A New Industry-Wide Matters Management & Collaboration Platform for Lawyers and Law Practices

Driving Technology Adoption Amidst the Changing Industry Landscape

The Ministry of Law (MinLaw), in partnership with legal technology firm Lupl, is developing an industry-wide matters management and collaboration platform, the Legal Technology Platform (LTP).

The LTP is designed around legal workflows commonly used by lawyers and law practices, and is a plug-and-play platform that integrates existing solutions (e.g. document management systems, communication solutions). Lawyers can access core features from these solutions via the LTP to minimise toggling between solutions, streamlining their day-to-day workflow and allowing them to focus on more substantive legal work.

A preview of the key features of the LTP, as part of a soft launch event, was provided to a select group of industry members as well as key stakeholders earlier today. The soft launch event also marks the beginning of the beta testing phase of the LTP. Further details about the LTP’s features as well as the commercial aspects will be shared nearer to the official launch in the second quarter of 2022.

Why digitise now?

The LTP is one of the key initiatives in MinLaw’s Technology and Innovation Roadmap (TIR), which was launched at the end of 2020 to support industry transformation and drive technology adoption within the legal industry.

Digitalisation is a key enabler and plays a critical role in transforming and advancing Singapore’s legal industry. Technology can improve the efficiency of lawyers and law practices, allowing them to provide better legal services by streamlining work processes and increasing the accuracy of legal work and documentation. The COVID-19 pandemic has also demonstrated the importance of digitalisation in ensuring business continuity for the legal industry, so that lawyers and law practices can continue to serve their clients efficiently and effectively even while operating remotely.

Who is the LTP for?

The LTP will support Singapore law practices, particularly small and medium-sized practices, which often face tight resources, in their digitalisation transformation by lowering the barriers to adopting legal technology solutions. The LTP is developed through an iterative approach with an emphasis on interoperability with third-party solutions, and is designed to be able to meet the evolving needs of the industry. As a secure, cloud-based legal matter management software and collaboration platform that will incorporate many of the solutions and systems lawyers use, the LTP aims to make it easy for lawyers to work together on legal matters within and across different organisations.

The key features of the LTP

Document management and collaboration

Lawyers will be able to work and collaborate on documents and other materials with internal and external parties digitally and securely. The LTP will also enable the pinning of content and third-party links for easy referencing within the team.

Assign tasks and track deadlines

The legal project management toolkit gives lawyers visibility of project status and enables the tracking of deadlines easily.

Customisable Matter Templates

An expanding library of matter templates to cater to various kinds of cases, so that lawyers can access and start working on their next case swiftly.

Secure communication

Lawyers will be able to communicate with their clients and external stakeholders via an encrypted in-app feature.

Integrations
The LTP integrates with select Practice Management Systems (PMS) and other solutions. Lawyers will be able to link their existing solutions to access key information and documents in a single location.

Co-Developed with Feedback by the Legal Industry

MinLaw and Lupl have been working closely with the legal industry to co-develop the LTP. Feedback on user requirements was gathered from a year-long engagement exercise with close to 150 Singapore lawyers from diverse practice areas, and incorporated into the development of the LTP. MinLaw will continue to seek feedback from the legal industry, and targets to officially launch the LTP in the second quarter of this year.

MinLaw is also working with other public institutions, such as the Courts and various Government agencies, to progressively integrate the LTP with systems which lawyers commonly transact with.

Additionally, MinLaw is working on a grant support scheme to defray the initial costs of adopting the LTP, so that price will not be a barrier for law practices to adopt the LTP.

To receive updates and register interest in the LTP, interested law practices can do so at the following link: https://go.gov.sg/registerltp