Mr marcus lim
Interviewer: Jiang Yu Hang
Interviewee: Marcus Lim (Singapore Country Manager of Lupl, a Legal Tech company headquartered in the US)
Interview Date: 17 May 2022 via Zoom
Interviewee’s Profile
Marcus Lim is the Singapore Country Manager of Lupl, a Legal Tech company that is currently partnering with the Ministry of Law (MinLaw) in Singapore as part of MinLaw’s Legal Technology Platform Initiative (LTPI) to accelerate the digitalisation of the Singapore legal industry. An initial commercial launch for the platform, which will be known as the Legal Tech Platform or LTP in Singapore, will take place on 19 July 2022.
Q1: I understand that you are currently the Singapore country manager of Lupl, a Legal Tech company headquartered in the United States. Could you share with us what motivated you to enter the Legal Tech scene?
I started my legal practice in technology and telecommunications and I always had an interest in this aspect of the law. So it was a very natural move for me, after helping to set-up and launch the Singapore International Mediation Institute (SIMI) on the global mediation map, to get back into this space, albeit from the Legal Tech angle.
I was especially inspired by the vision of Lupl and the LTPI, which was to transform the way lawyers think about and how they work with the variety of Legal Tech solutions now available in the market. The focus on an open system that integrates with existing legal solutions to optimise collaboration also resonated strongly with me.
Q2: In which direction do you think the Legal Tech industry should be headed? What do you think are the most important aspects of legal tech?
I think that as legal solutions become increasingly sophisticated, it is important that lawyers are able to identify with tools that truly speak to the profession. It will help with cementing a stronger sense of community and camaraderie within the profession, a little like how the stethoscope is the mark of a doctor. I believe this is something that Lupl can assist with, being a digital workspace designed specifically for lawyers that brings together the documents, data, communications and knowledge into a central hub for their matters.
Q3: Could you share some of the most important aspects of Lupl, the Legal Technology Platform?
Lupl is a next-generation matter management platform designed to help legal professionals save time, improve client relationships and reduce risk.
It acts as a central hub for legal matters and brings together all the moving parts in one place. There’s legal project management functionality, to help lawyers move their matters forward, manage tasks and key dates, and hit their deadlines. There’s document management functionality, so teams can easily share and collaborate on documents – with integrated eSignature, comparison, version control and collaborative editing. There’s encrypted communication functionality combined with the ability to pull emails into the channel and start Zoom calls internally and with clients. And there’s knowledge management functionality, which allows lawyers to develop and use matter and workflow templates, which automate matter setup and streamline the process. This is all wrapped up in a simple, intuitive user interface which is specifically designed to require no training or implementation effort, something that is particularly important for busy lawyers.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Lupl is its “Bring Your Own System” approach, which allows firms to connect their existing tools and systems. For example, firms can connect their existing Document Management Systems, or Practice Management Systems, to Lupl. Similarly, they can access content from leading providers like LexisNexis via the platform. With the average lawyer using 10 or more different technologies on a given day, it’s no surprise that lawyers are looking for a system to bring things together.
In Singapore, we’ve taken the platform to another level thanks to our collaboration with MinLaw. You’ll see this from the moment you log in from Singapore because you’ll notice the MinLaw logo on screen, which really drives the message that this is a space that Singapore lawyers can call home.
We’ve spent much of the last 12-18 months making sure the platform integrates with the tools and systems lawyers in Singapore use most. We’ve listened carefully to the industry to make sure we’re meeting their needs. One example is our WhatsApp integration, which reflects our finding that 75% of lawyers are using WhatsApp with clients and that lawyers are concerned about the compliance implications. Based on this feedback, we built the industry’s first secure, compliant WhatsApp integration, specifically to meet the needs of Singapore lawyers. Beyond this, we are also working on integrations with government agencies Singapore lawyers interface with, and figuring out how we can bring more of that data onto the platform.
Q4: How mature do you think Legal Tech and Innovation are in Singapore?
I will not represent or hold myself out as the final voice on this, as there are many great pioneers in this field who are much more qualified to make a comment on the Legal Tech progress than I am. From my perspective since joining the scene, I do think that we have come quite a long way.
Looking at past efforts and the take-up rate and the work that has already been done, it would be safe to say that we are more than just a “work in progress” as an industry. In fact I think we are now at a stage where we want to push the boundaries and set new standards.
A growing level of maturity with Legal Tech solutions will certainly bring higher expectations - especially with their ability to integrate with each other. This is going to be a key trend moving forward and why Lupl has been developed with this focus from day one.
Q5: In your opinion, what are the most significant barriers to Legal Innovation with Technology in Singapore? Could you suggest any solutions for them?
I think the challenges in Singapore are much the same as in the rest of the world. The legal profession has been around for a very long time and old habits die hard. People are very used to doing things a certain way – even if they acknowledge that their existing processes require much more time and manual effort than they would like.
But I do think things are changing and a few things are driving that. First, there’s a growing understanding that technology solutions can help reduce the manual, administrative burden and free up lawyers to work on the substantive legal work that they went to law school for. Second, there’s growing client demand for new solutions. In 2022, clients can get their health data on their watch, their financial data via an app, and they are not willing to send an email and wait three days to access their legal work product. Finally, there’s a new generation of lawyers entering the profession who are digital-natives and are quick to adopt new technologies.
Q6: One view against legal technology and innovation is that “If an underlying problem can be solved by hiring more people instead of adopting new legal technology, then it would make little sense to invest in new legal technology.” What would be your response to that?
I think this is reminiscent of an era where the amount of training needed to onboard new tech solutions was heavily front-loaded and required a high initial capital investment. These days where many apps are mobile-friendly and SaaS-based, the balance between the cost of human and tech resource has shifted dramatically.
For me, the future of the industry isn't a choice between “technology or people”, it’s “technology and people”. Technology is there to empower lawyers and clients to solve complex legal problems together – and this also happens to be Lupl’s mission statement!
Q7: What advice would you give to lawyers or law students to prepare for the upcoming technological changes in the legal industry?
We often say that digital devices and social media have become a mainstay of our lives, and we tend to make an assumption that being surrounded by technology makes us comfortable working with and around them. However, that is not true. You may be a law student who has grown up with digital devices all your life, but you may not know what the culture is like working in a law firm over email or over messaging or over documents. What is the protocol for sharing comments? How would you want to manage a work conversation over an email or a message thread? These are all things that you can only learn from immersing yourself in that environment. Just because one has access to technology, it does not mean that one is competent to work in an environment with technology. That means law students will definitely need to acquire some level of professional competence working around and with popular technology solutions. The way you use emails and even Microsoft Word as a student is vastly different from how you use it in a workplace setting.
There are a lot of other considerations to think about, and some of these are very human in nature. These considerations are likely to be lost when we only focus on the technology side. Therefore, we also need to consider the role of people in technology in law and how the work culture of legal services has developed and the ways to get students up to speed, so that there is less of a culture shock when they start practice – there are already enough reasons for young lawyers to burn out, let us not give them another one just because they are unfamiliar with how technology is used in the workplace. Going forward, it would be really great for more law students to be exposed to how practitioners engage with their clients on these various technology platforms.