Singapore Academy of Law is starting a legal tech accelerator as part of a wider initiative helmed by its SAL Ventures targeting innovation in the provision of legal services.
Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) has begun taking applications for a new legal tech accelerator described as the first in Asia of its kind, the Business Times reported yesterday.
SAL’s Global Legal Innovation and Digital Entrepreneurship (Glide) initiative will run for 90 days, offering both local and overseas legal tech businesses help with scaling up their businesses.
The accelerator is being set up as part of SAL’s strategy for facilitating innovation in legal services, the Future Law Innovation Programme (Flip), run under the auspices of the academy’s venture investment arm, SAL Ventures.
Glide’s businesses will meet potential clients to pilot their ideas and discuss opportunities for co-development. The program’s mentoring sessions have been designed with operational factors specific to the legal sector in mind.
Participants must pay a fee to join and have a minimum viable product ready for testing. SAL will not automatically take equity through the program and says the fee structure will be graded according to each participant’s government grant eligibility.
Strategically, the academy believes Singapore can benefit from its compact market size to close the gap in legal tech innovation with peers in Western Europe, North America and Australia.
Having a smaller market has helped build a more collaborative ecosystem in the field, argued Noemie Alintissar, assistant director of Flip.
Paul Neo, chief operating officer at SAL and executive director of SAL Ventures, added: “The Asian market is bigger and less saturated, so it represents a lot of opportunity for legal tech startups from around the world.”
