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

The training program, called Automation Academy, is currently in a pilot phase and is run through Clifford Chance's Singapore-based global innovation lab Create+65. The firm plans to expand Automation Academy throughout the Asia-Pacific region in the coming months. Clifford Chance's other offices in the region are in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong in China; Perth and Sydney in Australia; Seoul in South Korea and Tokyo in Japan.

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 program 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, which automates 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 program, the aim is to have developed fully functional bots that can change the way Clifford Chance approaches particular legal tasks, added Laura Collins-Scott, the innovation lead of Create+65, in the statement.

Automation Academy is the latest legal tech initiative by Clifford Chance in Singapore since last year, when it launched its Asia-Pacific innovation hub, called Best Delivery and Innovation Hub, with support by the Singapore Economic Development Board. The global innovation lab Create+65, which was also launched last year, is a part of the innovation hub. In May 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 the city-state's government, which has been actively promoting legaltech in Singapore. The city-state 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 launched Asia's first legaltech-focused startup accelerator, called Global Legal Innovation and Digital Entrepreneurship, after an 18-month delay and a $2.7 million scheme 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 before the city-state's government decides whether to renew. The firm also has a Formal Law Alliance with local firm Cavenagh Law.