LAB provides legal services for the less privileged in Singapore. We handle thousands of family disputes involving children each year. We are therefore always looking for ways to help more families get access to justice through the use of legal technology.

LAB has developed 4 legal tech products, namely:

1. An online chatbot which equips users with legal information on family and children issues based on their input;
2. A matrimonial asset division tool which predicts how much a party can receive from divorce proceedings;
3. A tool which guides users on how to complete their Syariah court divorce papers; and
4. A portal which our applicants for legal aid can use to apply for legal aid and advice, and communicate with us on their cases.

This link provides a quick introduction to each of these products.

Currently, we are developing a tool to help users contemplating/undergoing divorce estimate the reasonable amount of maintenance that they will be required to pay for their children without unnecessary litigation.

Parties will be able to use information from these tools to make informed decisions, facilitate negotiations, reduce the acrimony between parties and in turn, minimise the impact of family proceedings on the children.

I will share about the strategies, methods and best practices we have employed to develop these legal tech products at the conference.

By sharing our experiences and insights, I hope to inspire fellow legal tech enthusiasts, legal practitioners and policy makers, especially in the access to justice arena, with ideas and tips on how to create a culture of innovation within their organisations, and how to leverage on this to create useful and cost-effective tech products for positive social impact.

As the agricultural revolution gathered pace in early industrialisation England, a man became synonymous with raising fears about the use of machinery. His followers smashed up farm and factory equipment. They took his name and became synonymous with holding back developments and potential progress. He was Ned Ludd

As the world embraces artificial intelligence, from mobile phones to colossal state and international computer systems, are the Luddites walking amongst us in family justice? A recent report of the renowned Nuffield Foundation described a lack of vision for the use of AI in family justice. Many adhere, perhaps even cling to, individual discretion and case specific best interests of children and financial division. Using digital technology, even before the very recent advent of artificial intelligence, was taboo and an apparent threat to the mystique, of family dispute resolution.

Yet judges have been given guidance on appropriate use of AI. Law firms embrace it in other areas of work with software companies month by month announcing more products and opportunities for seemingly efficient ways of working.

Moreover and even more crucially, the public may well have more confidence in AI than lawyers! At least, they will expect digital now AI guidance on reaching outcomes in family disputes. But they are too often frustrated and thrown back on traditional forms of advice and representation which has in essence changed little over a century.

This presentation will not be technical but it will show some of what is possible, some of what is already going on and some of the threats and opportunities for the profession and family justice. It intends to contribute to a vision of AI for family justice

Peace agreements are ‘formal, publicly available documents, produced after discussion with conflict protagonists and mutually agreed to by some or all of them, addressing conflict with a view to ending it.’ Increasingly, peace agreements serve not only as accords to end violence, but also roadmaps for peacebuilding, the wider peace process and the post-conflict state that emerges. Where children are considered at all, existing studies have focused almost exclusively on the ways in which peace agreements address children and, relatedly, children’s participation or representation in the negotiations that produce them. While important, these preoccupations can overlook opportunities for child participation in the implementation of peace agreements. This paper will argue that when peace agreements are understood as instrumental rather than constitutive of a peace process, the implementation phase opens avenues for ongoing negotiation and recalibration, greater levels of participation and ultimately, opportunities for including the views of children and young people.