Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping courts and legal systems across Asia‑Pacific. In this episode of Cross‑Examined, we speak with Eric Chin, Asia Pacific Director of New Law at PwC, about how AI and generative AI are being adopted by courts from Singapore and China to Australia and beyond. Eric shares best practice example of using AI for legal research, judgment support, small claims assistance and even access‑to‑justice initiatives. The conversation examines what Australian legal practitioners can learn from their Asia‑Pacific neighbours about adopting AI.

Guest:

1. Eric Chin, Asia Pacific Director of New Law Practice and the Legal Generative AI Initiative Lead, PwC
2. Founding board member of the ASEAN Legal Tech Association, co-founder of Legal Hackers Melbourne and co-creator of the Global Legal Tech Report
3. Expert in legal innovation, legal process digitisation and generative AI solutions for law firms and in-house legal teams.
4. www.linkedin.com/in/ericjychin/

Host:

1. Karen Finch, Head of Legal Policy and Innovation, Law Institute of Victoria
2. kfinch@liv.asn.au | www.linkedin.com/in/karen-finch/

As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes courts and legal systems across the Asia-Pacific region, this episode explores how leading legal jurisdictions are adopting AI – and what Australian lawyers can learn from those experiences.

Eric Chin, Asia Pacific Director of New Law at PwC, unpacks the innovative ways AI and generative AI are being used in the courts in APAC countries such as Singapore and China. He shares real-world examples of how generative AI is supporting legal research, judgement analysis, small claims assistance and access-to-justice initiatives, offering valuable insights into the future of tech-supported justice.

This episode also examines the key legal, ethical and professional challenges associated with AI in courts. Listeners will gain practical guidance on identifying reliable resources that Australian lawyers can use to adopt AI ethically and effectively in their legal practice.

Timestamps:

1. [00:12] Intro and guest welcome
2. [01:30] Recent research into AI adoption in Asia-Pacific courts
3. [03:00] The history of AI and the legal profession
4. [05:10] Singapore’s innovative approach to AI
5. [07:23] The AI framework in Chinese courts
6. [10:45] The greatest AI challenges in APAC
7. [13:44] How AI in Australia’s legal system compares
8. [14:52] How AI can improve access to justice
9. [16:28] Finding reliable information on AI adoption
10. [17:24] Embracing AI within the legal profession in a safe way

Key Takeaways:

1. Generative AI is being adopted at varying speeds across Asia-Pacific courts, with jurisdictions implementing AI tools based on judicial priorities and technological readiness.
2. Singapore is considered a leader in legal AI, particularly in using AI to improve access to justice, streamline court processes and support self-represented litigants.
3. Chinese courts are highly proactive in regulating and strengthening AI technologies designed to strengthen judicial efficiency and court system compliance.
4. Other APAC regions, including Australia, are piloting generative AI tools, especially for legal drafting, document review and chronology building.
5. Courts are taking measured approaches to AI adoption to safeguard judicial independence and preserve public trust in legal systems.
6. Generative AI has potential to enhance pro bono work, particularly by assisting with initial client queries and administrative support for community legal services.
7. The LIV AI Hub is a trusted and reliable resource for Australian lawyers seeking guidance on AI adoption in legal practice.

Resources & Links:

1. Artificial Intelligence Hub – The LIV’s AI Hub, providing essential resources
2. Ethical and Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence – LIV AI Ethics Guidelines
3. Supervising AI – Article from the LIV’s Legal Practitioner’s Liability Committee
4. AI and democracy – LIJ article by The Honourable Justice Melissa Perry
5. Main Home - ALTA – The Australian Legal Technology Alliance
6. Critical skills: Defensible use of AI in legal practice – LIJ article by Tom Bennett-Mitrovski, a legal technology specialist based in Singapore
7. Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association
8. Media Release: New Generative AI-powered Case Summarisation Tool to Help Small Claims Tribunals Users – Media release from the Singapore Government Courts
9. For the latest insights on Victorian legal developments and to hear directly from leading voices in the profession, subscribe toCross-Examined podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or visit the Law Institute of Victoria website.
10. Follow us on LinkedIn for legal insights and episode updates.

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About Cross-Examined:

Cross-Examined is a new podcast from the Law Institute of Victoria. Tune in to hear experts discuss hot topics in the law and the changes shaping the legal profession. Regular episodes will cover everything from AI and cyber threats to ethical dilemmas, workplace taboos and practice management insights.

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Welcome to Cross-Examined, a podcast by the Law Institute of Victoria.

Welcome to Cross-Examined. I'm Karen Finch. Today we're exploring how artificial intelligence and generative AI are transforming courts and legal systems across Southeast Asia and the broader Asia Pacific region. To explore this, we're speaking with Eric Chin, who leads the Legal Generative AI Initiative as the Asia Pacific Director of the New Law Practice at PwC. Eric is an expert in legal innovation, legal process digitisation and generative AI solutions for law firms and in-house legal teams. Eric is also a founding board member of the ASEAN Legal Tech Association and co-founder of Legal Hackers Melbourne. Eric, welcome to Cross-Examined.

Thank you so much Karen. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

We are very excited to have you here Eric. So, let's jump in. Can you tell us a bit about the research you've conducted on the state of AI adoption in courts across the Asia-PAC region? And what were some of your key findings?

Absolutely. First of all, thank you so much again for the opportunity to share our research. We've been working with the legal industry to implement generative AI solutions for both law firms and legal departments across the Asia Pacific region.

Recently, we were invited to two panel discussions, one by the Asia Pacific Institute of Experts and other by the NUS Centre for International Law. Both were really interested in the state of AI and generative AI adoption in the courts across the Asia Pacific region. So we were really excited to do the research and to speak to people on the ground. And that's where we crossed paths with you to hear more about what was happening in Australia.

So, we were really interested in exploring the state of AI and gen AI adoption in the courts in the region, and here's a quick summary of what we found. Firstly, majority of the jurisdictions are actively implementing AI solutions. And they are at different phases of their journey, which we'll explore later on in this session. Secondly, you have jurisdictions that have also indicated their support for generative AI and the use of AI in court proceedings.

We also do see there are different use cases that are being tested across the region, and that crosses things like research and search, as well as drafting, summarising and judgment support. We have also seen public-facing chatbots as well as decision support and case allocation AI solutions being tested.

So Eric, I think our listeners are probably familiar with the term “AI” unless they've been living under a rock. And you've mentioned there a few user cases. But what are the few different technologies that are being called “AI”?

That's a really good question. If I take a step back, when we talk about AI and legal tech, we can trace this back to the first wave of AI coming into the market about 10 to 15 years ago, when we saw, for example, machine learning AI entering the market with helping with supervised machine learning and predictive analytics that really underpin the e-discovery and contract due diligence solutions. Then we have natural language processing AI that classified unstructured text for e-discovery and also extracted information for contract drafting and review. We also had expert systems that map knowledge-driven and case-based reasoning solutions in the market. That first wave of AI also gave birth to the Australian Legal Technology Association. And of course, Karen, you were the president at ALTA.

Today, when we talk about AI, we are really referring to generative AI solutions. And these are pre-trained large language models that really generate text and understand text. For the legal industry, what we've seen is that legal generative AI solutions basically take the fine-tuned large language model and train it on top with legal datasets. And when you think about legal datasets, we're really talking about contracts, legal memos, textbooks, legislation, case law and so on.

The reason this is important is because, when you think about the work that we do in the legal industry, we are working in contracts, we are working in legal memos, and each word is precisely phrased. And this is where legal fine-tuned large language models or GenAI solutions really come in. Today, there are more than 730 GenAI solutions in the market.

Wow, and that's wonderful context. I really appreciate you nutting down that for our audience today. I want to move to Singapore, because Singapore is widely recognised as a leader in this space. So, what specific AI and generative AI initiatives has Singapore implemented in its courts? And, I guess, what makes Singapore's approach distinctive in your view?

Yes, so I absolutely agree with you that there's a lot that's happened in Singapore with regards to AI and generative AI. So, I was on the panel recently with the Chief Transformation and Innovation Officer from the Supreme Court on this topic. They have implemented Harvey to help self-represented individuals to handle their own cases for small claims tribunal. So, for context, the Supreme Court has seen small claims tribunal increasing to 11,000 cases per annum. So, this really helps with access to justice. In particular, individuals filing or responding to claims in small claims tribunals where consumers can seek claims of up to $20,000 or $30,000, where mutually agreed, can use the tool to improve the understanding of the cases and help them prepare their court documents.

On top of that, the Singapore judiciary has also published a guide on the use of generative AI tools by court users, where the courts have also noted that the ultimate responsibility in the use of generative AI really lies on the users themselves. The guide really highlights the need to ensure accuracy of verifying the AI outputs by the lawyers, as well as protecting intellectual property rights, confidentiality and sensitive information.

There's also been a lot of deliberation that has taken place from considering whether to allow disallowed use of generative AI or to whitelist or blacklist certain products, all the way through to whether there is a need for users to declare the use of generative AI or declare the type of models being used.

Ultimately, they have decided it was too prohibitive. Therefore, the guide was launched to help lawyers understand that they are ultimately responsible for the use of generative AI and the importance of verifying the outputs.

So Eric, let's move to China. As a technology-forward jurisdiction, what approaches to AI in courts have they implemented?

Very good question. So, the Chinese courts are extremely proactive when it comes to the use of AI, and just to put things into perspective, ChatGPT was made publicly available on 30th November 2022 and in under two weeks on the 8th of December 2022, the opinions of the Supreme People's Court on regulating and strengthening the application of artificial intelligence in the judicial fields was published. And in its opinion, the Supreme Court set a goal to establish an artificial intelligence application system by 2025 to support the judiciary in its legal services. And subsequently, in 2024, the Supreme Court announced an artificial intelligence platform that could act as a legal AI assistant for judges, with features including legal information classification as well as case outline extraction.

Another point to note is that the title of that opinion piece was phrased as “Strengthening the Application of Artificial Intelligence”. It really highlights their positive view on the prospect of having generative AI being used in assisting the judiciary.

So let's span out even further, Eric. Take me on the journey. So, we're going to look at some other jurisdictions that your research encompassed. And it included a long list, s o listeners, bear with me. It included Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and New Zealand and, of course, Australia, which we are going to get to soon. But looking at APAC, did you identify any challenges or opportunities specific in those regions?

Absolutely. I think firstly we see, as we explored earlier, majority of the jurisdictions are actively looking at ways to implement AI solutions. They are also at different phases of their journey as well. So, you have jurisdictions like the Philippines and Thailand that have announced intentions and plans to develop AI for research, as well as drafting to help the courts.

Then you have jurisdictions like Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and, of course, Victoria in Australia, that are piloting generative AI solutions for drafting, precedent search, case recommender and case chronology builder as well. Finally, you have jurisdictions like Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, we covered before Singapore and China that have announced the use of AI and generative AI solutions.

So, in Malaysia we have seen the introduction of AI solution that helps with sentencing. We've also seen Indonesia announcing an AI solution that helps with identifying similar cases. And, of course, we've covered before with Singapore implementing a solution like Harvey to help with small claims tribunal, and the Chinese Supreme Court launching an AI solution to help the judges with court proceedings.

So, you've outlined there lots of opportunities, but what about the challenges that you identified in the APAC region?

Very good question. I think on the challenges front we really see two. The first is ensuring that professional responsibilities are upheld and compliance with court guidelines. So, if I take a step back, court guidelines are generally non-enforceable. Even if it's enforceable with prescriptive rules that are in place, it begs the question, how would the courts actually regulate and enforce them? Because they would actually add more workflows and processes, which the courts may not have time to do. And ultimately education and awareness are really important in the use of AI.

Secondly, we also see the authenticity of evidence being challenged because of generative AI. This is because generated evidence becomes much more realistic with the use of generative AI. It really reduces the barrier of entry, given that there are many publicly available tools. You now don't need to be an expert in Photoshop to doctor an evidence. It also reduces the time required to generate evidence as well.

So, when you look across those opportunities and challenges across the region, any patterns or common themes emerge?

Absolutely. So, what we are seeing is that the courts are generally taking a more measured approach to its AI and generative AI adoption, since the court have a duty to maintain public trust and confidence in the legal system.

So, we are seeing the use of generative AI in judicial process that are being tested, whether it's in research and search, drafting, summarising, decision support, case allocation, transcription and court operations.

We also see two consistent types of judicial guidance on the use of generative AI. So, for example, we are seeing principle-based approach that points to the importance of ethics, confidentiality, privacy, fairness and security, that leaves room for evolution as the technology changes and evolves. We also see a much more prescriptive approach that draws a line on acceptable use, input restrictions and mandatory verification. Both approaches really converge on three things. The first is the importance of human-in-the-loop. The second is not delegating judicial functions to AI. And the third is being cautious about AI outputs.

So what about Australia? Let's move. Most of our audience may be in Australia. So, what does what's happening across Southeast Asia compare with Australia's approach to AI in courts? And are there any insights from your research that you think could translate into the Australian legal system?

Very good question, Karen. I think two things come to mind. The first is a centralised versus decentralised approach towards generative AI adoption and pilots by the courts. The benefits of a decentralised approach, of course, is greater exploration. But, at the same time, there might be risk of competition, whereas a centralised approach really ensures consistency in the rollouts as well.

The second thing that comes to mind is the differences in scale across the different jurisdictions. If I take a step back and look at a jurisdiction like Singapore, there are about 6,000 lawyers. So, the scale in comparison to Australia, where we have closer to 100,000 lawyers today, is of course a lot smaller and therefore they can be a lot more nimble in their approach as well.

So Eric, earlier in this session, you talked a little bit about the access to justice, and you used that incredible example of Harvey being used in the Small Claims Tribunal in Singapore. But what about the broader context of how you think AI can improve access to justice more broadly than just in court use?

Very good question, Karen. I think one of the things that we are currently exploring in Singapore is how we could use generative AI and AI agents to assist with access to justice, in particular for Pro Bono Singapore.

So, an example is, they get a few hundred email queries a week, which they have to process. What we are currently exploring is the use of AI solutions that can automatically read and classify each of the emails into separate categories and then draft an email response based on the query before notifying the team, so that they can review the responses that have been drafted before editing, finalising and sending to the applicants.

And, once you've done that, you can also save that information into a centralised database. This will essentially help reduce the turnaround time of queries that are coming through via email – whether it's a status check on a file, all the way through to new information requests and calls for assistance.

That's incredible. And I can already feel the sense of relief washing over some of our listeners that may be sitting within CLCs and our pro bono sector here in Australia – having those types of solutions here would be absolutely incredible. So Eric, for our listeners who want to stay informed, where can they find reliable information and resources about AI adoption?

I really like what LIV is doing with the AI Hub. I think it's a great source of information as well as case studies of what is being implemented in the legal industry. On top of that, there are also a lot of really good AI and more specifically legal industry events that you can attend as well, whether it is the legal tech and innovation festivals, all the way through to any of the events organised by the Australian Legal Technology Association as well.

And I think that education and connectivity and understanding is such an important thing. So before we wrap up, Eric, do you have any tips for listeners or maybe one thing people can do today is to start embracing AI in a safe way in the legal profession?

Absolutely. Having spent the last three years working with lawyers across the region on the journey of generative AI adoption, there are a few tips and lessons that come to mind.

The first is, you can't Generative AI your way out of a problem. And the recognition that AI is just a tool to assist and transform, not to replace. And it's not a cure-all solution as well.

The second thing is, it's really important to break down large, complex problem into smaller bite size when you are using an AI solution. So, making it more manageable, so that when you are reviewing the outputs, it's in chunks.

The third thing that comes to mind is the importance of prompt engineering. A well-crafted and structured prompt can help you generate a much more useful output – whether it is drafting a clause to summarising information from multiple contracts. It is so much more helpful when you are able to craft a well-structured prompt.

The fourth thing that comes to mind, and this is one of the most important things that I've seen, is the crucial role of knowledge specialists. In this case, it's the lawyers. I think a lot of what we read in mainstream media is how AI is going to replace lawyers. Our view is that AI is going to augment lawyers, because you still need the experts to help you understand what is it that you are looking for when you are summarising or analysing a contract, as well as what is the output that you are looking for as well when working with a AI-generated output.

The last and final thing, which is the fifth point, is the importance of human-in-the-loop. In this case, it's the lawyers reviewing the output before submitting either to clients or the courts.

Thank you, Eric. I could actually talk to you all day on this topic, but unfortunately, that's all we have time for today. So thank you so much, Eric, for joining us today on this show.

Thank you so much for having me, Karen. It's such a pleasure.

And thank you to everyone listening to Cross-Examined. You'll find links to resources, Eric's research and information on AI developments in Asia-Pacific courts in the show notes. If you've found this episode useful, please share it with colleagues and subscribe, so you don't miss out on future episodes. Until next time, thanks for listening to Cross-Examined.