Love.Law.Robots. by Ang Hou Fu

tech

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In 2021, I discovered something exciting — an application of machine learning that was both mind-blowing and practical.

The premise was simple. Type a description of the code you want in your editor, and GitHub Copilot will generate the code. It was terrific, and many people, including myself, were excited to use it.

🚀 I just got access to @github Copilot and it's super amazing!!! This is going to save me so much time!! Check out the short video below! #GitHubCopilot I think I'll spend more time writing function descriptions now than the code itself :D pic.twitter.com/HKXJVtGffm

— abhishek (@abhi1thakur) June 30, 2021

The idea that you can prompt a machine to generate code for you is obviously interesting for contract lawyers. I believe we are getting closer every day. I am waiting for my early access to Spellbook.

As a poorly trained and very busy programmer, it feels like I am a target of Github Copilot. The costs was also not so ridiculous. (Spellbook Legal costs $89 a month compared to Copilot's $10 a month) Even so, I haven't tried it for over a year. I wasn’t comfortable enough with the idea and I wasn’t sure how to express it.

Now I can. I recently came across a website proposing to investigate Github Copilot. The main author is Matthew Butterick. He’s the author of Typography for Lawyers and this site proudly uses the Equity typeface.

GitHub Copilot investigation · Joseph Saveri Law Firm & Matthew ButterickGitHub Copilot investigation

In short, the training of GitHub Copilot on open source repositories it hosts probably raises questions on whether such use complies with its copyright licenses. Is it fair use to use publicly accessible code for computational analysis? You might recall that Singapore recently passed an amendment to the Copyright Act providing an exception for computational data analysis. If GitHub Copilot is right that it is fair use, any code anywhere is game to be consumed by the learning machine.

Of course, the idea that it might be illegal hasn’t exactly stopped me from trying.

The key objection to GitHub Copilot is that it is not open source. By packaging the world’s open-source code in an AI model, and spitting it out to its user with no context, a user only interacts with Github Copilot. It is, in essence, a coding walled garden.

Copi­lot intro­duces what we might call a more self­ish inter­face to open-source soft­ware: just give me what I want! With Copi­lot, open-source users never have to know who made their soft­ware. They never have to inter­act with a com­mu­nity. They never have to con­tribute.

For someone who wants to learn to code, this enticing idea is probably a double-edged sword. You could probably swim around using prompts with your AI pair programmer, but without any context, you are not learning much. If I wanted to know how something works, I would like to run it, read its code and interact with its community. I am a member of a group of people with shared goals, not someone who just wants to consume other people’s work.

Matthew Butterick might end up with enough material to sue Microsoft, and the legal issues raised will be interesting for the open-source community. For now, though, I am going to stick to programming the hard way.

#OpenSource #Programming #GitHubCopilot #DataMining #Copyright #MachineLearning #News #Newsletter #tech #TechnologyLaw

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

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One can have a variety of opinions about the pandemic but I will insist on this one. It made everyone treat online not as a cute sideshow, but as an essential part of working life.

While stuck at home, I made it a point to attend any conference or talk online that seemed adjacent to my interests. I attended talks on machine learning and AI. I even learnt a bit of linguistics.

One of the more life-changing seminars I attended was the first Bucerius Legal Tech Essentials in 2020. In short, I highly recommend it for someone who doesn't have much time but needs to dive deep and swim wide in this field. They lived up to their taglines: “ Curated. Intense. Remote. “

You swim wide because they cover a wide gamut of speakers, from academics, thought leaders and entrepreneurs with their own LegalTech companies.

You dive deep mainly because the speakers are talking about their expertise (this isn't a panel show). I recalled that many speakers took questions, so you can engage with them.

The only bad thing was that since all the speakers were based on both sides of the Atlantic, the timing was horrendous for the other side of the world. I remember falling asleep in front of my desk, trying to figure out the Six Sigma rule around 1 in the morning.

Nevertheless, I didn't think I was the only person from South East Asia attending the talks. During the customary roll call of various attendees at the start of each session, you would get a taste of how global interest in LegalTech was.

People in Singapore would also get a taste of Bucerius Legal Tech Essentials when Prof Daniel Katz, one of the “hosts” of Legal Tech Essentials, gave a lecture in 2021 at SMU, Singapore. It was a whirlwind of 500 slides in 60 minutes. Note that there are no certifications or brownie points for attending or interacting. These people stayed up late for the LegalTech.

It seems that being in Singapore has borne other fruit. 2022's Legal Tech Essentials would feature timings more convenient for this part of the world. This means 8:30 pm here... which I reckon is a marked improvement over 1 am.

Legal Tech Essentials 2022Curated, Intense, Remote.You can sign up for updates at their site.

So if you're interested in the field but don't know where to start, I strongly recommend this. I didn't enjoy it as much in 2021 since I found most topics less effective a second time. Maybe I will give this another try.

At the end of 2021, I repeatedly feared that online seminars would be buried and in-person conferences would be back in vogue. I'm glad that Legal Tech Essentials is back and still remote. It was a light in a very dark time of the pandemic, but now I hope it will still light a few light bulbs to anyone interested in Legal and Technology.

#Newsletter #LegalTech #Lawyers #News #tech #TechnologyLaw #Training #Presentation

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

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A recent disciplinary case in Singapore, [Law Society of Singapore v Mohammed Lutfi bin Hussin](https://www.elitigation.sg/gd/s/2022SGHC182) , highlights a common pitfall in legal practice. A lawyer failed to witness the signing of conveyancing documents personally but attested to doing so. Few people may pay attention to a routine conveyancing transaction. Still, this time, the transaction was tainted by fraud: a mortgagor had submitted false documents to a mortgagee to obtain a higher loan. The lawyer’s license was suspended for three years for claiming to have witnessed the signing when he didn’t.

There’s an uncharacteristic lack of remorse on the lawyer’s part compared to other disciplinary cases. Here’s how he described his practice, which seems rather ordinary at first glance:

This was a routine purchase of the Property by [a buyer] financed by a loan taken from a bank. The transaction could be carried out without my seeing [the Buyer]. My staff are fully capable of dealing with routine transactions such as [the Buyer’s] purchase of the Property. If anything out of the ordinary crops up, they will inform me and I will then see [the Buyer] and sort out whatever problem has arisen. There were no issues at all relating to [the Buyer’s] purchase and for that reason, I did not have to see him.

In contrast, here’s what the Court of 3 Judges (in charge of lawyer discipline) thought of that:

[The lawyer] had put in place a “system” pursuant to which he entrusted his non-legally trained staff to carry out conveyancing transactions, including witnessing the execution of conveyancing documents, so that he did not have to meet his own clients, unless he deemed it necessary. Under this “system”, he presupposed that everything was in order until and unless his staff flagged any issues. In relation to [the Buyer’s] conveyancing transaction, nothing out of the ordinary was brought to his attention. He therefore assumed that all was in order and never met [the Buyer], notwithstanding the fact that the latter had engaged him as his conveyancing solicitor.

It’s important to note that witnessing someone sign a document isn’t likely to have stopped the fraudulent transaction. The nub of the issue was that the lawyer had claimed to do something he did not. The Court recognized that some might call this “technical dishonesty”.

But what’s the point of witnessing someone sign a document? The main idea is that it prevents fraud. Anyone can put anyone’s signature anywhere. The lawyer ensures the signor’s identity, understands the document, and there are no signs of duress or misunderstanding.

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.HoufuA similar problem persists in the area of wills and testaments.

Post-pandemic, though, alternatives are apparent but with questionable legality. If a lawyer witnesses a signing through Zoom, does it count? If e-Signature can be used, what value does being in person add? Banks don’t use lawyers to prevent fraud all the time too. Document submission, such as income and particulars, can now be received directly through the relevant government agency and authenticated fairly securely by the applicant. The wonders of SingPass!

The question is, would the lawyer have escaped sanction if there was actually a “system” in place? The Court describes this as a “non-system” because the lawyer had abdicated his responsibilities to non-legally trained staff. But what if the lawyer had implemented a system to train his staff on when to escalate, use checklists, verify the work, and carry out audits? Would that be enough? Or is the point that no matter what, the lawyer must be physically present?

We aren’t going to find out because everyone understands that witnessing a signing has to be personal. Furthermore, this is a strict requirement promulgated by legislation, so it’s non-negotiable.

These issues are essential because conveyancing is a prime example of volume work in the legal profession. If a lawyer has to be physically present at every stage of the transaction, this would slow down the process and make it expensive. The practice would be harder to justify in the face of more efficient and cost-effective solutions. More people would believe its objective is to maintain a monopoly for lawyers. Even lawyers may be hard-pressed to find efficient ways to do business and inadvertently find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

For now, legal innovators trying to automate manual processes or implement a “system” would have to be careful if they involved any attestation. It’s the law; you can’t change it, and breaking it would get you in hot soup, no matter how dissatisfied you would be.

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 earlier post explored another common pitfall.

#Law #Lawyers #E-signature #Employee #LawSociety #Singapore #SupremeCourtSingapore #tech

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

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Presentations are a crucial part of your professional life. In my line of work, presentations function as introducers, reports, training, proposals, summaries and explainers. Sometimes, presentations are watched in person or through web conferencing. Other times, they appear on websites for browsing or e-learning.

To do the job, many people will start PowerPoint, plunk in many words in bullet points and let their “showmanship” do the rest.

Your old ways of doing PowerPoint are no longer enough

Montreal Design ClubPhoto by charlesdeluvio / Unsplash

Since the pandemic and remote work changed the ways we work today, the demands on presentation have also changed drastically:

  • A “presenter” may no longer be present. You might not even be visible through a Zoom Window. Some presentations are watched in a video. Some people may even view your presentation on “mute” or by continuously scrolling to the “interesting” points.
  • Your audience consumes content differently these days. If I wanted to read a wall of bullet points like this one), I would rather read an article. Worse, if the content doesn’t engage, I lose the audience. You also want the audience to come back to you too.
  • Some studies claim that an audience’s attention span is about 20 minutes. Context matters. You might be forced to sit through the entire presentation like at a conference, but your attention still has to be maintained. Viewing it from home or somewhere else, you must get to the point quickly.

As a lawyer, I seem to have endless things to say. Figuring out how to say it? That’s the tricky part. Your personality and style contribute to your best presentations. Reading a block of bullet points on a template PowerPoint presentation wouldn’t bring that out. You would need opportunity, practice and feedback—all the time.

If you want to look at new ways of doing things, I wrote this post for you.

You can express more on your slide.

I found that the easiest way to improve your presentation is to abandon bullet points. The first step towards approaching any slide is to think about its purpose:

  • Am I making a list?
  • Am I describing a process?
  • Am I highlighting a point which I want the audience to know?
  • And so on.

Once you know what you want, it becomes evident that bullet points aren’t the only way to achieve them. A process can be described with arrows, steps or even a map. A list can be made of post-its, boxes and maybe even articles (for example, a list of news items can be illustrated with “newspaper clippings”). Such design elements will help an audience, no matter how far they are from you, to get the point.

Since presentations aren’t my core area of work, I don’t find myself being able to come up with a design quickly. A quick reference could be helpful.

In the end, I found The Better Deck Deck by Nolan Haims. Essentially they are a bunch of flashcards showing deck ideas. This is not an essay about how to make great presentations, just a collection of examples which condenses excellent ideas and how to execute them.

The Better Deck Deck: 52 Alternatives to Bullet Points | Nolan Haims CreativeThis deck of cards gives you 52 proven design alternatives to the dreaded bullet point layout and over 150 professionally designed examples of slides using these techniques to spark your creativity and improve your next presentation.Nolan Haims CreativeShop

Before I embark on any presentation project, I flip through these cards to get those creative juices flowing. If you do lots of presentations, I recommend it!

SmartArt isn’t stupid once you tear it apart.

If you believe bullet points are not the right direction, fret not; Microsoft PowerPoint agrees with you too.

In recent years, Microsoft PowerPoint has been improving on a function named “SmartArt”. It is an excellent tool for converting your bullet points into anything else. Today, they have galleries of ideas for you to choose from, including 3D.

I’m just kidding. Please don’t choose a 3D SmartArt! I beg you!

Unfortunately, it’s too much of a good thing. SmartArt, as well as the fancier “Design Ideas”, doesn’t teach you which design is best for you, leading to stock templates and bullet points in various shapes and sizes. These days, I can tell which slides were designed by PowerPoint, not you.

Furthermore, because PowerPoint tightly merges design and content, it isn’t easy to customize SmartArt in any profound way. This includes translating any ideas you have from the reference guide in the previous tip to PowerPoint.

The key to making SmartArt do what you want is to convert it to shapes. Once your SmartArt loses its form, you can arrange and align your shapes in any way you please.

This is my current workflow: sketch the contours of my design in SmartArt, then refine it by converting it to shapes and working on them.

This opens many possibilities and speeds up your presentation production by quickly creating basic shapes and designs.

Don’t be a Presenter, Be a Coder: SlideDev

Everybody loves PowerPoint because it is WYSIWYG — what you see is what you get. It’s easy to understand the tools, and there’s comfort in getting what you want right from the development stage. Most alternatives to PowerPoint like Google Slides and Apple Keynote also rely heavily on WYSIWYG.

WYSIWYG is excellent for novice users, but it’s easy to outgrow them.

The first problem with PowerPoint is that it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the number of options. We had seen one of them already when we tried to create an ugly and unreadable 3D SmartArt. You can also wreck your presentation with different fonts and sizes and unprofessional-looking work.

If you’ve always wanted to approach a different approach, try Slidev.

SlideDev employs many features familiar to Coders — Markdown syntax, installation using npm and hosting on a website. You also get to write your presentation on your IDE, version control using git and include anything a website can do, such as embeds and CSS animations.

I can’t use Slidev at work because nobody knows how to read a markdown file, so don’t throw away your PowerPoint yet.

However, having tried it, I appreciated being able to condense the essential parts of making a presentation. Suppose you aren’t a coder but are very familiar with presentations. In that case, I recommend trying Slidev to get a taste of what it is like to code and increase your familiarity with web technologies.

Conclusion

I hope this post helped you with some new places to explore how to make your next presentation. During the pandemic, I searched high and low for ways to improve my presentations, and these are some of the things I found. Did you find something worth sharing? Feel free to let me know!

Would I still use Excel for Contract Management?Many people would like to use Excel to manage their contract data. After two years of operating such a system, would I still recommend it?Love.Law.Robots.HoufuAnother one of my Microsoft Office posts.

#tech #MicrosoftOffice #MicrosoftPowerPoint #Ideas #Slidev #Presentation #Books #Programming #Training

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

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It's an exciting time to be alive. In last year's TechLawFest, Singapore's signature legal conference for folks who need to shore up their tech gravitas, NFTs were discussed furiously. Back then, NFTs were the hottest thing in the universe, and lawyers either knew NFTs or didn't.

The world is much different these days. TechLawFest has already moved on to the “Metaverse”.

We've got more top-notch speakers to break down every aspect of the Metaverse for you.

Don't miss out: https://t.co/BvgY2wOqpy ​#futurelaw #lawandtechnology #tlf #tlf22 #techlaw #techlawfest pic.twitter.com/c6OMnx5f3Q

— TechLaw.Fest (@TechLawFest) May 24, 2022

In the meantime, the value of NFTs and cryptocurrencies plunged. Two years of financial gains were wiped out. Suddenly, celebrities piping cryptocurrencies went quiet and were ordered to do some soul searching.

It's the biggest “I told you so” moment in my recent memory. This makes the websites of crypto sceptics fun to read. The “counter” memes are fun too.

Diamond Hands is crypto slang, by the way.

Anyone familiar with the reality in this space is well aware that scams and frauds are plentiful, and the dreams are as beautiful as the chasms you can fall into. This isn't an investment blog, but high risk doesn't lead to high returns. A get-rich scheme is not for the faint-hearted or the ethically firm.

From the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

I am secretly happy that cryptocurrencies and NFTs have finally had their long-coming reckoning. It's not because I like people losing money. Or that crypto bros will finally shut the hell up.

My interest in this area is quite intellectual. I think such technologies raise fascinating questions, which is the most lawyerly thing you will hear me say on this blog for a long time.

Take stolen NFTs, for example:

Looking forward to precedent setting debates on IP ownership & exploitation, having spent 18 years studying copyright & the industry laws. I’d ather meet @DarkWing84 to make a deal, vs in court. We can prove the promise of ape community https://t.co/U1GpYK2X7d

— Seth Green (@SethGreen) May 24, 2022

You might remember Mr Green as either Dr Evil's son, a voice on Family Guy, or the creator, writer, etc., of Robot Chicken. He was also a victim of a phishing scam which took away his NFT. All this sounds rather ordinary, but Mr Green also had plans to use the Ape referred to in his NFT for a show. Without his NFT, he can't make his show.

Sorry, what?

Presumably, it's because when you own an NFT, you own the right to parade it in other material. You know, like how some people pick which shows their pets will star in. If you don't own a pet, there's no show.

However, it's not so simple. An NFT is a reference to a particular bunch of data on a blockchain. Furthermore, “owning” a thing isn't necessarily the same as owning its intellectual property. No one gets the idea that because they bought a Harry Potter book, they get to start their own Harry Potter universe.

Even so, this confusion is particularly rife with digital products. Just because you own the “metaverse” handle on Instagram doesn't take away Meta's right to take back their handle per their terms of use.

Beware the metaverse. It's not all fun and games out there.

In this regard, BAYC's terms of use are a crap shoot.

Source: https://boredapeyachtclub.com/#/terms (access 12 June 2022)

  • Yes, “You Own the NFT”. That sounds great, even though the capitalised “Own” looks fishy.
  • “When you purchase an NFT, you own the underlying Bored Ape, the Art, completely”. What's with the comma between “Bored Ape” and “the Art”? Is “Bored Ape” the definition of the “Art”? Or are there two things, the “Bored Ape” and “the Art”? What does owning something “completely” mean anyway?
  • Clause ii starts with “Subject to your continued compliance with these Terms…”. I guess this is what owning something completely means?
  • Who is “you” anyway?

Of course, this may be only a snapshot of the agreement between BAYC and the owner of NFT. Other terms like the smart contract or at OpenSea may apply. However, with terms this grossly vague, it's hard to expect the other conditions to be an improvement or fully resolve all arguments. You'd expect any lawyer with a bit of imagination to have a field day with this.

This is perhaps why Mr Green would love to make a deal rather than meet the current owner of his phished NFTs in court.

The issues with stolen NFTs aren’t so novel

Delorean Photo by Mark Sivewright / Unsplash

Regarding the issue of who “owns” a stolen NFT, you may be surprised that there are precedents. In fact, this problem is so well known that it forms a key part of a first-year contract law student’s learning.

The theory, distilled, is as follows. The original owner didn’t intend to transfer his NFT to a fraudster. There was a mistake that voided his consent to the (smart) contract that operated the transfer. If such a contract is voided, the fraudster had no right to transfer his NFT to his unwitting buyer. The unwitting buyer thus doesn’t own the NFT. The court will order the buyer to transfer the NFT back to the original owner.

We would be short-changing the law students if the issues were so straightforward:

  • The unwitting buyer is also a victim because he bought the NFT without knowing it was stolen. It’s a choice between two victims — either take the NFT from the unwitting buyer or leave the original owner out.
  • What kind of mistake should void consent? Surely, they have to be really big mistakes, right?
  • Is the buyer really a victim? The cost of an NFT is fairly well known. Can one buy an NFT at such a low price that he or she has to know it is part of a criminal enterprise?

It’s even more surprising that you don’t have to travel out of a web3 world to find an example. In Quoine Pte Ltd v B2C2 Ltd [2020] SGCA(I) 2, computers were made to trade Ethereum and Bitcoin at superfast speeds and without human intervention. The code led to unexpected results such that USD285 million in Bitcoin (back then) were contested between two market participants. Was the bug a mistake that allowed one participant to cancel the contracts? The majority of the court said no. The code was doing what everyone intended.

If this was the case, how is hitting the transfer button a mistake? In a decentralized and “trustless” world, a buyer isn’t expecting the identity of a seller to be a material issue in a transaction. Aren’t you supposed to be taking good care of your account yourself anyway? The system is working as expected.

“Working as expected” is the kind of phrase you throw around when you are feeling unkind. Quoine’s dissent is also interesting, and I reproduced it here:

There is nothing surprising, impermissible or unworkable therefore about a test which asks what any reasonable trader would have thought, given knowledge of the particular circumstances.

Three Things: Our Robots made our mistake worseThe plot sounds like something from right out of a movie. In the dead of the night, computers have been doing their thing — buying and selling cryptocurrencies based on maths and science. One morning, a human checks in and realises that something has gone very wrong. A glitch in the algorithm caused…Love.Law.Robots.In Blog version 2020, I wrote about this case.

A reasonable trader, or a reasonable market participant, isn’t an ordinary guy. He represents the best of us, the fairest of us and the guy we need to be when we are tempted by greed, hubris and selfishness.

In a world replete with scams and grifters, perhaps a reasonable person is what cryptocurrency needs.

The building blocks of a major lawsuit are in place

![Lego has been my life since as far back as I can remember, when I was younger I loved building houses, making all the Lego family comfortable in their awesome new home.

Now, I watch my 5 year old nephew delve head first into the infinite possibilities that Lego provides. It’s an opportunity to see what comes from a young mind. It’s awesome. Never grow up.](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1498747324273-943f73ca00b6?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=MnwxMTc3M3wwfDF8c2VhcmNofDExfHxidWlsZGluZyUyMGJsb2Nrc3xlbnwwfHx8fDE2NTUyNzQxMDA&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&q=80&w=2000)Photo by Hello I'm Nik / Unsplash

In other news, a law firm in Singapore managed to secure a worldwide freezing order over an NFT in a purely commercial dispute (a botched loan agreement). There aren’t any details on how such an order will be enforced — would they serve it on an online marketplace and force them not to process any transactions? In any case, the fact that it succeeded will tempt others to try it themselves.

The more people look to the legal system to enforce what they perceive as their rights, the more opportunities courts will have to comment on them. The outcome might not be what early adopters prefer or expect — a court can hold that it isn’t reasonable to claim that a phished NFT belongs to an unwitting buyer because the code of the smart contract worked as expected. Similarly, cryptocurrency is as decentralised as finding a marketplace which wouldn’t obey court orders.

The key here is that there must be people who value their NFTs enough to request a court to protect their rights. In a bull run, the incentive to do so is muted because it would probably be more profitable to continue investing. In a bear market, when the chips have fallen, promises that have been made must be kept. And that’s when the lawyers come in.

Hopefully at some point, we’d clear the deck of grifters and scam artists, and leave cryptocurrency, NFTs and even maybe the Metaverse with the norms of a sustainable enterprise.

That’s what everyone wants, right?

#tech #TechLawFest #TechnologyLaw #Cryptocurrency #NFT #Contracts #Law #News

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

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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

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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

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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

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Sometime in 2019, I read Technical Blogging and realised several things missing about my blog. That's when I wrote, “Why I would use Excel for my Contract Management System”, as a demonstration of what I learned. Lo and behold, it is one of the best performing posts on the blog.

I want to think that the post was pretty effective. Try and answer a need that a reader may have, etc. However, I think it's more likely because people really want to use Excel to manage their contracts.

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.Houfu

Two years have passed. Do I still have the same opinion? Would I use Excel for contract management?

I am still using Excel.

Let's go to the ending first: I am still using this system after two years. Many of the complaints I expected still held:

  • It's incredibly tedious. I don't really have the time to input all the fields properly. With the pandemic situation, it's not been straightforward to get cheap help either.
  • Some of the fields I selected were not so helpful. For example, the free text input for some fields like services etc., made it difficult to gain insight across broad data ranges.
  • It just isn't convenient. I wanted badly for the system to let me know when there were expiring contracts. However, I had to set a time manually to open the document and extract the information. This was not a commitment that I could keep easily.

However, the system stood up to be counted on when I needed it. I have been able to locate and check previous contracts, which the original department could not find. Furthermore, when I needed to find out the number of jurisdictions we did business with, it was a simple Pivot chart. A pretty graph I could show my management in less than an hour.

Lessons Learnt

Even though I have stuck with Excel, I found my experience illuminating, and it definitely prepared me for my other projects in implementing document automation and e-signature. Here's a list of lessons I have learned that will give you insights into your own journey.

1. Don't underestimate Excel.

This old green toolbox wears its age well and hints at owners long past, their workday woes and triumphs—the daily grind. Photo by Susan Holt Simpson / Unsplash

The Office 365 apps are not only ubiquitous but are also very malleable. The example close to a tech lawyer's heart is Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word is not an excellent tool for writing court submissions and contracts. But they can do that, as well as letters, forms, notices, policies, documentation and the list. Since you can find Word on many computers at our workplaces, they are used ad nauseam even when there are better ways to write letters or contracts.

If you're impressed with what a word processor like Microsoft Word can do, wait till you see Excel. Of course, writing court submissions with Excel appears farfetched, but I have come across contracts written with Excel. More sophisticated (and correct) uses of Excel include compiling and analysing data and presenting summaries.

If you manage your contracting data in Excel, Excel can process such data to extract and analyse data, as we did in my 2019 post. The information you input in the form might look like a table, but it's become more than that. Using its built-in functions, you can extract and manipulate the data inside.

So, if you find Microsoft Office apps on your computer, don't dismiss them too quickly. It's definitely a part of your toolbox, and you can do some pretty amazing things with them.

2. Seek data, not information

Document folders on the shelvesPhoto by Viktor Talashuk / Unsplash

A strange insight came to me once I tried to push Excel to do more with my information. What's the point of putting in the dates of the contract, the jurisdictions of the counterparty, or governing law of the contract? The most immediate answer is that it summarises the contract and its risk profile as a lawyer. When it's a table, I can broadly see this information across a range of contracts.

For a computer or a program like Excel, this risk profile information has no meaning by itself. To make your data work harder for you, a program like Excel has to recognise special characteristics like dates, categories and numbers. Once Excel knows more about the data it is handling, further processing like analytics over a time span or clustering becomes possible.

Once you have that going, you are no longer dictating to Excel what your information is and how your information should be presented. Now Excel can do some of the heavy lifting for you in computing your data as you explore it. Doing more with less! New insights!

In my experience, staring at the information you have at hand doesn't always immediately deliver data. Special insights came when I used the system more and realised what other information I could capture. Suppose you could explore your contract data with purpose-built systems. That's awesome. However, if you only have access to Excel, it's better to use that than to be led by your feelings around the information.

3. The best tool for the job can be Excel

I had a few hours to kill in Copenhagen, so I went to the Sorte Diamant Library to take some photos. Libraries are quiet places and staff members aren’t always thrilled to hear camera shutters go off. As I was firing away, I noticed a staffer approaching from my side. I said a photographers’ prayer and prepared to get told off. He said to follow him and I obliged. We walked through a door with a “staff only” sign, found our way down a narrow corridor and entered a huge room, dimly lit, filled with archived books. “You’ll get good shots in here”, the librarian said and then got back to work.Photo by Marten Bjork / Unsplash

In reality, you would not be innovating in a vacuum. There might already be several tools in your organisation, and they may have users too. Google Docs is all right, and I'm not too fond of Microsoft Word. I really like Notion too. Would I be able to convince everyone around me to drop Microsoft Word and adopt Google Docs or Notion immediately? It's a tall order.

This is what “no-code” should look like — NotionWhat do we really want from a “no-code” product? Notion shows we want well designed software which can deliver a big impact in small ways.Love.Law.Robots.Houfu

Furthermore, your solution is supposed to fill gaps in the organisation. Every organisation is different so that the best solution has to be customised for each organisation. There may be places and times where adopting a complete, point to point solution is the best approach. Very often, though, you'd have to do some real work of substituting, eliminating, consolidating or reusing something that's already there. You have to lay the groundwork.

A tech lawyer shouldn't focus on what tools are out there but what tools he can have to do the job. At times, leadership is not so forthcoming to invest in a costly platform. To make do, you have to take a look at your toolbox and what you have there. Many of us will find Excel there, so we have to make the best use of it. Explore it, and you will find a pretty powerful tool.

Conclusion

I ain't ashamed to say I use Excel. Compared to having nothing , this is still a much better situation.

Using Excel, the contract management system may have entered a static point — I can't really find a way to improve it significantly using Excel only. As I mentioned in my 2019 post:

However, once you can demonstrate practical benefits and a workflow, stepping up to a real made for the purpose document or contract management system is easier to climb.

The significant improvement now would be to get something that's made for its purpose.

Even so, you could, as I did, find that significant improvement is hard to attain. It's too radical a change, and I can't really demonstrate the benefits that would persuade large sections of folks who may not like the change. If that's the case, we may have to live with our Excel CMS for just a while longer.

On the other hand, there are other aspects in your legal department that you might find lacking, such as e-signatures or intake systems. Perhaps it's time to bring these up to scratch as well. Once others get used to e-signatures, it's a shorter leap to conclude that Excel is not the best solution we can have. Innovation is always a long journey, and at some point, you'd look back at your Excel CMS and find it a milestone of your early efforts.

#tech #ContractManagementSystem #Contracts #LegalTech #MicrosoftOffice #E-signature

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