Pro Bono Innovators 2024 Honoree Linklaters

In our 2024 edition of Pro Bono Innovators, Bloomberg Law honors Linklaters for its work advising on the design and delivery of an Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbot supporting migrant workers in Hong Kong in collaboration with Migrasia, a local nonprofit. The firm is also honored for creating a hackathon with volunteers from other law firms to aid Working Families, a UK group supporting parents and caregivers with free legal advice.

Your firm’s key matters include helping Hong Kong-based nonprofit Migrasia develop and test a Migration-Support AI Chatbot (PoBot) for migrant workers looking for information on their rights and referrals. You also organized an inaugural hackathon in London in February 2024, helping UK nonprofit Working Families update more than 200 online pages of free workplace legal and benefits information. The effort utilized 20 lawyer volunteers from 11 firms. How did your firm strategize on how to approach these matters?  

Po Bot matter: We are a proud longstanding social impact partner of Migrasia in Hong Kong, providing both funding and pro bono support to further Migrasia’s work and mission. When asked to support with the development of PoBot, a Gen AI-powered chatbot supporting migrant workers, we jumped at the chance.

For Albert Yuen, Linklaters counsel and head of Technology Media & Telecommunications in Hong Kong, PoBot presented the perfect opportunity to support a high-impact pro bono project, combining our AI and data governance skills across our TMT and Innovation legal teams. “We felt the matter was not best served just with legal advice, but with practical innovation support, too. This was confirmed after our initial meeting with Migrasia, focused on support areas and exactly how our legal and tech services could add most value,” Yuen said.

The skills and input of Carl Li, managing associate and innovation lead for Asia, were pivotal. Carl worked with Migrasia and colleagues to scope our value-add input, formed interdisciplinary teams that combined legal, tech and project management expertise and recruited and trained volunteers to test PoBot’s functionality and user experience.

Hackathon matter: Strategic preparation was key for the hackathon,” said Managing Associate, Sophie Brambley. “We needed an efficient tech platform with priority advice pages ready and editable. A smoother user-experience for hackers would result in more advice pages updated during the event.”

We opted for Trello, the brilliant existing task management and tracking platform used by Working Families for pro bono collaborations. In the run up to the hackathon, Associate Lizzie Harker-Noor worked with Working Families to prioritize and allocate the advice pages most in need of updating, managed colleagues from across Linklaters Business Teams to upload the advice pages to Trello and prepared instructions for hackers.

What were the most innovative aspects of two or your client matters in your view? And who took the lead on driving innovation with the work?

PoBot matter: The use of natural language processing and machine learning to create a chatbot that can provide tailored information, and guidance was a particularly innovative aspect of this project. Our technology legal team and our tech innovation team worked together to provide legal advice on AI laws and Hong Kong data governance for the deployment of the chatbot, and user testing and feedback on the developed chatbot tool prior to launch. We used agile testing methods to ensure PoBot was user-friendly and effective.

Paras Karula, Migrasia’s chief operating officer, said, “the innovative aspects of this project were particularly compelling, as we were able to leverage large language models (LLMs) for a social good cause. The most critical factor in training and fine-tuning any LLM model is access to high-quality data.

Fortunately, we had a wealth of resources at our disposal, including past conversation data, a library of publications on the migration issues faced by the migrant domestic worker population in Hong Kong, and comprehensive information about Hong Kong’s employment and labor laws. This allowed us to supplement the necessary data for the project.”

Hackathon matter: The hackathon drew on cross-firm collaboration, bringing together legal experts in a high-energy, in-person setting. This not only expedited the advice page update process but also enriched the content quality through a broader spectrum of perspectives and specialized knowledge. We purposely designed a scalable volunteer model for the event.

Participants were asked to dedicate a single four-hour block to the task, but we facilitated continuing review contributions through use of an open technology platform. Working with Working Families to allocate reviews strategically was also central to the event’s design.

High-traffic advice pages and those impacted by recent or imminent legislative changes were prioritized, ensuring that the updates were timely and relevant. This maximized the impact of the lawyers’ efforts on the most accessed content.

Tell us more about the impact of the matters on the local, national, and/or global level.

PoBot matter:  The impact of the project is significant and has a lot of potential. PoBot will help to bridge the gap between access to information and the legal rights and needs of migrant workers and the availability of relevantly skilled pro bono lawyers in Hong Kong. PoBot has wide reach in being potentially accessible to all migrant workers in Hong Kong (as well as those that may support and advise migrant workers).

The project has the potential to be replicated or adapted for other jurisdictions or groups of vulnerable people who need legal assistance, as well as translation into multiple languages.

Associate Jasmine Yung said: “Very often, what migrant workers need are adjacent legal information and not legal advice, and PoBot helps address their queries in real time, in summary format, on a confidential basis and in a hassle-free manner, as well as directing them to relevant source materials and areas for further assistance. As an example, a migrant worker who just moved from Philippines to Hong Kong may make a query via PoBot about the permitted charges of employment agencies and discover that they are overcharged.”

Migrasia is pleased to report that “PoBot has been successfully tested on a limited basis across our various communication channels with the migrant worker community. The chatbot is especially useful in streamlining our client intake and triage process,” Kalura said.

Hackathon matter: During the four-hour hackathon session, volunteers from the 11 firms involved successfully revised approximately 20% of the advice pages on Working Families’ website. Considering the length and complexity of these pages—equivalent to 15-20 A4 pages each—the effort saved the small Working Families legal team many hours. In addition to updating the advice pages, the hackathon connected the Working Families team to 20 employment lawyers, many of whom are continuing to help hack the remaining advice pages remotely on a longer-term basis.

Why do you think your team ultimately achieved successful results in these two matters?

PoBot matter: The team achieved successful results because we worked collaboratively and creatively with Migrasia. We were also excited to leverage our legal expertise in the relevant emerging fields of law in AI and data governance, including providing advice on the implications of using an Open-AI based chatbot model in Hong Kong and relevant licensing issues, and utilizing our wide experience in innovation and technology. This meant we could couple our legal advice with a high-quality practical solution in testing the PoBot to get it ready for public launch, a better value add for Migrasia.

Hackathon matter:  Linklaters’ contribution to the success of the hackathon stems from our commitment to nurturing multilayered partnerships with our pro bono clients. We try to maintain open lines of communication and tailor our service design and delivery to meet the precise needs of our clients (whether legal or not) effectively. We are not afraid to have a go at a new style of event, or potential solution to a client’s problem!

Responses provided by Albert Yuen, counsel, head of Technology, Media & Telecommunications – Hong Kong; Carl Li, managing associate and innovation lead for Asia, and Jasmine Yung, associate, for the PoBot matter.

Responses provided by Lizzie Harker-Noor, pro bono associate and Sophie Brambley, pro bono managing associate for the Hackathon matter.