Brian Tang on State of Legal Innovation in Asia-Pacific 2020 Report (SOLA) - Hong Kong (Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association)

"State of Legal Innovation in Asia-Pacific 2020 Report (SOLA) - Hong Kong"
Brian Tang 
Published in 2020

via Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association (on which Brian Tang is on the Steering Committee): full report

Description: First launched at Stanford University’s FutureLaw CodeX conference in April 2019 and then at TechLaw.Fest 2019, the SOLIA Report 2020 will give readers actionable insights on the state of legal innovation in over 10 jurisdictions in the Asia-Pacific, along with case studies from regional law firms.

Response to IOSCO Consultation on Use of AI and Machine Learning by Market Intermediaries and Asset Managers (FTAHK & LITE Lab@HKU)

In October 2020, the FinTech Association of Hong Kong and LITE Lab@HKU submitted a joint written response to the International Organization of Securities Commission (IOSCO)'s public consultation on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) by market intermediaries and asset managers. The response strongly agrees with IOSCO that the use of AI and ML by market intermediaries and asset management firms creates novel opportunities and risks, with an overall need to foster trust in AI and financial markets. The risks should be appropriately mitigated by proportionate regulation that fosters responsible innovation and promotes market integrity, fairness and investor protection, financial stability, competition and innovation. It should also support financial inclusion and combat financial crime. The response draws attention to four important themes: (1) Encouraging the use of AI/ML in RegTech; (2) Addressing unintended consequences that may discourage innovation; (3) Guidance on Proportionality Factors (especially for Customer and Client Disclosure); and (4) Human-In-The-Loop approach to address AI fairness, accountability and transparency.  The joint response can be accessed here.

Brian Tang on Being a Successful 21st Century Legal Professional (HK Lawyer)

"Be a Successful 21 Century Legal Professional by Becoming T, Delta or O Shaped"

Brian Tang
Hong Kong Lawyer
June 2020

Lawyers as a profession have long been well known as domain experts, client advocates and problem solvers. However, there is increasing recognition and analysis of the broader core skillsets and mindsets required for lawyers and future legal service professionals to succeed. 

T-shaped lawyer 

The concept of the T-shaped professional has long been promoted in different contexts, from computing at IBM, to management consulting at McKinsey, and creative design at IDEO...

Delta Competency Model for Legal Professionals 

In 2018, a small group comprising law professors from Northwestern and Michigan State and legal professionals from Mayer Brown and legaltech giant Thomson Reuters met at a conference hosted at Michigan State's LegalRnD Lab run by Dan Linna. The group recognised the value of the T-shaped lawyer and the need for lawyers to expand their competency to process, data and technology, and then in the words of Northwestern Law School's Alyson Carrel "flipped the T-shaped Lawyer on its side" and added a third component, Personal Effectiveness Skills, to better capture the human element of lawyering that enables him or her to be a counselor and trusted advisor. Key personal effectiveness skills include relationship management, entrepreneurial mindset, emotional intelligence, communication and character. They called this the Delta Competency Model...

O-shaped lawyer 

Across the Atlantic, another initiative has emerged that is driven instead by 18 leading UK general counsel – ie, the important corporate clients of law firms and major users of legal services. The O-shaped lawyer (oshapedlawyer.com), as described by Network Rail’s General Counsel (Regions) Dan Kayne, exudes optimism and is open, opportunistic, original and takes ownership.... Click here to read the full text. 

HKU Law Students Win Inaugural Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational @ Georgetown Law (HK Lawyer)

"Hong Kong University Students Win Inaugural Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational by Creating AI-Powered Platform to Assist Injured Workers"

Hong Kong Lawyer
May 2020

Four students from the University of Hong Kong won the inaugural Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational organised by Georgetown Law with an AI-powered casebank to assist injured workers to get the compensation they deserve.

     The Iron Tech Lawyer Competition has been held for Georgetown Law students for 10 semesters by Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law and Policy. In 2020, for the first time, Georgetown Law created an Invitational for students from other law schools around the world who participated in academic courses or supervised independent study to incorporate technology for access to justice (A2J) projects with non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

     Originally, the student teams from around the world were scheduled to attend the finals in Washington DC. Alas, with the COVID-19 pandemic and suspension of travel and universities, the initial preliminary round, finals, and subsequent faculty workshop on teaching A2J technology, were held virtually across 5 time zones via Zoom.

     The HKU team won first prize on April 17 by overcoming rigorous competition from 10 different student teams around the world. Many of the participating teams qualified for the Invitational only after being selected over competing teams in their own schools. All told, over 100 students participated in creating projects for the Invitational, producing over 25 different projects for non-profit organizations. ...
     Competition judge Miguel Willis said: “I was very impressed with the winner of this year’s Iron Tech Lawyer Invitational – The University of Hong Kong team’s EC Casebank solution takes a novel and highly sophisticated approach to enhance the legal capability of injured workers’ to receive just compensation for their claims – within a simple and easy to use interface… showing much promise to empower workers to be active participants in the resolution of their claims." ...
     The winning team comprised project leader Chloe Lok Wing Chan, UX designer and programmer Cuthbert Chow, natural language processing (NLP) and data management lead Jasmine Chi Man Poon and business management lead Iverson Chun Ming Wong. The students were part of the first cohort of students of the LITE course held at Hong Kong University, which is part of LITE Lab@HKU, a new interdisciplinary and experiential programme to foster law, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship (LITE) led by founding executive director Brian Tang... Click here to read the full text. 

Brian Tang on the State of Legal Innovation in Hong Kong 2019

"Chapter 3, Hong Kong"

Brian Tang

State of Legal Innovation in the Asia Pacific

Singapore Academy of Law

pp. 38-54

Introduction: Legal innovation, newlaw, lawtech, legaltech, regtech, suptech and govtech are phrases that are increasingly (and often confusingly) being used interchangeably, in deliberations and pronouncements about the confluence of emerging technologies (such as automation, artificial intelligence (“AI”), data analytics and distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain) and business models (such as outsourcing and online or software subscriptions) that is impacting the delivery of legal and regulatory services. Whether such developments normatively constitute legal innovation or legal disruption is in the eye of the beholder, and depends on who the purported beneficiary or client is: 

(a) Law firm market – the beneficiary or customer is the law firm seeking to improve its delivery of services that augments or at least maintains the profitability of partners of those legal professional services firms (often associated with the term “Legaltech”, “NewLaw” and “alternative legal service providers”).

(b) Corporate counsel and regulatory compliance market – the beneficiary or customer is the in-house lawyer and/or compliance officer who is also seeking such improvements, but at the same time often with priorities relating to internal efficiencies and cost savings, which could be detrimental to the profitability of lawyers in the first category (often associated with the term “Legaltech” and “Regtech”).

(c) Governments, regulators and the judiciary – the ultimate beneficiary or customer is the ordinary citizen and/or small and medium enterprise who seeks to benefit from easy-to-use and low-cost governmental and regulatory services and access to justice (often associated with terms “Suptech and “Govtech”). Such initiatives, as well as the emergence of certain legaltech providers, may well disintermediate some of the current service providers, similar to the way fintech is disintermediating large segments of the financial industry. In many cases, governments also have a national agenda to remain competitive in the global environment of cross-border trade that is increasingly online and where data and digital identity are key strategic components.

At its core, these discussions relate to the changing structure and composition of the legal profession and market, in circumstances where large corporate clients are increasingly unwilling to pay for the work of trainees and newly-qualified lawyers, 2 and emerging technologies are narrowing the traditional law firm pyramid by replacing or at least changing the roles played by junior lawyers. This report is a brief summary of the State of the Legal Profession and Innovation in Hong Kong.. Click here to read the full text.

Meet the People Behind LITE Lab@HKU (Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship)

Brian W Tang is executive director of LITE Lab@HKU, University of Hong Kong’s new interdisciplinary and experiential programme to foster law, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship (LITE) led by the Faculty of Law in conjunction with the Department of Computer Science. Brian is a frequently invited international speaker on his practice and research areas of law and innovation, capital marketplaces, regtech, lawtech, AI governance, virtual assets and future skills. His work was featured on CNBC’s Learning Curve Series and in Diana Wu’s book Future Proof: Reinventing Work In the Age of Acceleration (2019).

     Brian is co-chair of the Fintech Association of Hong Kong’s RegTech Committee, co-founded the APAC Regtech Network, and sits on IEEE’s Global Initiative on Ethics on Autonomous and Intelligent System’s Policy Committee, the HKU Fintech Index Advisory Board and the Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation and Technology Association (ALITA)’s Steering Committee. 

     Brian is founder of ACMI and Young Makers & ChangeMakers, and organized Hong Kong’s first legaltech and regtech hackathons in conjunction with Global Legal Hackathon and smart legal contract challenge in conjunction with Computational Law & Blockchain Festival. He has been invited to be a mentor for Bizkathon@HKUST 2019, MIT Entrepreneurship & Fintech Integrator 2019, Ocean Park x HKU Hackathon 2019, iDendron Incubation Programme, Hong Kong Law Society Innotech Law Hackathon and Fintech SuperCharger, and a judge for Barclays DerivHack 2019, WSJ Financial Inclusion Challenge Awards and Microsoft ImagineHack 2017. He was also an instructor for blockchain incubator Helix Accelerator. 

     Brian is an avid proponent of blended learning, being a principal instructor of Asia’s first FinTech MOOC on edX that has more than 40,000 learners in every country worldwide and contributed to HKU’s Blockchain and Fintech MOOC as well as to the Hong Kong Society of Financial Analyst’s Fintech Video Series on capital market and regtech. 

     Brian has spent nearly 20 years at global investment bank Credit Suisse in Hong Kong, and at law firms Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and California and Mallesons in Perth, Australia, where he advised on some of the world’s largest and first-ever financial services and technology capital markets and M&A deals, project bonds and microfinance. With responsibilities at Credit Suisse covering Asia-Pacific (ex-Australia and Japan), Brian has worked on IPOs in nearly every Asian jurisdiction, and some landmark transactions include the dual-listings of China Telecom (NYSE/HKEx), ICBC (HKEx/SSE), UC Rusal (HKEx/Euronext Paris) and Glencore (LSE/HKEx); Alibaba.com’s privatization; and led a cross-disciplinary team to establish and manage one of the first Chinese joint venture investment banks.  Brian is admitted in Hong Kong, the State of New York and Supreme Court of Western Australia and the High Court of Australia. 

As a new lecturer joining the LITE Lab@HKU team, Stephanie Biedermann is creating opportunities for students to gain practical and transactional experience in Hong Kong, research relevant legal issues, and assist local companies and NGOs. A US-licensed lawyer, Stephanie's legal experience includes work in the US, the Middle East, and Hong Kong, with a focus on public interest law and access to justice issues as they relate to individual client services, policy decisions, and the development of clinical opportunities for law students.
     Prior to joining HKU, Stephanie Biedermann served as Legal Officer at PILnet, where she oversaw the Hong Kong Pro Bono Roundtable. While based in the United Arab Emirates, Stephanie Biedermann worked on matters ranging from international energy policies to labour migration in the Gulf Coooperation Council. As an officer in the governance division of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) – a sustainability-focused intergovernmental organisation based in Abu Dhabi – she helped initiate collaboration between IRENA and UNHCR to bring renewable energy to refugee camps in Jordan and Ethiopia. While in Abu Dhabi, Stephanie also worked on policies to improve living and working conditions for migrant workers. She was part of the team that revised New York University Abu Dhabi’s labour standards. In Cairo, Stephanie was the Legal Director of an NGO assisting refugees in the resettlement process. She strived to find durable solutions for vulnerable families and individuals – primarily from Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia. 

     While based in the United States, Stephanie conducted impact litigation on behalf of persons with disabilities with Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley, California, as the Arthur Liman Fellowship Attorney. Stephanie holds a JD from Yale Law School, a BA in English from Princeton University, and is admitted to the State Bar of California, USA.

Brian Tang on "Lawyers Must Adopt Three Mindsets to Succeed in the Technology Age" (HK Lawyer)

"Lawyers Must Adopt Three Mindsets to Succeed in the Technology Age"

Brian Tang

Hong Kong Lawyer

August 2019

Recent news reports are replete with declarations about how the new ABCD technologies (artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud and data) have and will change the services industry, from fintech for the financial services industry, to lawtech for the legal services industry.
     Lawyers are trained as expert problem-solvers to serve their clients. Yet, in the May-June 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review , Sydney Finkelstein rightly cautions: “Don’t be Blinded by Your Own Expertise”.
     Extensive past experience and success can lead to overconfidence and being blinkered when faced with new challenges arising from new technologies, competitors and business models.
     At the recent Inter-Pacific Bar Association Annual Meeting and Conference, Singapore’s Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon described technological changes giving rise in law to new products, new players and new processes.
     Like other learned professions, continuous education is a licensing requirement for all lawyers to keep up-to-date to maintain their duty of competence and professional standing.
    Yet the impact of technology extends beyond domain expertise and practice management skills ... Click here to read the full text. 

HKU FinTech Day 2018 (Programme)

HKU FinTech Day

as part of the 2018 FinTech Education Series @ Hong Kong FinTech Week 

www.hkufintech.com 

29 October 2018 (Monday), 12:30pm – 5:30pm Large Moot Court, 2/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower The University of Hong Kong 

       Programme

12:30 – 13:00	Registration
13:00 – 13:10	Welcome Remarks Professor Christopher Chao, Dean, HKU Faculty of Engineering
13:10 – 14:00	Panel Discussion: The Future is Now: Understanding and Preparing for the Implications of Artificial Intelligence Gary Meggitt, Director, Asian Institute of International Financial Law, HKU Soujit Ghosh, Co-Founder, Squared-S Artificial Intelligence Kevin Pereira, Managing Director, blu Artificial Intelligence Kane Wu, Co-Founder of ThinkCol and Chairman of Hong Kong Data Science Society David S. Lee, Senior Lecturer, HKU Faculty of Business & Economics
14:00 – 14:15	Special Announcement: Introducing the New FinTech MOOCs Professor Douglas Arner, HKU Faculty of Law Professor David Bishop, HKU Faculty of Business & Economics Professor S.M. Yiu, HKU Department of Computer Science HKU TELI (Technology Enriched Learning Initiative) Jen Lee, HKU Faculty of Law Jon Pederson, HKU Faculty of Business & Economics
14:15 – 14:25 14:25 – 14:30	Special Announcement: Introducing BASc in FinTech Professor S.M. Yiu, HKU Department of Computer Science Dr Alan Kwan, HKU Faculty of Business & Economics Special Announcement: Introducing LITE Professor Michael Hor, Dean, HKU Faculty of Law Brian Tang, Founding Executive Director of Law, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (LITE) Programme, HKU Faculty of Law
14:30 – 15:00	Be Future Ready in the new Era of ABC: AI, Big Data and Cloud Maria Hui, HR Director, Microsoft Bess Chung, Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft
15:00 – 15:10 15:10 – 15:40 15:40 – 16:20	Education for Emerging Cohort of Fintech Entrepreneurs Maria Pennanen, CEO, Santiment Deutschland Panel Discussion: Blockchain Fever: How to Cure This Mystery Affliction Bowie Lau, Founder, MaGESpire Professor Pedro Eloy, Head of BusinessLab, HKU MBA, Faculty of Business & Economics, CEO of Pelham Grey Avril Parkin, Co-Chair for the Big Data Committee, FinTech Association of Hong Kong Maria Pennanen, CEO, Santiment Deutschland Anil Kudalkar, Co-Founder, MaGESpire Partners Fintech Startup Fireside Pitches: Planto and MediConCen Laurence Tang, iDendron Judging panel of industry experts
16:20 – 17:20	Panel Discussion: Global Leadership in Digital Banking – RegTech as a Secret Sauce Huiya Yao, Head of FinTech Innovation, WeBank Max Yevdokimov, Chief Digital CX Officer, Tinkoff Bank Alex Kong, Founder and CEO, TNG Brian Tang, Founding Executive Director of LITE Programme, HKU Faculty of Law and Founder of ACMI
17:20 – 17:30	Closing Remarks Syed Musheer Ahmed, General Manager, FinTech Association of Hong Kong
17:30 – 18:30	Networking in the 1/F foyer of Cheng Yu Tung Tower

HKU FinTech Research and Teaching Showcase will be held in the 1/F foyer

Reserve your seat here 

Enquiries: Flora Leung at fkleung@hku.hk