Law firms around the world are still looking for ways to cope with COVID-19 and its impact, and so do law firms in Asia. While they are being exposed to many opportunities, some of them more exciting than the others, certain things will never be the same. The first quarter of 2020 brought a complete or partial lock down in almost every jurisdiction in Asia, which impacted business and legal work in a negative way. While deals have been held up due to the inability to accomplish certain tasks that were once taken for granted, Asian law firms for the most part have been engaged in keeping the staff safe and ensuring business continuity. Technology allowed law firms to move to remote work very quickly. However, the drop in the legal demand, 6% according to Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor, forced the law firms to go the extra mile to serve clients. Hong Kong, for example, hosted a series of virtual legal clinics about legal and regulatory issues for fintech including corporate restructuring, commercial arrangements and financial services. Law firms in Asia were also the first to have their business continuity plans tested, particularly their obligations around the health and safety of staff. The Japanese firm Atsumi & Sakai, for example, came up with an infection countermeasures plan even before the remote work system was established. Although, it is hard to predict the disruption COVID-19 had caused in Asia, law firms are turning their focus towards building greater client's receptiveness digitisation, automation and remote work arrangements. Singapore, for example, has gained a pretty exciting reputation in the LegalTech, for some time now. They have taken strides to embrace and launch initiatives to advance LegalTech, which quickened the pace of its innovation. These include a growing number of centres of excellence (COE's) related to technology; as a country, Singapore, strengthened its infrastructure to facilitate digitalisation in the legal industry. Although the pandemic transformed the way some of the clients perceived the idea of legal digitalisation, not everything can be done online.
For example, it is not easy to train legal interns without face to face interaction and also building and fostering a relationship with a client online, is not as easy as it sounds. Not to mention the financial resources that are needed to procure, learn and train your staff on new software and platforms. "You need time to research what will work for your company, time to experiment with and learn the programs, and time to teach this to the rest of your team." Another issue that has been top-of-mind for LegalTech adopters is cyber security, primarily due to compromised and leaked electronic documents that can be easily disseminated in an unlimited number of copies. As you can see, Asia has been pretty open minded and progressive about LegalTech.
How about your country? What would you like to see changed?
by Galina Barbascumpa