Clifford Chance has launched an automation training programme in Singapore—the latest of the Magic Circle firm's legal technology efforts in the city-state.

The training programme, called Automation Academy, is currently in a pilot phase and is run through Clifford Chance's Singapore-based global innovation lab Create+65.

Automation Academy helps trainees and lawyers understand how to automate tasks, such as drafting contracts, without any computer coding. "The aim is to ensure all trainees have a commercial understanding of how legal documents can be automated by breaking down the fear that many legal graduates and lawyers, who often identify with being non-technical/non-mathematical, have around technology," the firm said in a press release.

The programme is run with Josef, a two-year-old Melbourne-based legal tech startup that operates a platform that helps lawyers build chatbots, without actually coding, that automate lawyer-client conversations to provide legal guidance and draft documents more efficiently. Josef's law firm clients include Herbert Smith Freehills and MinterEllison, according to the startup's website. Josef also collaborated with Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to teach the firm's summer associates in Silicon Valley to build bots.

The automation training will equip lawyers with the skills to identify automation opportunities and build bots to solve real-world challenges within Clifford Chance, the firm's Singapore managing partner, Kai-Niklas Schneider, said in a statement.

At the end of 12 weeks into the programme, the aim is to have developed fully functional bots that can change the way Clifford Chance approaches particular legal tasks, according to Laura Collins-Scott, the innovation lead of Create+65.

The firm plans to expand Automation Academy throughout the Asia Pacific in the coming months. Clifford Chance's other offices in the region are in Beijing; Shanghai; Hong Kong; Perth, Australia; Sydney; Seoul, South Korea; and Tokyo.

Automation Academy is the latest legaltech initiative by Clifford Chance in Singapore. Last year, it launched its Asia-Pacific innovation hub, called Best Delivery and Innovation Hub, with support from the Singapore Economic Development Board. The global innovation lab Create+65, which also launched last year, is a part of the innovation hub. In May of this year, Create+65 selected Singapore-based artificial intelligence company Taiger Singapore Pte. Ltd. as its first participant.

Clifford Chance's efforts are in line with government of Singapore, which has been actively promoting legaltech in the city-state. Singapore is currently in the middle of a two-year pilot programme, called Future Law Innovation Programme, launched last year by the Singapore Academy of Law, a government body that promotes Singapore's legal industry. So far this year, the government has launched Asia's first legal tech-focused startup accelerator, called Global Legal Innovation and Digital Entrepreneurship—a project that came after an 18-month delay. It also has launched a $2.7 million program to encourage small- and medium-sized local firms to adopt legal technology.

Clifford Chance operates in Singapore under a Qualifying Foreign Law Practice (QFLP) license, which allows the firm to practise certain aspects of local law. All current QFLP licenses will expire next year unless the government decides to renew those licenses. The firm also has a Formal Law Alliance with local firm Cavenagh Law.

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