Speakers

Closing Debate | Tech Competency will Trump Legal Skills in Tomorrow’s Lawyer

As technology reshapes the legal practice, a debate emerges: will technological competency overshadow traditional legal skills in defining the lawyer of the future? This debate examines the competing forces of automation, artificial intelligence, data-driven decision-making and digital client services, and whether these will become the dominant measure of professional capability. One side argues that mastering legal technology will be the decisive differentiator-enabling greater efficiency, accuracy, access to justice, and competitive advantage.

The opposing view contends that core legal reasoning, advocacy, ethics, negotiation and human judgment remain irreplaceable, and that technology is merely a tool to enhance, not replace, legal expertise. Through contrasting perspectives, this session challenges participants to consider where the real value of tomorrow’s lawyer will lie: in coding and computational fluency, or in timeless human skills that technology cannot replicate.

About Jiamin

Leow Jiamin is a Deputy Director (Legal Faculty) in the Learning and Professional Development Cluster of the Singapore Academy of Law. She joined SAL in April 2025 and gained her qualifications in adult education from the Institute of Adult Learning (IAL) in May 2025.

Prior to joining SAL, Jiamin was a disputes resolution Partner at WongPartnership LLP and handled a wide range of Court and arbitration matters ranging from commercial and corporate disputes, cross border disputes, fraud, asset recovery, to intellectual property disputes. Being fluent in business and legal Mandarin, she also regularly acted for Mandarin-speaking and Chinese clients.

As a junior lawyer, Jiamin spent a number of years at Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP, handling both contentious (from intellectual property to general disputes before both the High Court and Court of Appeal) and non-contentious matters, and was mentioned in Legal 500 (Asia Pacific) in 2019 as well as IAM Patent 1000 (Singapore) in 2020.

She regularly speaks at conferences, teaches at universities, and contributes to various industry publications in respect of emerging issues in Singapore law. These include contributing to the Asian Business Law Institute’s ABLI-SAL Cryptoasset Series - Cryptoassets and Civil Procedure Law (Singapore edition) and moderating the panel on Resolving A.I. and Technology Disputes at the TechLaw.Fest 2024. 

Jiamin was called to the Singapore Bar in 2015, placing Joint-4th in the Bar Examinations 2014 (of 667 candidates), and was awarded a distinction in Intellectual Property Law as well as the SILE top student prize in Family Law. In addition to her legal credentials, she holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Biomedical Engineering), reflecting her multidisciplinary expertise.