano negotiations to something you can live with.

Related to the speed of contracting, clear and reasonable terms means that parties aren't sapped by the energy it takes to reach an agreement. I found internal customers are happy when they aren't fighting pointless battles, and when they don't have to explain to the counterparty or their legal department why our terms are so unfair. It also turns out that business folks aren't blind, and they like to discuss strategic matters that really matter to the deal. That starts with shunting out the stuff that doesn't matter.

Thing 5: Some technologies are more important than others

Image by Michael Schwarzenberger from Pixabay

I found the hardest issue with implementing change in contracting is what to prioritize. When you have limited time, resources and leadership capital, the changes you emphasize appears to be very significant. Document automation and AI contract review sound cool, while other less glorious things like storage systems and helpdesks also seem important.

One of the best parts about “Sign Here” is that it sets out a list of technologies you should focus on and why. Conversely, it also highlights technologies that you might hear about, but also their not-so-discussed limitations. It's one of the most fun parts of the book, so I won't spoil it for you.

Instead, I'd highlight the most important technologies that I thought were. It broadly matches the insights from the book.

  • Document template automation (Docassemble)
  • e-Signature (we just implemented DocuSign)
  • Intake system (I'm working on it)
  • Knowledge system (Probably try and perfect the SharePoint site we now have)

docassemble – Love.Law.Robots.Love.Law.Robots.Some of my posts on this blog on docassemble.

Conclusion

Buy the book!

#BookReview #LegalTech #Contracts #ContractManagementSystem #docassemble #E-signature #Law

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu

Feature image

I am not going to be shy about this. I really hate reading Non-Disclosure Agreements. Sometimes, they are known as NDAs, Confidentiality Agreements, and Mutual Confidentiality Agreements. Whatever guise they are in, they seem to say the same thing in many different ways. If there was a nuance, it's difficult to say what actual impact they have. Yet, we still have to figure it out and review them as necessary. Because somebody probably forgot to put in something that we need. Once they are signed, we move on. In short, a lot of time is spent on NDAs, but nobody cares. 🤢

That's what @thelawboutique_ execs Electra and Roisin found when they sat down to review the agreements they'd handled for their clients.

The #NDA effort-to-value ratio isn’t just appalling for the service providers – for in-house counsel it’s even worse. Can you relate? pic.twitter.com/CAuHQAkPQR

— oneNDA (@onendaclub) July 26, 2021

This kind of dysfunction is ripe for disruption. NDAs are probably one of the most straightforward problems in using AI for contract review. They have a certain structure and a limited set of clauses. You don't need to look far for an example — check NDAlynn. You can even enjoy NDALynn for free if you don't mind your document becoming part of the hivemind.

oneNDA is a different kind of disruptor. It suggests that life would be much easier for everyone if we sat together and agreed on one NDA. If you're curious what that crowdsourced NDA looks like, you can take a look at their website or download it here.

oneNDA Is Live! An M&A Module Is NextThe oneNDA project, which has sought to create a universal Non-Disclosure Agreement to cover confidential information, has gone live and is now available. However, the project will not stop th…Artificial Lawyerartificiallawyer

What I liked about oneNDA

  • It's short, simple and pretty. At two pages, they have really condensed the document into its finer parts.
  • The so-called “variables” only cover about half a page. Agreeing on the details of this document will probably take less than a few minutes. This is probably more substantial than many NDAs I have seen regarding time and costs saved (if that is the only thing you have to agree on).
  • It's licensed underCC BY-ND 4.0, a Creative Commons license. So yeah, I can share it here.

What I didn't like about oneNDA

  • Choices have been made, and not everyone will agree with them. You can check out their graveyard to read about what they decided to leave out in oneNDA. I can understand why they did it, but that will not stop anyone from adding it back in. You would then have to spend time reviewing it, which defeats the purpose.
  • It's licensed with ND (No Derivatives). This means you can't change and then distribute it, including sending it to your counter-party. It's a plausible controversy whether contract clauses can be copyrighted (they obviously can). I guess dictating how the NDA is used can help adoption by building a strong identity. In my view and having some background in open source, I honestly think this ND qualification is unnecessary. I would definitely think twice about these restrictions before using them.

My Conclusion

The creators of oneNDA have made a smart decision by aiming first for an NDA that is the simplest — having a commercial discussion. Logically speaking, it's like buttoning your shirt as you prepare for a business meeting. You shouldn't be spending much (if possible, any) lawyer or negotiation time on this sort of agreement. This NDA definitely helps you to reach that conclusion.

However, if you've reviewed enough NDAs, you would know that the arguments which prevent us from having a universal NDA aren't entirely rational. Somebody thinks their template is better, and we are going to have a debate over it. Sometimes it's easier to argue that we should stick to our template than selling a change which sounds like losing our freedoms. Maybe our language has been “tested”, and oneNDA hasn't. If I was conservative, having as many clauses in as possible is safer than leaving something out.

Reviewing NDAs is the express route to learning why contracts are dysfunctional.

Finally, there's a problem with NDAs. I first found out when I wrote my own NDA generator. Everyone sort of agrees that NDAs are low hanging fruit, but the reward of solving the problem isn't sweet or worth shouting to management. Nobody cares about NDAs, so nobody cares about the solution. Here lies an important lesson in innovation — some problems just aren't worth solving. The conclusion of my NDA generator was that people nodded at the “proof of concept”. Conversely, a letter generator that wasn't particularly complex or legal had a greater impact. They used it more often, and it saved them from learning how to choose a template.

On the other hand, like buttoning a business shirt, it wouldn't impress you if a button was in a different shape, or featured “magnets”.

oneNDA Is mediocreNDA: Thoughts on a Proposed Standard Nondisclosure Agreement – Adams on Contract DraftingoneNDA is a new initiative that “set out on a mission to standardise the NDA so that lawyers can spend less time on them and more time on more valuable work.” For more about oneNDA, go here. This week they released their “simple, plain English, open-source NDA,” also called, somewhat confusingly, on…Adams on Contract DraftingKen AdamsIt's great to know that I ain't alone in my conclusions.

So, while I am a firm supporter of standards, I am not excited about this one. oneNDA is great, but it is just another NDA.

Standards, the Importance of StandardsI explore the possibilities of using a taxonomy from the Legal Matter Standard Specification from SALI the Alliance.Love.Law.Robots.HoufuRead about a standard I am actually excited about.

Looking Forward

I may not be excited about oneNDA in its current state, but I am more curious about how technically they would implement modules for M&A. I hope it will be a useful tool that provides convenience and simplicity for users, and not just a choose your own NDA. Anything that keeps NDAs away from lawyers will be a boon for the whole process.

For now, count this sceptic out of the hivemind.

Enjoyed this post? You can read more about law or technology on Love.Law.Robots. by subscribing today. I post at least once a week and subscribers get a free members only newsletter. Thank you!

#Law #Contracts #Copyright #LegalTech #oneNDA

Author Portrait Love.Law.Robots. – A blog by Ang Hou Fu