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

Decision-making algorithms (Automated Decision-Making Systems, or ADM) have become an integral, although often unconscious, part of everyday life for each of us. By following suggestions derived from personal profiling facilitated by big data, ADMs make decisions on significant aspects of life, and they are also widely used in family matters and in proceedings involving children, such as decisions regarding child support, custody, and adoption procedures. These practices are widespread in comparative law, both in civil law and common law systems. Their use seems to be justified, on the one hand, by the assumption—even if inaccurate—that an ADM can be fair and independent in its decision-making when, in reality, it absorbs the biases present in the data that fuel its functioning. On the other hand, it is argued that their use is economically efficient because they are applied in serial cases, allowing for resource savings. Both assumptions conceal debatable realities that negatively influence algorithmic treatment; generally, data collection concerns not the children but their family or the environment from which they come. As a result, the child is unfairly affected by the negative consequences of their parents' behaviour—those who are actually under scrutiny—but the biases in such data persistently impact the children and their future. The purpose of this abstract is to verify, using a comparative methodology, whether and how legal systems attempt to mitigate the negative impact of family surveillance ADMs on the life and well-being of the minor subject to their scrutiny.