3.Was there a lack of such services in Singapore? How
does LawGuide Singapore fit into the broader push in
Singapore towards using technology to better enable legal
services?
Yes, my team and I observed that the current market for legal information
sources and platforms in Singapore was fragmented and could be better
represented and organised for the benefit of consumers.
Information about the law was not always easy to find because it didn't
exist in a single dependable source or platform. To complicate things, even
if a person did eventually find the information, it was not always easy to
understand because information and knowledge about the law was often
presented in complex, and often confusing, formats – long articles filled
with technical legal terms and jargon
In addition, many of the existing legal information sources and platforms
were not primarily focused on delivering information using digital
methods or social media despite the fact that internet and social media
penetration and usage rates in Singapore are amongst the highest in our
part of the world.
To sum up, we saw that people need basic answers before they engage a
lawyer, even from the outset of deciding whether they need one, so we
decided to help them by taking complex, and often confusing, information
on commonly-encountered legal issues and present them in short, simple
pieces delivered in rich media form - such as animations, videos and
infographics - through our website and social media channels which is
where everyone’s attention is focused on.
4.LawGuide Singapore is the first law-related website in
Singapore to offer a searchable database of frequently-
asked questions that includes a library of video and
graphical guides related to everyday issues on law. What
were the challenges in building such a site and how did
you overcome them?
In planning for the redesign of our website and the development of our
chatbot, we listened to our consumers and community and understood
that our earlier website could be even better optimised to be more user-
centric and present and deliver our rich, digital content more efficiently.
We also wanted to make sure our content was accessible across multiple
channels.