Global developments in digital transformation require business sectors to transform, and the legal sector is no exception. To support the Ministry of Law’s Legal Industry Technology and Innovation Roadmap launched in October 2020, the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) approached Director TRAIL, Assoc Prof Daniel Seng to be the Guest Editor of a Special Issue of the Singapore Academy of Law Journal, themed around law and technology.

Unlike past Special Issues which revolve around a specific existing field of law or legal practice, the concept of law and technology remains amorphous even now, 25 years on from Justice Frank Easterbrook’s famous statement about cyberspace and the law of the horse. It can refer to the “law of technology”: the law and regulations governing and mediating the use of modern technological innovations and related concepts, such as cryptocurrency, data privacy, and competition in digital platforms. But it can also refer to the “technology of law”: the incorporation of technological advances into the practice of law. This places an additional burden on lawyers, practitioners, and academics to go outside their comfort zone and understand the underlying operation of such technologies, in order to continue fulfilling their duties to the law.

This Special Issue therefore forgoes a deep dive in favour of presenting a smorgasbord of offerings. For starters, the Special Issue explores the challenges involved in applying law and regulations to fast-moving technology, and looks at Estonia for lessons on how these challenges can be best tackled. Next, the Special Issue explores a number of substantive topics, including the regulation of cryptocurrencies; the data protection implications of modern employee monitoring software; the shortcomings of existing enterprise approaches to cybersecurity and data protection; the possibility of using property rights to govern the collection, use, and processing of personal data; and a case study in the context of competition analysis of two-sided digital platforms. From here, the Special Issue shifts to consider the use and impact of technology in court proceedings, including the leading of electronic evidence, the use of artificial intelligence in judicial decision making, and the use of automated document assembly for the benefit of litigants in person. Lastly, the Special Issue concludes with two papers inviting us to consider a radically different future of law: first, a world where law can be simulated in virtual laboratories with the assistance of big data, machine learning and social science techniques; and second, a “systems thinking” approach to the design of legal rules to help us deal with uncertain subjects and issues.

Given the general nature of the topics covered in the Special Issue, and their relevance to the paradigm shifts faced by practitioners, TRAIL is pleased to present, with the support of SAL, a series of Seminars on Law and Technology (SLATE) based on the papers presented in the Special Issue. Each SLATE session, held in a hybrid format with some physical attendees, will feature one or more contributors to the Special Issue sharing insights on their paper, and one or more designated guest commentators interacting with the contributors on the topic of the day.

The provisional schedule for SLATE is as follows: