Stella Chen

Background

About Stella Chen

I have been passionate about finding a better way to deliver legal services ever since I was a year 2 law student, when I came across a copy of Richard Susskind’s “Tomorrow’s Lawyers” while interning at a big firm. This sparked my interest in finding a way to deliver legal services more effectively and efficiently. The need for change hit home when, as a practice trainee, I and a third-year associate spent hours repeatedly fixing the same formatting error that kept reappearing in a table of contents. Towards this end of effecting change, I spent 2.5 years in the Law Society of Singapore researching and publishing reports about trends that would affect lawyers in the future, then 4.5 years in RHTLaw Asia helping the firm to adopt technology that would improve their efficiency. I see technology as a means to increase access to justice for the person in the street, and to improve my fellow lawyers’ quality of life. I also believe that rather than adopting technology for its own sake, we must not lose sight of the people whom technology is meant to help. In my role at RHT, I have been privileged enough to work with people at all levels, from the mailroom staff and secretaries to the managing partner. I believe that taking the time to listen and understand people’s concerns can make the difference between their being willing to take time out of their busy schedules to try a new software, and the software languishing as a white elephant.