UK Government Launches 1st Legal Tech Trade Mission To Singapore

The UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT), is launching a new trade mission for legal tech companies, this time to the South East Asia legal centre, Singapore, on 11th to 13th November. This will be its first ever legal tech trade mission to the city state.

As with other trade missions, which have included Iberia and Central Europe, a select group of 10 companies – with a UK base – will travel to Singapore and engage with the local legal community.

The mission has been designed to coincide with the Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (SWITCH).

The UK Government department said: ‘This will be a great opportunity for you to meet and network with leaders and decision makers from law firms across Singapore, as well as benefit from the impact of SWITCH [by] meeting industry and government organisations from across the region.’

Recently, some legal experts in the UK have looked on a bit nervously at Singapore’s national effort to drive tech innovation and adoption, worried that the legal centre’s litigation and arbitration capabilities, in particular, may end up taking more international work from English commercial courts and UK-based arbitrations because of this advancement.

However, this new trade mission appears to have overcome any such fears and has embraced the idea of helping the local market to adopt new legal tech, albeit tech that stems from the UK. I.e. the strategy is rather ‘if Singapore is going to move rapidly ahead with tech adoption and improve its legal services offering, then we may as well be promoting the use of UK-based legal tech solutions’, which to Artificial Lawyer does indeed seem to be the better strategy.

Singapore is going to steadily advance in terms of tech adoption in its legal market come what may, so better to be part of it. After all, legal tech knows no borders.

Moreover, many of the UK’s largest law firms operate offices in Singapore, and they in turn may benefit from Singapore moving ahead with legal innovation projects.

In addition, the DIT is also teaming up with the Future Law Innovation Programme (FLIP) and Enterprise Singapore to promote UK legal tech solutions widely across the Singapore legal community.

As readers will remember, Singapore recently set up a funding programme to help local law firms pay for the initial use of various legal tech solutions. Under the scheme $3.68 million has been set aside to provide legal practices with up to 70% funding support for adopting technology solutions. So there will also be an opportunity for UK companies on the trade mission to make themselves known to that programme’s organisers as well.

Overall this opportunity will give you the chance to:

  • Pitch to FLIP’s innovation-driven ecosystem of legal firms
  • Meet with buyers and potential partners.
  • On the ground local support and advice from DIT staff based in Singapore
  • Support from DIT trade experts in London
  • Attend DIT activities during SWITCH week

If you would like to go along, check out the main page here, and to go straight to registering, then click here.

A participation cost of £220 +VAT will apply and be charged upon being selected for the mission. The fee does not include flights, accommodation, insurance, transfers, or food. Registration of interest is open until Friday 20th September 2019. This trade mission is open to UK companies including those with local offices in the region.