Singapore Gives University $10.7M to Develop Legal Tech Research Program
Singapore Management University has received the grant to launch a five-year research program that will focus on developing a smart contract programming language.
March 13, 2020 at 10:09 AM
3 minute read
The Singaporean government has given a $10.7 million grant to one of the city-state's law schools to fund a research program that develops smart technologies to be used in legal services.
Singapore Management University has received the grant to launch a five-year research program in computational law to study and develop open-source legal technologies. The program will first aim to develop a programming language that allows for laws, rules and agreements to be expressed in code. The goal is for the industry to eventually adopt this language in developing smart contracts and statues that can be reliably executed by computers to enable precise and accurate performance and compliance.
"The [the computer program] will facilitate the delivery of more efficient legal and regulatory services through digital systems, and will broaden access to justice," Singapore Management University said in a statement.
The university's law school, one of three in the city-state, will lead the development of the research program and collaborate with the School of Information Systems. The research program also collaborates with two co-founders of Singaporean startup Legalese, which develops programming languages that help automate legal document drafting. Legalese was founded in 2015 by entrepreneur Wong Meng Weng, who joins the program as a principal research fellow, and Alexis Chun, a former disputes lawyer with Singaporean law firm Rajah & Tann.
The grant comes from the National Research Foundation, a division of the Prime Minister's Office. So far, a variety of Singaporean government agencies have made funding available to encourage innovation and technological advancement in the legal sector.
In 2016, the Singapore government pledged $13.6 billion in public investment to drive innovation in the city-state in the next five years. In 2019, the Singaporean Ministry of Law, Law Society of Singapore and other government agencies launched a $2.7 million (S$3.68 million) scheme to help small and medium-sized Singaporean law firms adopt legal technology.
The larger and better-known initiative, the Singapore Academy of Law's Future Law Innovation Programme, or FLIP, launched a legal tech startup accelerator last year and has attracted Linklaters as one of the members. The Singapore Economic Development Board, another government agency, launched the Professional Services Industry Transformation Map in 2018 to help drive innovation in the services sectors, including legal. Clifford Chance has taken advantage of both FLIP and the transformation map and set up a regional innovation hub in Singapore.
In November, the Law Society of England and Wales named Singapore one of the top 10 emerging legal tech markets in the world.
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