Love.Law.Robots. by Ang Hou Fu

Singapore

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I love playing with legal data. For me, books specialising in legal data are uncommon, especially those dealing with what’s available on the wild world of the internet today.

That’s why I snapped up Sarah Sutherland’s “Legal Data and Information in Practice”. Ms Sutherland was CEO of CanLII, one of the most admirable LIIs. CanLII is extensive, comprehensive, and packed with great features like noting up and keywords. It even comes in two languages.

Legal Data and Information in Practice: How Data and the Law InteractLegal Data and Information in Practice provides readers with an understanding of how to facilitate the acquisition, management, and use of legal data in organizations such as libraries, courts, governments, universities, and start-ups.Presenting a synthesis of information about legal data that will…Routledge & CRC PressSarah A. Sutherland

The book’s blurb recommends that it is “ essential reading for those in the law library community who are based in English-speaking countries with a common law tradition ”.

Since finishing the book, I found the blurb’s focus way too narrow. This is a book for anyone who loves legal data.

For one, I enjoyed the approachable language. My interaction with legal data has always been pragmatic. Either I was studying for some course, or I needed to find an answer quickly. It will be enough to appreciate the book if you’ve done any of those things. I liked that it didn’t baffle me with impossible or theoretical language. I found myself nodding at several junctures as I reflected on my experience of interacting with legal data as well.

Furthermore, it’s effectively a primer:

  • It’s short. I took a month to finish it at a leisurely place (i.e., in between taking care of children, making sure the legal department runs smoothly, and programming). Oh, and unlike most law books, it has pictures.
  • It effectively explains a broad range of topics. It talks about the challenges of AI and the political and administrative backgrounds of how legal data is provided without overwhelming you. More impressively, I found new areas in this field that I didn’t know about before reading the book, such as the various strategies to acquire legal data and an overview of statistical and machine learning techniques on data.

So, even if you are not a librarian or a legal technologist by profession, this book is still handy for you. I would love more depth, and maybe that’s some scope for a 2nd edition. In any case, Sarah Sutherland’s “Legal Data and Information in Practice” is a great starting point for everyone. Reading it will level up your ability to discuss and evaluate what’s going on in this exciting field.

  • * *

I am sorry for being a sucker — I am the kind of guy who watches movies to swoon at sweeping visages of my home jurisdiction, Singapore. I enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians, even though it’s fake.

So, I couldn’t resist looking for references to Singapore in the book. Luckily for me, Singapore is mentioned several times in the book. It’s described as “an interesting example of what can happen if a government is willing to invest heavily in developing capacity in legal computing and data use”. I’m not convinced that LawNet is like an LII, but among other points raised, such as the infrastructure, availability and formats are still much better here than in the rest of the common law world.

The more interesting point is that Singapore, as a small jurisdiction, would usually find its dataset smaller. That’s why experimenting on making models trained on other kinds of data effective on yours is crucial. (I think the paper cited in the book is an excellent example of this.) Other facets are relevant when you have fewer data and resources: what kinds of legal data should one focus on and the strategies to acquire them.

The challenges of a smaller dataset seem to be less exciting because fewer people are staring at them. However, I would suggest that these challenges are more prevalent than you would expect — companies and organisations also have smaller datasets and fewer resources. What would work for Singapore should be of interest to many others.

There’s always something to be excited about in this field. What do you think?

#BookReview #ArtificalIntelligence #DataMining #Law #LegalTech #MachineLearning #NaturalLanguageProcessing #Singapore #TechnologyLaw

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

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In one of my more popular posts last year, I remarked glibly that turning the outcome of 5 million random Monopoly JR games into a truth was magical. It wasn't funny because there was magic involved (there's none). It was funny because as a lawyer I couldn't wrap my head around it.

That's because this profession is very adverse to numbers and data. I don't know the reasons why, but you can witness the dismissive attitude towards it in a recent case heard at the US Supreme Court:

Roberts: Is there any evidence that 15 weeks is so much worse than viability?
Reproductive Rights lawyer: [data data data]
Roberts: “Putting the data aside…”

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) December 1, 2021

Or the uproar when the Supreme Court of Canada tried to describe its reasons in a diagram:

I stand by my concerns! ;)

— Amy Salyzyn (@AmySalyzyn) November 23, 2021

A disturbing statistic fails to convince

the city.Photo by Tamara Gore / Unsplash

There's nothing funny about the death penalty in Singapore, though. A group of 17 Malays on death row for drug offences challenged their sentences. They don't allege that anything in particular happened to them. Instead, they point to statistics cobbled together from public sources showing that Malays were overrepresented in the death row — Malays made up 77% of Singaporeans on death row for drug offences, even though they only form 13.5% of the general population.

They thus alleged that the investigation and prosecution of drug offences discriminated against them, even if it was unconscious or not deliberate.

Unsurprisingly, the case was dismissed late last year. The judgement displays all the high watermarks of the scepticism the law has against statistics. Take this critical part of the judgement at [71] as an example:

Further, even if the plaintiffs’ statistical data is accepted as complete and accurate, the only variables reflected are the ethnic group and nationality of each offender. No account is taken of the multitude of other variables that would have contributed to the convictions and sentences in each case. The manner in which the plaintiffs’ statistics are presented therefore presupposes that all these offenders were equally situated and that the sole reason for differential treatment was their ethnicity, which are the very facts the plaintiffs bear the burden of showing.

Any statistics presented as evidence will always have these problems because it is in the nature of statistics. Take a simple linear regression below as an example. The blue dots are samples and the red line is a linear regression, calculated by minimising the distances among all the samples. Only two variables are presented. The majority of the samples actually do not “fit” the line. This might be caused by some particular circumstance unique to the sample. “Common sense and logic” still tell us that there is a trend.

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linear_regression.svg

As such, the fact that not all accused are given death sentences or some get reduced sentences does not invalidate the trend that the cases are showing. If there was no discrimination, we would see a random distribution, not a trend.

Even if we recognise that there is a trend, or in the context of the case that there is an overrepresentation of a particular community in sentencing, it doesn’t tell us why this is happening.

The problem starkly illustrates the conundrum that correlation does not imply causation.

Source: xkcd

We know how many people are given death sentences under the law, but there may be several reasons why there may be idiosyncrasies:

  • Police are over-policing a particular community
  • Prosecutors are less “lenient” towards a particular community
  • Courts are inclined to give particular sentences
  • A particular community is more “prone” to this type of criminal activity
  • A particular community is less able to fight charges due to fewer resources (e.g. access to good legal advice)

A statistic alone would not be able to differentiate the cause or how much.

Without saying as much, the court appeared to have a lot of difficulty grappling with what exactly is causing the trend. At once, it isn’t sure whether the plaintiff’s case of discrimination is direct or indirect (see paragraph 62). Earlier in the judgement, we are treated to a scintillating report of double-crossing witnesses and a potential smoking gun, which was ultimately excluded (see paragraphs 5 to 15). In conclusion, the statistic by itself was not sufficient to prove or ground any case in discrimination under constitutional law.

The prosecution also went over a list of complaints that are commonly associated with statistical data (see paragraph 33):

  • The makeup of the data does not explain itself — why from 2010? How is a particular offender considered as part of the Malay community or some other community based on the reported case alone?
  • The data is selective and biased. No unreported cases. No cases from persons who avoided the death penalty in certain circumstances.

There are other potential problems. We don't know how significant this survey was,(the judgement does not say) but given that only 8 death sentences were passed in 2020, the number of cases considered is not likely to be significant. This means that cases affected by outliers such as random prosecution or offender decisions are likely to have a more significant impact on the sample and the result. This doesn’t mean that there was no discrimination — it means measuring it using statistics is difficult.

Ultimately, the number of people sentenced to death alone is probably not nuanced enough to tell us how fair or unfair a law is.

One should not take this too far though — the statistics prepared by the applicants might be based on the only information publicly available. Without easy access to complete and accurate data, it’s unfair to blame its imperfections on the applicants. However, this might also be the case where information isn’t even collected. How do we express the decisions of courts, prosecutors or the police in data and quantify bias in that?

Another point — while the data may not be perfect, proving something in law is not the same as in science. For example, in the criminal standard of proof, an accused is convicted when there is no reasonable doubt, and we accept circumstantial evidence even when we pass the death penalty for murder. I would believe that it is possible to form a winning case using statistics in combination with other evidence.

However, an advocate will need to be able to explain numbers and statistical concepts to a judge. This will not be an easy task in most contexts, and will only be reserved for the most confident of advocates.

Conclusion

This was one of many bad outings for statistics in the law. It might have been caused by a poor understanding of statistics or the limitations of using statistics in the legal sphere. I have yet to see a judgement demonstrate a sound grasp of these issues. If you do, please share!

#Singapore #SupremeCourtSingapore #DataScience #Judgements #Law

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

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A new year brings new beginnings, except the light at the end of the tunnel shines harshly on what we have left behind.

In a normal year, the start of the year for the Legal fraternity brings the opening of the Legal Year. A ceremony is also held where representatives of the bar, judiciary and attorney-general chambers give speeches with courtesy and camaraderie.

However, this year’s speech from the bar brings startling news. 538 lawyers left the profession in Singapore last year, a year on year increase of over 30% per cent.

Far more disturbing is the revelation that the departures are concentrated on young lawyers of less than 5 years of practice. For a long time, the bar has been concerned about the “hourglass” distribution of practice. Fat at the bottom and the top, where the youngest and oldest in the profession are, and thin in the middle. Is burnout starting earlier now?

It’s heartening that such problems are being confronted right now. In the said speech, Law Society President Adrian Tan puts it in this manner:

The 21st-century lawyers are different. They want to marry, not the law, but a human being. They, too, want to work hard. They, too, want their work to have meaning. But they also want other things that human beings want: to have children, to build a home, to have a life outside the law.

Even one of the new Senior Counsels from the bar (it’s interesting to note that both of them are female this year) put the concern in a similar manner.

I hope to be a role model of sorts to some to stay the course that much longer. I do hope that (this appointment) is a sign to all the young ladies out there that there is more that can be done.

So what would solve young lawyers burning out? Mr Adrian Tan posits that the 21st Century lawyer can have a sustainable career when the “law firm” as a physical place vanishes:

This is the picture I present to you of the New Singapore Lawyer, who works from a laptop, uses technology to collaborate with other lawyers, meets clients virtually, and is not bound to a physical office. Whenever there is a need for sensitive communication, the New Singapore Lawyer will book a secure Zoom pod. If there is a month-long arbitration with opponents in different time zones, the New Singapore Lawyer will use special facilities to cater to those needs... Put another way: the New Singapore Lawyer will spend more time on work, rather than on commuting to work.

This idea appears to have come out from the experience of senior lawyers working from home. It was a strange and foreign experience for everyone.

I like the vision of this “New Singapore Lawyer” (it’s great we finally have a published fiction author as a Law Society President).

However, I experienced many bouts of irony as I waded through its implications. One of the experiences people have from working from home is that without the separation of the workplace, they spent longer hours working. If we want young lawyers to not burn out, bringing work home does not look like a good start.

Another bout of irony came from the “threat” that technology can bring to the legal profession. Last year, the Singapore Academy of Law published a 600-page tome which raison d'etre was to examine how technology impacts the law for a profession that didn’t necessarily welcome it. While legal work done by city law offices is bespoke enough to not be replaced by robots, legal work at the lower end is more susceptible to being automated — people can turn to “googling” to find answers to legal questions rather than pay an hourly rate to a lawyer. The free-wheeling New Singapore Lawyer might not be so carefree after all.

So has working from home made us all love technology a lot more? Maybe, but I would suggest that this happy relationship is likely to be very limited and short-lived. It won’t be enough to overcome the challenges of burnout that young lawyers face at the beginning of their professional lives.

#Singapore #Law #Lawyers #LegalTech #LawSociety #WorkLifeBalance

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

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( TW: Child Abuse)

I don't need to indulge in any hedging for this — punishing children physically so that they will “learn” will never be a part of my parenting playbook. I have been on the receiving end of this myself. I didn't see a point in it as a child, and I tried to defeat it by testing its limits. Thankfully, my parents were reasonable people who (a) could recognise that it wasn't working and (b) loved me enough to see that it's not worth it. I believe many children and their parents go through various permutations of this path.

Still, family time is too precious to be spent experimenting on a well-known truth — physically disciplining a child is ineffective and harmful.

Not all children have reasonable parents — the newspaper recently reported a case where the courts issued personal protection orders against a child's adoptive mother. The mother had beaten the child with a cane several times in response to the child's potty problems, and the father applied for a personal protection order on behalf of the child. The article and the judgement contain fairly detailed audio transcripts of how the abuse happened.

The picture that emerges is rather harrowing. Furthermore, you can see glimpses of hurt among all those involved. There are no heroes in this story.

I always look out for bits like this:

It means that I'm a bad mummy […] I'm a lousy mummy. I'm not doing my job.

it never made sense when my parents hit me, until I realised that it wasn’t “them” that hit me, their own fears and anxieties, inherited from others

— visa is doing final edits ✍🏾📖 (@visakanv) November 29, 2021

A thick grey line

I might be firm in my views, but this area enjoys a wide latitude of views here. Chan Wing Cheong's article “Corporal Punishment of Children by Parents: Is it Discipline or Violence and Abuse?” in 2018 referred to other arguments such as religious reasons, personal experience, and claims that failing to do such a “parental duty” will lead to social chaos.

Some readers may be surprised that the judgment implies that some forms of physical punishment are legal or reasonable. If the parent had caned the child only once instead of 54 times, should that be allowed? If the parent had caned the child “softly” as requested by the child, would that have improved the situation? In obvious circumstances, these questions are easy. In borderline cases, which more children are likely to experience, the answers are arbitrary and capricious.

With little irony, the judgement describes this wide latitude as a “thick grey line”. In truth, corporal punishments of children are used in several settings here. It's interesting to note that in an article “explaining” the policy of the Ministry of Education about caning in schools in 2018, readers will find misdirection to some pointed questions. Caning is clearly frowned upon here, but we have to have it in some situations. The thick grey line is wide as it is foggy.

Singapore has a long way to go, but we should go along with the rest of the world. On this note, it's interesting that Japan and South Korea have already prohibited child corporal punishment in all settings, including the home. Closer to home, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Myanmar and China are committed to prohibiting it.

Going beyond the violence

While the images of (unreasonable) corporeal punishment are disturbing, I found it very interesting that the case arose in the context of a personal protection order.

Like many things in life, there are several ways to respond to a situation. If your child is getting beaten up by your spouse, you could counsel them (assuming you find it wrong).

If the situation gets out of your control, filing a police report is another option. Calling child protection services too. The preceding options entail criminal liabilities. If proven, your spouse will be going to jail or fined. A breadwinner or a child might be removed from the family, or the family suffers financially.

The personal protection order is a different beast. It's a civil matter, so you have complete control of the proceedings. As mentioned in the judgment, the outcome of a personal protection order is an order not to commit family violence and may be an order to attend counselling. If you are deft enough to handle it yourself (and many personal protection order applicants certainly do so), the costs are not high.

The result (and this judgement is a good example) is a veritable goldmine for divorce proceedings. The mother doesn't look great for her parenting skills, and without any further information on the family dynamics, the father seems all right. A case for sole care and control of the child is now much stronger.

( NB : There isn't any information on whether there are any ongoing divorce proceedings in this case, and there may be other reasons to choose a personal protection order, including being able to prosecute this on your own.)

So if a spouse claims that there is family violence, it might be worth questioning whether there are any ulterior motives in the claim.

On the other hand, this might be another powerful reason why you shouldn't cane or physically punish your children.

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!

#Singapore #FamilyLaw #Law #PersonalProtectionOrder

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

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Regular readers might have noticed the disappearance of articles relating to the Personal Data Protection Commission’s decisions lately. However, as news of the “largest” data breach in Singapore came out, I decided to look into this area again.

My lack of interest paralleled the changing environment, which allowed me to keep up-to-date on them:

  1. The PDPC removed their RSS feed for the latest updates;
  2. I am not allowed to monitor their website manually; and
  3. The PDPC started issuing shorter summaries of their decisions, which makes their work more opaque and less interesting.

Looking at this area again, I wanted to see whether the insights I gleaned from my earlier data project might hold and what would still be relevant going forward.

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.Houfu

Something big struck, well, actually not much.

Photo by Francesca Saraco / Unsplash

The respondent in the case that had attracted media attention is Reddoorz, which operates a hotel booking platform in the budget hotel space. The cause of the breach is as sad as it is unremarkable — they had left the keys to their production database in the code of a disused but still available version of their mobile app. Using those keys, bad actors probably exfiltrated the data. This is yet another example of how lazy practices in developing apps can translate to real-world harm. They even missed the breach when they tried to perform some pen tests because it was old.

PDPC | Breach of the Protection Obligation by CommeasureBreach of the Protection Obligation by CommeasurePDPC LogoRead the PDPC’s enforcement decision here.

The data breach is the “largest” because it involved nearly 6 million customers. Given that the resident population in Singapore is roughly 5.5 million, this probably includes people from around our region.

The PDPC penalised the respondent with a $74,000 fine. This roughly works out to be about 1 cent per person. Even though this is the “largest” data breach handled under the PDPA, the PDPC did not use its full power to issue a penalty of up to $1 million. Under the latest amendments, which have yet to take effect, the potential might of the PDPC can be even greater than that.

The decision states that the PDPC took into account the COVID-19 situation and its impact on the hospitality industry in reducing the penalty amount. It would have been helpful to know how much this factor had reduced the penalty to have an accurate view of it.

In any case, this is consistent with several PDPC decisions. Using the PDPC’s website’s filters, only three decisions doled out more than $75,000 in penalties, and a further 4 doled out more than $50,000. This is among more than 100 decisions with a financial penalty. Even among the rare few cases, only 1 case exercised more than 25% of the current limit of the penalty. The following case only amounts to $120,000 (a high profile health-related case, too!).

The top of the financial penalty list (As of November 2021). Take note of the financial penalty filters at the bottom left corner.

This suggests that the penalties are, in practice, quite limited. What would it take for the PDPC to penalise an offender? Probably not the number of records breached. Maybe public disquiet?

In a world without data breaches

Throttle Roll - Swap Meat MarketPhoto by Parker Burchfield / Unsplash

While the media focuses on financial penalties, I am not a big fan of them.

While doling out “meaningful” penalties strikes a balance between compliance with the law and business interests, there are limits to this approach. As mentioned above, dealing with a risk of $5,000 fines may not be sufficient for a company to hire a team of specialists or even a professional Data Protection Officer. If a company’s best strategy is not to get caught for a penalty, this does not promote compliance with the law at all.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world without data breaches. The decisions, including those mentioned above, are filled with human errors. Waiting to get caught for such mistakes is not a responsible strategy. Luckily, the PDPA doesn’t require the organisation to provide bulletproof security measures, only reasonable ones. Then, the crux is figuring out what the PDPC thinks is enough to be reasonable.

So while all these data protection decisions and financial penalties are interesting in showing how others get it wrong, the real gem for the data protection professional in Singapore is finding someone who got it right.

And here’s the gem: Giordano. Now I am sorry I haven’t bought a shirt from them in decades.

There was a data breach, and the suspect was compromised credentials. However, the perpetrator did not get far:

  • The organisation deployed various endpoint solutions
  • The organisation implemented real-time system monitoring of web traffic abnormalities
  • Data was regularly and automatically backed up and encrypted anyway

Kudos to the IT and data protection team!

Compared to other “Not in Breach” decisions, this decision is the only one I know to directly link to one of the many guides made by the PDPC for organisations. “How to Guard Against Common Types of Data Breaches” makes a headline appearance in the Summary when introducing the reasonable measures that Giordano implemented.

The close reference to the guides signals that organisations following them can have a better chance of being in the “No Breach” category.

An approach that promotes best practices is arguably more beneficial to society than one that penalises others for making a mistake. Reasonable industry practices must include encrypting essential data and other recommendations from the PDPC. It would need leaders like Giordano, an otherwise ordinary clothing apparel store in many shopping malls, to make a difference.

A call from the undertaking

Photo by Nicola Fioravanti / Unsplash

The final case in this post isn’t found in the regular enforcement decisions section of the PDPC’s website — undertakings.

If you view a penalty as recognising a failure of data protection and no breach as an indicator of its success, the undertaking is that weird creature in between. It rewards organisations that have the data protection system for taking the initiative to settle with the PDPC early but recognises that there are still gaps in its implementation.

I was excited about undertakings and called them the “teeth of the accountability principle”. However, I haven’t found much substance in my excitement, and the parallel with US anti-corruption practices appears unfounded.

Between February 2021, when the undertaking procedure was given legislative force, and November 2021, 10 organisations spanning different industries went through this procedure. In the meantime, the PDPC delivered 21 decisions with a financial penalty, direction or warning. I reckon roughly 30% is a good indicator that organisations use this procedure when they can.

My beef is that very little information is provided on these undertakings, which appears even shorter than the summaries of enforcement decisions. With very little information, it isn’t clear why these organisations get undertakings rather than penalties.

Take the instant case in November as an example. Do they have superior data protection structures in their organisations? (The organisation didn’t have any and had to undertake to implement something.) Are they all Data Protection Trust Mark organisations? (Answer: No.) Are they minor breaches? (On the surface, I can’t tell. 2,771 users were affected in this case.)

My hunch is that (like the Guide to Active Enforcement says) these organisations voluntarily notified the PDPC with a remediation plan that the PDPC could accept. This is not as easy as it sounds, as you might probably engage lawyers and other professionals to navigate your way to that remediation plan.

With very little media attention and even a separate section away from the good and the ugly on the PDPC’s website, the undertaking is likely to be practically the best way for organisations to deal with the consequences of a data breach. Whether the balance goes too far in shielding organisations from them remains to be seen.

Conclusion

Having peeked back at this area, I am still not sure I like what I find. There was a time when there was excitement about data protection in Singapore, and becoming a professional was seen as a viable place to find employment. It would be fascinating to see how much this industry develops. If it does or it doesn’t, I believe that the actions and the approach of the PDPC to organisations with data breaches would be a fundamental cause.

Until there is information on how many data protection professionals there are in Singapore and what they are doing, I don’t think you will find many more articles in this area on this blog.

#Privacy #PersonalDataProtectionCommission #PersonalDataProtectionAct #Penalties #Undertakings #Benchmarking #DataBreach #DataProtectionOfficer #Enforcement #Law ##PDPAAmendment2020 #PDPC-Decisions #Singapore #Decisions

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

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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

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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!

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#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