TechLaw.Fest 2025 Interview: Justice Kwek Mean Luck
Editor’s note: We are delighted to publish this piece in anticipation of this year’s TechLaw.Fest. This piece was first published on LawTech.Asia on 27 January 2026, based on an interview conducted by LawTech.Asia with Justice Kwek Mean Luck. We thank LawTech.Asia for permitting the Law Society to republish this article on the Law Gazette (in an edited form).
Following TechLaw.Fest 2025, LawTech.Asia (“LTA”) interviewed the Honourable Justice Kwek Mean Luck in October 2025. Drawing on his experience as High Court Judge of the Supreme Court, Chair of the Board of Directors of LawNet Technology Services (“LTS”), and Chair of the Board of Governors of the Singapore Judicial College (“SJC”), Justice Kwek shared his perspectives on technology, AI, judicial education and the future of the legal profession.
Question 1
LTA: Could you give our readers a peek into how judges prepare for cases arising from developments in AI?
Justice Kwek: The Judiciary is intentional about looking forward and anticipating issues that may arise. This includes technology and AI. In the SJC, we look at three areas in preparing judges:
- First, building in our judges a sense of familiarity with technology;
- Second, providing our judges a sense of the emerging legal issues at the intersection of technology and the law; and
- Third, helping our judges consider how emerging technologies may affect the justice system and court operations. For judges in Singapore, we have a responsibility not just in terms of adjudicative justice, but also in systemic justice. Being on the front line, it is important that judges think about and consider how various developments – such as in technology – affect the justice system.
The foundational technology course at the SJC incorporates these three elements. There are three parts to the programme:
- The first part is a hands-on demonstration of technology. This allows judges to interact with the technology to get a sense of how it operates.
- The second part identifies emergent legal issues. There are two aspects to this: one, how law and technology issues have arisen in past cases. Two, what are the emerging technology and legal issues that may come before the court in future.
- The third part addresses systemic justice. The SJC brings together technology and legal practitioners onto the same panel, to share and discuss how they see technology affecting the practice of the law and the justice system. This allows judges to look ahead and consider how emerging technologies may affect our work on systemic justice.
When it comes to AI, the SJC adopts this frame and applies it with greater depth. In its programs, the SJC uses a range of instructional modalities, which can involve academia, practitioners and judges, from Singapore and overseas.
The Singapore judiciary also holds regular roundtables with foreign judiciaries. This allows our judges to see how other jurisdictions are preparing themselves or addressing emerging issues.
To drive deeper preparation, the Judiciary also has a Technology Law Cluster, comprising a group of judges from the tri-courts, who study technology law and technology issues.
Question 2
LTA: As a Judge, you would have come across many young lawyers hoping to make their mark in the field. What have you taken away from their hopes and aspirations? Do they dovetail with the ongoing evolution of the legal industry?
Justice Kwek: This is something that the Judiciary keeps a close eye on, as the hopes and aspirations of young lawyers are important to the growth of the legal profession.
I have been struck in particular by young lawyers whose hopes are to make a mark, not just in terms of career or financial progress, but also in service of the wider community. My sense, is that over the long course of one’s career, what truly pushes us to grow and expand, is when our hopes and aspirations are tied to something larger: to that of service and helping those around us. This is more powerful in driving us to become more than what we are today.
Despite the uncertainties that may cloud the horizon, technological and industry changes can dovetail with the hopes and aspirations of those in the legal profession.
For example, the digital revolution has led to a massive increase in the amount of documentation that can serve as evidence. This can be inundating. However, recent technological tools, driven by generative AI and agentic tools, allow young lawyers to investigate relevant evidence rapidly, giving them more capacity to handle higher order work.
The increasingly multi-disciplinary nature of legal practice will also allow our lawyers to be more effective in helping clients resolve their issues. To be an effective lawyer, you cannot just know the law, you also need to know adjacent non-legal areas. One cannot be a technology lawyer without understanding technology. The trend towards multi-disciplinarity, will give young lawyers a better platform to learn and provide more helpful solutions to clients.
Ultimately, in every age, new developments will bring about uncertainties. The onus is on us as a profession and society, to understand them, manage the risks and seize the opportunities.
Question 3
LTA: One of the key questions that young lawyers face is how technological advancements — specifically, AI — will shape and impact their jobs and careers. How would you suggest they approach thinking about this issue, and how can they better prepare themselves for an AI-first future?
Justice Kwek: As we consider technological change and its impact, it is important to try to understand what will and will not change.
The nature of legal practice, and what we do in practice, will change because of technology. What will not change, however, is the need for depth in one’s craft.
The honing of legal craft can only come through practice over time – it is not something you can achieve overnight. An AI tool may help you do legal research or provide legal answers within a shorter span of time, but whether you make good use of it, still depends on whether you are able to think more deeply about its answers and the application of them to problems. Doing so effectively, still requires intentional practice.
Thus, regardless of how legal practice may shift due to technology, the need for deep legal craft remains. And the only way to achieve that, is to have commitment towards honing the craft.
Mentorship, too, is very important. Regardless of what technology tools come out, one should always have good mentors. They play an important role in helping us to grow and develop.
In addition, I would say that it is also important for us collectively, as a generation of lawyers, to think more deeply about how AI is affecting us. As AI operates in a very dynamic space, the more of us who are involved in serious and deep discussions on how it will affect us, the better prepared we will be.
For our young lawyers, how might they want to consider such issues? There are three lenses that I find helpful.
History
First, the historical lens: looking at how over the course of history, societies have adapted to technology and how technology has affected society. AI is not the first major technology that has arrived in our generation. For example, there was a time when we did not have the Internet. The Internet helps to highlight certain parameters of technological change: (a) ease of access; (b) speed of access; and (c) depth and range of technological capability.
These parameters can be applied to consider the trajectory of AI’s growth and the extent to which it may differ. The pace of generative AI developments across these parameters, also means that very quickly, generative AI capabilities will become embedded in daily technology, so that we are not even conscious that we are relying on generative AI.
When applying the historical lens, it is useful to bear in mind two types of change: adaptive change and hidden change.
Adaptive changes are changes that force us to consciously adapt to new ways of doing things. A classic example is the advent of computers and word processing capabilities, replacing typewriters and stenographers. Notably, adaptive changes are those we can see and are conscious of.
I am more concerned about hidden change, which modifies our behaviours over time without us being fully conscious of the shifts.
We cannot avoid the use of AI. At the same time as lawyers become increasingly reliant on AI, for example for legal summaries and answers, we do need to consider in advance certain questions, for example:
- Will the sustained lack of analytic engagement hamper the development of our analytical capabilities, particularly for incoming generations of lawyers who have no such prior analytic work exposure?
- If lawyers and judges become reliant on particular research tools, will they be able to detect that AI tool’s underlying algorithmic biases, over the course of time? If not, could that result in unintended changes in societal norms over time?
Being conscious of the hidden changes, will help us as a society, to move forward without losing the strengths of the past generations. Of course, we should not hold our hands off and disengage from technology. But we must engage technology with open eyes and agile minds.
Geography
Another lens is the geographical lens. One aspect of this is where the two leaders, US and China, are heading in terms of their AI development. This area is very dynamic, so I will share an illustrative snapshot, drawing on conversations I have had with people in this space in both countries.
There are two areas of frontier interest in the US, which is quite distinct from China: first, the pursuit of the “mother-of-all-models” – drawing on global datasets to create a very powerful AI tool; and second, creating empathy in AI, with the hope that generative AI can move to emotive areas, such as the creative arts.
In China, the general area of focus is different. It is more practical-minded, looking at how AI can support more powerful applications that can engage consumers and businesses, adapting the LLMs to serve the needs of many different industries in China.
Naturally, AI development in these countries is not limited to such areas. It is a different conversation when we look specifically at Legaltech AI companies. Fundamentally, this is a very dynamic field, changing by the weeks and months. I cite these illustrations of how we might apply a geographical lens to consider the impact of AI developments on our future.
Cross-industry
A third lens is the cross-industry lens: looking at what is happening in other industries. For example, in HR. One of the most time-consuming tasks in HR is going through thousands of CVs to screen candidates. This is now done by AI. HR professionals can then focus on interacting with candidates and assessing fit. Even there, AI is helping them, to prepare psychological profiles based on academic research parameters and record interviews. AI is moving into what were previously seen as higher order tasks.
I have shared these three lenses, in the hope that more of us engage in this and consider these issues collectively. We are all seeing different parts of a very fast-moving development. The more of us are engaged in in-depth discussions, the better prepared our legal profession will be for the future.
Question 4
LTA: You have had a long and distinguished career in law and public service. What would your advice be to young legal professionals hoping to build a meaningful and lasting career in law and / or policy?
Justice Kwek: My advice to those looking to have a meaningful and purposeful career, would be to look outside of themselves and see what they can do for those around them.
I did not start out thinking that I wanted to be somewhere in particular. I have been blessed to have been in jobs that allowed me to look outwards and serve, and that sense of a wider mission has been instrumental in driving me forward. What I do know, is that in whatever I do as I walk along the road of life, I want to be able to help the people around me breathe easier. That in turn has richly rewarded me.
In my conversations with very successful people near the end of their lives, they invariably find meaning not in their wealth or personal achievements, but in what they have done for others.
So my advice is: find purpose and meaning, by looking outside of yourself – in service of those around you and the wider community.
