IT specialists ask Chinese law firms to upgrade systems

A lawyer (right) offers legal advice to a citizen in Beijing. [Photo/Xinhua]

To brace for rising uncertainties and an increasingly complex regulatory environment abroad, IT specialists are telling Chinese legal services to upgrade their data and litigation management systems.

China is essentially still in the middle of its first round of global expansion. More than ever before, Chinese companies operating abroad will seek legal support from law firms with rich international experience.

On the part of lawyers and law firms, according to Zhao Lixing, professor of law in Fudan University, there will be "a fresh round of learning" to adapt to the digital work environment, such as to understand the difference between physical evidence and digital evidence.

Firms with more international experience are learning faster, noted Steven Wang, Partner of the Shanghai-based Smart Team Global, a solution provider and implementer targeting the Chinese legal service industry.

He said: "Some companies have been shopping for the right solutions and services for the past few years."

Mickey Liao, an IT specialist from Taiwan, said in 2016 he and his partners were "busier in the second half of the year" because they "signed up more users" on the Chinese mainland for legal software upgrading.

Changes in Shanghai's law firms are setting a clear example for the rest of the country, he said.

In the particular field of legal solutions, the challenge comes from two directions, IT professionals noted.

On the one hand, for the past few years, Chinese companies have been in a race to branch out their business overseas and have inevitably run into various local legal problems.

The longer the investment commitment is, the more disputes they are likely to face. So, to properly protect and store every document and evidence of internal communications becomes imperative - an area where Chinese companies are "usually messy" when they operate at home, Wang said.

Beijing's Belt and Road initiative is likely bring Chinese companies into contact with economies with a less familiar regulatory environment.

Chinese law firms will have to help them improve ability to control the legal risk, he said.

On the other hand, new technologies are being more widely used in the domestic market, e-commerce in particular. They are leading to changes in the traditional ways of litigation and dispute settlement.

According to Wu Jun, a partner from King & Wood Mallesons, one of the largest China-based law firms, there are already online courts and dispute settlements in small cases in consumer commerce. But in contrast, many other areas are still dominated by legacy practices, a fact that makes the use of new technologies still difficult, such as in digital evidence.

To facilitate buying and selling globally, Chinese e-commerce companies will need to rely on an extensive support system from in-house and outside legal expertise, he pointed out.

Expanding in faster and multi-language environments, all law firms are stepping up IT. Executives from Baker & McKenzie (Asia Pacific), an international legal service with rich emerging-market experience, have already reported pilot programs with the use of artificial intelligence in document processing.

As for China, "larger firms are raising their level of capability. In language proficiency, and in managerial details, they will make progress as quickly as they did before. In that I have no doubt," said David Fleming, a Baker & McKenzie partner.

The solutions that Wang's team are implementing include eDiscovery, a system developed from the US by Capax LLC for enterprise-level data management and evidence discovery, and the matching Chinese system for mobile office that the Wang's team developed by itself.