Smart AI Tools will Transform How Singapore Firms Handle Legal Research and Company Paperwork

1. The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) have launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered search engine in LawNet¹ 4.0 enabled by the latest release of GPT-Legal Q&A model, aimed at simplifying the legal research process and enabling the legal fraternity in Singapore to obtain immediate contract-law related research when preparing for court cases. More than 75% of the lawyers in Singapore will be able to directly benefit from a shorter legal research journey, which frees up resources to focus more on other aspects of case preparation.

2. IMDA, in collaboration with SAL, has also created an agentic Annual General Meeting (AGM) demonstrator to support corporate secretarial work, such as planning and executing AGMs.

3. "IMDA’s launch of GPT-Legal Q&A powered search with SAL is a great showcase of using AI well to serve professional purpose. By significantly reducing the time and effort required for legal research, we are freeing up time for law practitioners to devote more attention to critical analysis and strategic counsel for their clients. Our agentic AGM demonstrator is designed with corporate secretarial professionals in mind to give them confidence that meetings run efficiently and in line with compliance requirements. The demonstrator is a tangible example of how AI can address real-world challenges and elevate the way corporate governance is delivered,” said Dr Ong Chen Hui, Assistant Chief Executive, BizTech Group, Infocomm Media Development Authority.

New release of GPT-Legal Q&A model in LawNet 4.0 will reduce time spent on legal research

4. The new GPT-Legal Q&A model, developed by IMDA together with SAL, powers the generative AI-powered search engine on LawNet. It is trained on Singapore’s legal context and supported by vast amounts of authoritative data, including judgments, Singapore Law Reports, legislation, and books. This search engine will allow legal researchers to get real-time, precisely referenced answers to complex legal research questions – tuned for contract law. It can address various legal question archetypes, from factual queries to case-specific and hypothetical scenarios, providing nuanced and context-aware insights.

5. The new model would significantly reduce the time and resources required for legal research by moving away from iterative searches and extensive reading to having instant, comprehensive insights. This brings direct benefits to about 10,000 users of LawNet, including more than 75% of Singapore lawyers in private practice. SAL is likely to also expand the generative AI-powered search engine to cover family and criminal law use cases in the future.

6. GPT-Legal Q&A goes beyond traditional keyword search by understanding the meaning behind a user’s query. Unlike standard searches that match exact terms and Boolean logical operators, GPT-Legal Q&A combines Large Language Model technology with Retrieval-Augmented Generation to assist with contract law queries. The system matches user questions with relevant legal content by understanding the context and meaning behind each query.

7. The GPT-Legal Q&A model represents a new phase in transforming legal research, complementing the earlier GPT-Legal model announced in 2024. The first model provided legal summaries for judgments that lacked summaries, or two out of every three judgments. To date, the first GPT-Legal model has been used to generate summaries of over 15,000 court judgments, condensing 8,000-word judgments into precise 800-hundred-word summaries. These summaries follow the format and structure of ‘headnotes’, which are the official summaries of select judgments authored by Justices' Law Clerks.

New agentic AGM demonstrator to streamline corporate secretarial work

8. In Singapore, companies are legally required to appoint a qualified corporate secretary within six months of their incorporation. These secretaries play a crucial role in ensuring compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements, managing essential documentation, and handling key corporate activities such as AGMs, Annual Returns, and Board Resolutions. There is growing demand for such services, but the corporate secretarial sector has increasing compliance complexity with strict penalties. However, the corporate compliance processes are increasingly going digital, laying the ground for AI to streamline routine tasks while maintaining regulatory standards, helping to address the sector's challenges.

9. IMDA has developed an agentic AGM demonstrator, in collaboration with potential user SAL, to focus on intelligent management of the end-to-end process for AGM, with the objective of ensuring efficiency, and accuracy in corporate compliance, as shown below. This demonstrates how an agentic AI assistant can handle routine corporate secretarial duties autonomously, freeing up professionals’ time to focus on higher-value advisory and strategic tasks. Such tasks include advising boards on governance and regulatory changes to prevent costly non-compliance and guiding companies on strategic moves like restructuring or Initial Public Offerings. These elevate the corporate secretary from paperwork handler to a trusted advisor shaping long-term business success.