In conversation with Alessa Pang, Partner, and Donny Trinh, Associate, at WongPartnership
“Jus AI shortens the distance between the questions and the materials needed to answer it, so lawyers can focus on judgment, strategy, and advocacy.“
Alessa Pang
Partner, WongPartnership
Results at a Glance
| Outcome | Result |
| Research speed | Investment treaty research tasks reduced from the better part of a day to a few hours or less |
| Tribunal constitution | Arbitrator research consolidated from multiple scattered sources into one, significantly faster first pass |
| Pre-mandate and pitch stage | Faster initial research allows the team to move quickly to merit assessment and client discussions |
| Research confidence | Source-linked results that can be verified and tested, covering both supporting and contrary authorities |
| Competitive positioning | Thorough and fast research as a differentiator for clients with tight timelines |
About the Firm
WongPartnership is one of the largest and most recognised dispute resolution practices in Singapore and in the region. The firm has approximately 170 lawyers across its disputes practice, including four senior counsel, and lawyers qualified to practise in Singapore, England and Wales, New York, India, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Spain.
The international arbitration practice at WongPartnership handles some of the most significant commercial and investment treaty arbitrations in the region and globally. The firm works with clients across the full lifecycle of a dispute, from pre-dispute advisory through to the evidentiary hearing and enforcement. WongPartnership’s dispute resolution practice recently won the International Arbitration Firm of the Year at the ALB Southeast Asia Awards, and its partners hold leadership positions in international arbitration organisations and institutions worldwide.
Alessa Pang leads a practice focused on commercial and corporate disputes, international arbitration, shipping, international trade, and commodities across multiple jurisdictions. Donny Trinh is an associate on the international arbitration team, qualified in England and Wales and in Vietnam, and works primarily on matters involving multiple jurisdictions, legal systems, and languages.
The Opportunity
Operational Challenge
Before Jus AI, one of the team’s most significant challenges was the time required to build a reliable first cut of research. International arbitration work at WongPartnership involves multiple jurisdictions, long procedural histories, and complex factual matrices. Research meant navigating multiple databases, working through large volumes of awards, commentary, rules, and decisions, across different institutions and jurisdictions.
Alessa Pang captures the pressure well: arbitrations run on tight timelines, and the team needs to land on an answer quickly, not only because of tribunal deadlines but because clients need a clear view of their position early. A slow research process delays everything that follows.
Strategic Challenge
Generic AI legal research tools draw on jurisdiction-specific sources and are not built for the demands of international arbitration. WongPartnership needed a tool that could draw on sources across multiple jurisdictions, multiple arbitral institutions, and international commentary, all in one place. Equally important was verifiability: in legal practice, AI-generated results must be traceable back to their underlying sources, so that lawyers can verify, test the reasoning, and assess whether the material actually applies to the case.
The Solution
WongPartnership has been an early adopter of AI across the firm. When evaluating Jus AI, the team prioritised tools that integrated into existing workflows and could be adopted readily by the international arbitration practice.
Jus AI met that standard for several reasons. It is built specifically for international arbitration and draws on Jus Mundi’s multi-jurisdictional arbitration database, covering sources from multiple institutions and jurisdictions that a jurisdiction-specific tool would not reach. Its collaborations with major arbitral institutions bring important institutional materials into the database, including the SIAC compendium of arbitrator challenges, which is particularly relevant for a team that regularly handles arbitrator challenge questions requiring institution-specific context.
The ICC Digital Resource Library is another resource Donny Trinh returns to consistently. Even on matters that are not ICC arbitrations, the ICC DRL addresses practical issues that arise across international arbitration generally, including procedure, case management, costs, tribunal practice, and enforcement. Having all of that searchable through Jus AI means finding the precise passage needed, fast.
Crucially, every result generated by Jus AI can be traced back to its source. For a team of lawyers whose professional duty is to verify the underlying material, that verifiability is not optional. It is what makes the tool usable in practice.
The Impact
From a Full Day to a Few Hours: Investment Treaty Research
Donny Trinh describes a research task that illustrates the impact clearly. Working on an investment treaty matter, he needed to analyse the fair and equitable treatment standard, specifically the question of legitimate expectations in the context of a state changing its regulatory framework after an investment had been made. The issue was determining when such a change represents a legitimate exercise of the state’s right to regulate versus a breach of the FET standard.
This is not the kind of issue with a single leading case. There is a large body of awards on the point, and tribunals do not always draw the line in the same place. What was needed was a map of the authorities and an analysis of the factors that tribunals tend to consider. Previously, that first-pass research map would have required working through awards one by one, following footnotes, reading commentary, and slowly building the picture. That process takes the better part of a day.
With Jus AI, Donny framed the question in plain language. Jus AI returned a structured, source-linked initial overview, surfaced relevant awards and commentary, organised the research around the key factors, and identified both the line of authorities supporting the team’s position and the reasoning that might cut against it. The underlying awards still needed to be read and verified, and that part did not change. But the AI got him to the relevant materials significantly faster. The same task that had previously taken most of a day was completed in a few hours or less.
The value was not speed alone. The structured overview gave confidence in the completeness of the research, making it easier to see both the supporting authorities and the contrary reasoning the other side might rely on.
Tribunal Constitution
At the tribunal constitution stage, gathering information on potential arbitrators requires pulling data from CVs, firm websites, published awards, articles, commentary, and prior decisions. Jus AI consolidates those sources and allows the team to reach the relevant information much faster, accelerating the process of assessment and analysis from the outset.
Pre-Mandate and Pitch Stage
When a new matter comes in, things move quickly. Alessa Pang notes that the team needs to assess and identify the legal issues fast, so it can deliver substantive analysis and have a targeted, informed discussion with the potential client. Jus AI accelerates that initial research, allowing the team to move directly to the higher-value work of assessing the merits and advising on strategy.
Speed to Judgment, Strategy, and Advocacy
The consistent theme across both Alessa Pang and Donny Trinh is the same: research is not the endpoint. Judgment, strategy, and advocacy are. The competitive advantage Jus AI delivers is not just faster research. It is getting the team to the stage of analysis, risk assessment, argument testing, and strategic advice more quickly and with greater confidence.
As Alessa Pang puts it directly: in arbitration, being thorough and fast is the competitive differentiator. Jus AI delivers both.
Closing Value
For WongPartnership, Jus AI has become a tool that shortens the distance between the legal question and the answer, freeing experienced lawyers to spend more time on the work that matters most to clients: assessing risk, testing arguments, and developing strategy. In a practice where timelines are tight and the quality of advice is everything, that shift is material.
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