Fukuoka, Japan – 2012 – Overview

They say one thing always lead to another.

It all started with a blog post entitled, “All Lawyers should have an iPad!” at LoyarBurok which talks about the use of iPad by lawyers. I wrote this post on one of the many nights that I couldn’t sleep.

Immediately after posting that article, I was invited by the Bar Council to speak on the topic, “Use of Technology amongst Lawyers“.

Most of the participants of my talk were practitioners senior to me. However, Gaythri, the Head of Marketing of LexisNexis SEA, a multinational legal information provider, attended too. She found out about my talk through Twitter.

After the talk, I was invited by Gaythri to review their upcoming LexisNexis iPad App which I gave input.

In early January, Gaythri invited me to attend the LexisNexis Customer Engagement Workshop at Fukouka. And at all expenses paid!

And weeks later, there I was, sitting in Business Class sipping champagne. Just one article led me to this. Amazing what the power of social media can do!


Business Class Seats – I could almost recline the seat 90 degrees.


Food


Awesome free stuff!

There were only five people (including me) invited by LexisNexis to attend this event namely a Managing Partner of an Indian law firm, a partner from a large Singaporean firm, a Chinese legal counsel of Foxconn (manufacturers of Apple products) and lastly a Japanese legal counsel from Lotte.

The event was held at Luigin Spa and Resorts, a hotel 40 minutes away from the city.

My room was spacious and it faced the sea.

Great view. Great service too.

The customer engagement session was great. Many ideas were discussed and exchanged. We had two sessions. In the first session, we had a panel discussion on how will legal profession be in the next ten years. The five of us gave our views to 50 over participants. My views were quite similar to what I presented in my “Use of Technology amongst Lawyers” talk. Briefly, they were:-

1. The new generation of young lawyers (namely the Gen Y) prefer flexibility over money. They no longer like 9 to 5 working hours. With this, mobility is important. The ability to work wherever and whenever are important in the future. Cloud computing and light weight and portable devices will be useful.

2. Touch screens, mobile devices and Apps are the way forward. Due to the need for mobility, documents will be in electronic form. I said that the use tablets and ultrabooks in legal practice will flourish. I also said that we may one day have paper thin touch screens and the Courts may use touch screen tables.

3. Apps will be developed to help legal practice. Currently, Dropbox, text convertors App and Penultimate (handwriting app) are useful.

4. I also said that thumbdrives will be one day as cheap as CDs. In the future, thumbdrives will be sold in bulk and people may even give thumbdrives as namecards (and also in the form of namecards) where their profile will be saved.

Before the presentation, the Indian lawyer told me that he goes to Court with three iPads and he doesn’t bring the physical file to Court. Each iPad would have all the relevant documents. If he needs to refer to two separate documents, he will use two iPads. Browsing and highlights are done through PDF reader Apps like GoodReader.

For thick documents, the Singaporean lawyer told me that she indexes her PDF files which will appear on the side of the document. These files will be indexed before e-filing them in Court.

5. Social media is the new marketing tool for lawyers and law firms. Many law firms have embraced social media to market their services. I gave an example of a UK law firm having their lawyers to have their own professional LinkedIn and Twitter account.

The second session was a breakout session. I was interviewed by the Malaysian LexisNexis team on various issues. I told them the story on how I ended up having a share in Nuffnang and also in Fukuoka.

The last session lasted until lunch time. We had lunch with the top management of LexisNexis including the South East Asia Head and Group CEO. It was a real privileged for a young practitioner like me to be there.

Due to the short trip, I didn’t have much time to visit Fukuoka. I did manage to visit the city and have some good food. Will talk about this later.

For my participation, LexisNexis presented me with a Kindle Fire. I can’t wait to download ebooks!

Many thanks again to LexisNexis for the opportunity!

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