 Welcome to Global Report. I'm your host, Lollie. Joining us today is Mr. Mark Cohen. Mark is the CEO of Legal Mosaic and the Executive Chairman of Digital Legal Exchange. He's also an author and contributor to various journals, including Forbes. Mark has also lectured at Harvard, Oxford, UCL, IE, and several other leading global institutions. Welcome to the show, Mark. My pleasure to be here with you, Lollie. Well, Mark, it's 6am here in Singapore, so if I were to yon at any point in time, it is me, not you, all right? I'm glad to know that, and I appreciate you getting up so early. Now, Mark, in addition to the accolades that I had just mentioned, you are also a critical player in the legal scene of Singapore because since 2018, you have been our catalyst in residence at the Singapore Academy of Law. Tell us what does a catalyst in residence do? That's a really great question, and I wish I could say that I was the one who suggested that title, but it was the Singapore Academy of Law. I guess in plain terms, a catalyst is someone who makes things happen, or participates in group activities that result in things happening. And so when the Singapore Academy of Law approached me back in 2018 to consider a role, they had in mind some things, and one of the things that they had, I think, was to get someone who had a long and somewhat global familiarity with the legal industry, how it intersects with business, how it intersects with technology, and to sort of take a very fresh, no-holes-barred review of some of the initiatives that Singapore was engaged in with an eye towards providing constructively critical counsel. Now, you know, a couple of months back, I saw this blaring headlight, talking about legal tech in Singapore. I saw this blaring headlight about Singapore being the shining light for legal technology in Asia. But I think if you go to the street, if you talk to the men on the street, we will not be too convinced. And the reason is, I think that any kind of technological advancement has to bring the entire population along with it, and the people on the street are feeling a little laptop because there is no relevance shown to us with regards to the new gadgets, the new technology that all the lawyers and the judges get to utilize. Are they passing on the cost savings? Are they passing on the time savings? What I'm trying to say is that it means very little to the men on the street if we are not shown to benefit too from all these legal innovations. Well, I couldn't agree with you more, whether it's the man on the street or the woman on the street, or whether it's a very large company. For technology to be material, it has to have a use case. That is to say, it's got to be used and applied to solve a problem or to make a particular process more efficient for the benefit of the ultimate consumer. So I come from a background of trial law. Some evidence never even sees the light of day, because it is not material, it's not relevant to the matter at hand. I think that so much of technology is the same. If there is really no use case, then what purpose does it serve? If it is so complicated that users are absolutely timid about the very prospect of trying to learn it, it has very little utility. So I would say in terms of being able to convince the man in the street as to the importance of technology, I would start by saying by using this piece of technology or adopting this app, it will help you to fill in the blank. And I could give you many examples of filling in the blank that have made a real difference for people around the world in recent times, particularly I think since COVID, which is really serving to accelerate change in ways that I think are very daunting, but ultimately I do think that some good things can and will come out of it. Well, let me allow me to give an example of a blank that has not been filled. For example, back in 2013, seven years ago, Singapore allows for law firms to utilize electronic litigation to do their filing from the comfort, the ease and the rapidity of their computers but such a service is denied to the litigants in person. In other words, today if you are not represented, this is the process you have to go through, you have to type out your affidavit, you have to collate your evidence, you have to print it out, you bring it to the human commissioner, you get his manual signature, you get his manual stamp, you scan the whole damn thing and then you take it to one of two filing bureaus in Singapore, get in line for two to three hours and maybe then and only then do you get to do the same thing as lawyers get to do from their computer. So this is why I raise my concern is that is all this legal innovation going to benefit just a small segment of the population, just the legal industry, or is this also going to translate into time and cost savings for the man on the street? Well now we're talking really more about economic issues I think because certainly the potential is there for technological tools to serve, better serve, the man in the street. That capability is there, it's being applied in other jurisdictions. I think part of the problem is that law has always thrived on its artisanal approach to things on the fact that lawyers would claim that no two cases are alike and that it's very labor intensive and that ultimately it's not so much the result or the outcome, but it's the input, the amount of work that was put into it and whether lawyers, not customers, think that they have done a really good job. Now business as we know operates just an opposite set of metrics. That is to say for business to be successful it must be customer-centric, it must be accessible, it must be efficient, it must be competitive, and it must be looking for ways to constantly improve customer access, satisfaction, and experience. So I would argue that it would be a very positive thing if lawyers who are in the so-called retail segment of the legal world, that is to say not corporation, lawyers representing large corporations, but rather lawyers who are representing the man in the street. The problem is that most men on the street can't afford lawyers in the first instance because those lawyers are not themselves making use of the tools that are available, and I'll go one step farther. There are a lot of lawyers who say yes, but technology is inimical to my well-being financially. If I start being able to do something in 10 minutes that I used to spend an hour on will then look at all the money I'm losing. I would flip that around and say that if you could do it in 10 minutes you could lower your price and you could service that many more people, that much more effectively, and by the way you could get other people to do a lot of the machine work and you would be liberating to do the very activities that you thought or hoped you would be doing when you graduated from law school instead of doing grunt work. So I think that what it really requires in my mind, Lily, is an explanation making a case both to the lawyer as well as to the man on the street, and I think it's just really a question of aligning the interests of the two because surely the tools are there for law to do a whole lot better and for customers in turn to have a whole lot better view of lawyers. You know that's interesting you should mention that because I feel that as a consumer looking at a lawyer the legal industry does not behave in a manner typical of other industries. For example with other businesses we as consumers would want to rate the service that we have received so take for example Grab which is the local Uber you know at the end of a trip I will rate the driver if I were to order for service delivery half an hour after delivery they will invite me to comment on the food that I have tasted and that kind of feedback is invaluable to the next customer in his or her decision making but when it comes to the legal industry I see very little very few feedback mechanisms available what are your thoughts on that? I completely agree with you and I will tell you that 13 years ago when I co-founded this company called Clarice Byer we were looking at that and that was before Uber ever came into existence and we thought to ourselves how can we both internally rate the efficiency and the success with clients of our lawyers internally and then how can we in turn gather data on how our clients perceive the lawyer's performance that is how we are going to gauge effectiveness that was 13 years ago fast forward to the present there are certainly platforms there are tools that are available and this raises another point Lily which is I think that law can and must do a better job of borrowing from other industries part of the reason it doesn't is because historically it has operated as a kind of an island or fiefdom or guild unto itself but in today's world it's not just about legal expertise it's also about business expertise it's about technological expertise it's about using technology to achieve efficient effective scale and it's about all these other things of which legal expertise is just one ingredient it is not the entire dinner and so for all those reasons there are people out there who are working hard to bring these kinds of ultimately mindsets to the delivery of legal services whether they're for the man or woman in the street or whether they're for the tamasics of the world now I have actually seen competitions calling for ranking of law firms it's just that the input doesn't come just from the public as actually comes from the law firms themselves I'm not sure how authentic those kind of rankings are if the lawyers get to rank themselves and it's a bit bizarre to me because seems that lawyers are the only professionals that rid themselves so I'm very glad to hear from you that even since 13 years ago there's been efforts to put fit that mechanisms available because those kind of things will truly empower customers in their decision making I say all the time how is it that you know I have more information in terms of getting into an uber or whatever the the right mailing service might be or if I want to um uh lease an apartment I want to go you know to Germany and instead of staying in a hotel I want to stay in an airbnb in matter of moments I can get all sorts of reviews I have all sorts of information I know exactly what to expect and what others say whether or not my expectations met their experiences and yet you know having uh been at bet the company trial lawyer for the first 30 years of my career people just went on the fact that well you know other people would say hey Mark's a really good lawyer but there was no data to back it up and I knew lots of lawyers who you know were really quite poor in terms of what their trial skills were and yet they were perceived as great lawyers um you know if if you can do that getting into a ride hailing service I've got to believe that you should be able to do it getting a lawyer and just one more thing to add to it um a few years ago I had a serious health issue which very happily has resolved itself completely and and and it's it's long in my uh rearview mirror I raise it for this purpose um when I was initially given the diagnosis I was looking for every piece of data that I could possibly find in terms of what the best places to go were who were the people who had conducted the most procedures of this kind what were their results I was looking for data much the same way the CEO of a company is going to be looking for data I often say that lawyers uh how many times have you heard a lawyer say my nose tells me this or my gut tells me that you tell that to a business person and they think it's comical um we should we should not be rendering advice by our anatomical parts save that for other things we should be doing it on the basis of data and our prospective customers and I use the word customer very intentionally our customers should have access to that data too before they decide whether or not to engage a particular lawyer so I mean why do you think the law industry has been so slow when it comes to adoption of technology technology I don't know if you were here at the tech law conference last year I believe you were I think I saw your name on the list but I recall this uh demo that our law minister Shamu Gam showcased to the audience in his demo he pitted 20 highly experienced lawyers against artificial intelligence to review five identical contracts it took the lawyers 92 minutes and it took AI just 26 seconds not even half a minute and with far less errors than the lawyers incurred so it was evident that you know legal tech has a vital role to play in the industry but why has the industry been so slow and resistant when it comes to adoption of technology if you look at travel if you look at medicine you look at retail you look at banking you look at finance even property real estate they seem to have lacked the legal industry in the dust when it comes to tech adoption could you explain that resistance please sure well I think there are several reasons one is legal culture remember that for a very long time um lawyers sold one thing and one thing alone and that was legal expertise um and they were the only ones that had it and in fact it you know up until the last 25 30 years ago um unless you were a lawyer you couldn't get into most law libraries um and so it was not only the legal expertise but it was the access to the source materials um okay so one thing is that lawyers have long had a monopoly um and their whole economic model their entire modus upper rondi has been built around that monopoly um now um and that monopoly of course says that the more input I have the more time I spend the more I'm going to be rewarded regardless of what the output of that time hits um so part of it is clearly economics I think another part of it is the fact that um a lot of lawyers feel that um technology is you know if they had wanted to study technology if they were interested in data and science they would have gone to medical school um but they ended up going to law school because it was you know a lot more you know sort of uh talk um and I find that really you know somewhat ironic because as a trial lawyer it's not about talk and supposition it's about evidence and how you can prove things so um and the other thing is I often cite the example of you know why is it do you think and of course I'm asking you rhetorically why is it that you think if if you talk to most any lawyer she or he is going to have a smartphone um they're going to use all sorts of apps they're going to take the same ride hailing service that you do um they're going to perhaps go use air bnb on the vacation so they are not you know complete tech luddites in their personal lives and yet in their professional lives knowing that technology you know can have many very positive consequences why is it that you know in their professional lives they choose to resist it and I think sadly it's it's it's very much a question of you know we don't need technology or it requires our particular brand of expertise or it's going to make me redundant in the end and I would argue to that it's you will become as a lawyer redundant in the next few years if you don't adopt technology if you don't understand what its potential is and more significantly you go beyond just basic legal expertise and you start learning other skills because lawyers in the next few years are going to function very differently most of them than when I was a baby lawyer I think you just called out the elephant in a room right there I think it's their fear of redundancy their insecurity about their jobs because I recall this webinar that you and Richard Soskin did at the Tech Law Fest this year a lot of the questions that came from the audience had to do with the lawyers their likelihood their insecurity about their jobs but you know have we gone so far away from the meaning of law that we have forgotten that laws were not erected to provide jobs for the lawyers the laws were erected to provide empowerment restoration and protection for the people how can we reinstill this value into the lawyers well that's a great question and I think one way is through a open and competitive marketplace and I think you're beginning to see that you're beginning to see law companies who do not necessarily engage in the practice of law but who are very very adept in delivering efficient effective cost efficient and valuable services and they're able to do it quickly predictably and at scale a couple examples from the states legal zoom is a well-known company that started out as a legal document company and now it does much more there's a young fellow who is a computer science whiz I first met him when he was a sophomore at Stanford University he was in studying law he was studying computer science but he was kind of using about many of the questions that you asked me why is law so resistant to technology why can't technology be used and he started a suite of apps called do not pay it's now mushroomed in there about 100 different apps that actually could be used with the click of a button to solve real life problems so for example he did an app right after covid hit which allowed people to you know be able in all 50 states in the states to be able to somehow navigate through the very complex forms for unemployment insurance these are real life tools that you know are not going to replace lawyers but are certainly going to make certain types of widespread legal issues more readily resolvable and at scale and certainly the potential and I know Richard talked a lot about remote courts something that you inverted to at the beginning of our conversation there's certainly a potential for that as well not just you know having courts as a place where people go with robes and in England you know wigs but courts are more of a process and there are places now where courts are starting to use technology to allow people who cannot afford law but need legal services to be able to have access to self-help tools and to be able to you know without either side hiring a lawyer be able to you know tap into things that will let people know here's the law see if you can solve this yourself because not all disputes require lawyers in fact I would argue that far far fewer disputes and most people would imagine do not require lawyers and could readily be resolved either by the parties between themselves or with resort to other tools yeah along with that one of the catch phrases that's been buzzing around in the legal scene not just in Singapore but globally is access to justice and before I tap your brains on how legal tech can bridge this gap between the law and the legalness of the people could you share with us very quickly how policymakers have been attempting to address this issue well they've been doing it in different ways Singapore I know the access to justice crisis there though it certainly exists and I don't have any hard data but I've been told by reliable sources that the about 30% of the population in Singapore who would you know want or need access to legal services effectively are denied them because they simply cannot afford them hopefully that is going to be further reduced but to you know contrast that with the United States and the UK is pretty much in the same zip code on this in the United States 85% of all Americans who are in need of legal services they're going to be evicted you know they want to be able to avail themselves of the fundamental constitutional slash legal right but can't because they don't have a lawyer can't afford one 85% of Americans can't afford a lawyer and two thirds of all American businesses when confronted with serious legal issues can't afford a lawyer that is a true tragedy and that really speaks to the fact that the legal profession can and must do better and the tools exist and to your question of the regulators unfortunately in the United States for example the American Bar Association which in effect oversees the state bars that set you know the particular practice roles has really I think been very hollow and has taken some cosmetic steps to try to address access to justice but as lawyers would say the matter speaks for itself you know the statistics I cited are really abysmal and shocking and it by the way it's also you know very detrimental to democracy how can people have faith in the rule of law if you know the law is not accessible to them even when they need it and so I think that you know regulators can and must play an important role in the UK for example there was what I would call a re-regulation not deregulation but a re-regulation that liberalized you know various regulations that had formally prohibited a non-lawyer ownership management in organizations that provide legal services these are the kinds of things I think that are necessary I'm really all in favor of a marketplace that's not to say that you you you you abandoned any protection of the public from charlotte's but at the same time you have to weigh you know the protecting the public from the fact that the current rules are preventing the public so you can't protect them if you've already effectively you know prevented them from being able to get access to services so I think that regulators must play a role in this process so must the judiciary so must lawyers themselves yeah thank you so much Mark unfortunately our time is up and I still have questions that I want to take your brains off I think we might have to have you back for another show if if your schedule allows I would be delighted thank you so much because I hate to squeeze in all the critical points I think these are issues that need to be addressed so thank you so much Mark I know it's near your bedtime and I commend you for the amazing work that you are doing I think what you're doing is going to bring make a tremendous difference to people beyond your state your town and your country and your efforts your mission to design a system that work more effectively for more people is truly an honorable one so I wish you all the success there is and I look forward to seeing you back on another show I look forward to it Lily bye bye now thank you very much thank you bye