Research project

Investigator:
Irene Ng

Abstract:
Legal technology, or legal tech, has been under the spotlight recently: ranging from the litigation to transactional work, and the past few years have seen an exponential increase in the amount of legal tech present in all areas of the legal industry. Despite its popularity, little has been discussed or debated on how legal tech should be regulated. The regulation of legal tech, however, is a tricky issue. Presently, the legal industry is heavily regulated, especially lawyers – in this case, should legal tech that intends to replace the function of lawyers or has already replaced lawyers be regulated in a similar manner, and if yes, how should they be regulated? Yet, before even thinking of a way to regulate legal tech, there is still an avalanche of questions, which need to be debated and answered – why should we regulate legal tech? How should we regulate legal tech? What is the relationship between legal tech and the legal industry? How has legal tech affected the legal industry and to what degree? This research project hopes to answer these questions by studying the existing regulations of lawyers and legal tech, providing the policy concerns surrounding regulation of lawyers and legal tech, and the impact of legal tech on existing regulations in the US and EU. The goal of this research project is therefore to provide a new standard or approach in regulating (or not!) the legal tech industry, and the consequences arising thereof.