Author
Assoc Prof Kwan Ho Lau
Organisation/Institution
Singapore Management University, School of Law
Country
SINGAPORE
Panel
Private Law
Title
Generative AI and Private Law Inquiry
Abstract
Lawyers, judges, and scholars are increasingly relying on generative artificial intelligence (genAI) systems, including large language models (LLMs), to assist with legal research, drafting, and analysis. This has prompted significant scholarly interest in how far LLMs technologically can, and normatively should, be used in the legal system. Less attention has been paid to the use of LLMs in legal studies. Specifically, how can and should genAI systems be incorporated into the very process of legal scholarship and academic research? In this paper, we examine how AI could support new methods for inquiry, using private law as a textbook field. Conceptualising LLMs as statistical legal observers, we explore how they can be harnessed to discover new insights about legal inquiry. To this end, our present project pursues three objectives. First, we present a framework for priming LLMs to adopt specified legal perspectives through prompt engineering and retrieval augmentation. As an intuitive and demonstrative starting point, these perspectives are expressed in terms of jurisdiction, namely, the common law of Singapore and of Australia. Secondly, by asking differently primed LLMs to opine on the same legal question, we construct an apparatus for experimental comparative law and seek to demonstrate how it can supplement (not supplant) doctrinal comparative analysis. Specifically, we ask LLMs primed separately with Singapore law and Australian law to attempt a purpose-built hypothetical that exposes tort and contract issues. Thirdly, and more importantly for present purposes, we analyse what the ability of modern LLMs to rapidly construct legal answers from different perspectives could possibly tell us about the nature of private law inquiry.
Biography
Kwan Ho Lau is an Associate Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University (SMU). He is a graduate of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the New York University School of Law. Prior to joining SMU, he was a Senior Associate at Allen & Gledhill LLP and a Justices’ Law Clerk with the Supreme Court of Singapore. He also worked as in-house counsel at the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC). Kwan Ho’s main research areas are in contract law and private law. He writes as well on judicial decision making in the common law and on the development of the legal profession. His work is cited by courts in Singapore (High Court and Court of Appeal) and Hong Kong (Court of Appeal), by sitting Commonwealth judges in extra-judicial speeches, by regulatory bodies and in academic treatises and articles regularly. He has given expert evidence on Singapore law in foreign court proceedings. Between 2021 and 2024 he served as the Deputy Director of the Centre for Commercial Law in Asia.
