7 ways blockchain will change the legal industry forever
Blockchain technology has received quite a bit of attention over the last year, with the potential to be a transformative force across multiple diverse industries. At the heart of this is the blockchain itself which offers a technique to create and maintain an immutable – but also transparent – distributed and shared ledger to be able to store information in.
When we think of high-tech industries, the legal sector is hardly one that comes to mind. After all, lawyers are often buried in the proverbial mountain of paperwork and the classic film about the legal profession is ‘The Paper Chase’, which ends with papers being blown all over the campus quad.
However, the blockchain has the ability to disrupt the practice of law, and drag it into the current century – there’s already a Global Legal Blockchain Consortium which seeks to standardize and promote its adoption. Here are seven ways in which the blockchain will make a big impact on the legal world.
Legal contracts are still written, with physical signatures required on original documents, which requires significant time to accomplish, all for a binding legal agreement. The blockchain holds the promise to change this into a digital process in what’s being dubbed ‘smart contracts’. These smart contracts could potentially be created and executed directly between the relevant parties, with less lawyer involvement.
OpenLaw endeavors to use the blockchain to decrease “the cost and friction of creating, securing, and generating binding legal agreements.” It also plans to provide the tools for storage of these agreements, without the requirements for intermediaries. With the potential to cut lawyers out of the process altogether, this is a disruptive use of the technology indeed.
The law has struggled when it comes to protecting intellectual property in the digital age, including images, audio, and video files, as well as designs and symbols. Artists and musicians attempt to protect their work, but too often it gets used without their permission, and royalties do not get paid from audio streaming services that struggle with profitability. Companies such as NKOR promise to have a platform for registering intellectual property and ‘anchoring’ it to the blockchain.
The law continuously adapts to changing societal needs. A decade ago, the legal sector had to address digital media rights issues, and some lawyers soon focused on this segment of the law. Now, with blockchain technology having the potential to be used across many sectors, the law will need to adapt again, and there is already a need to have lawyers specializing in blockchain law – the new cutting-edge for digital law.
At the most recent annual meeting of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTACON), the buzz around artificial intelligence was reportedly eclipsed by the blockchain, with a whole panel devoted to its application in the law.
Property rights encompasses how property is bought, sold and rented. Go down to your local government property office, and it is easy to see how this arena is stuck in the last century, with piles of ledgers, paper deeds, and property cards all tracking property ownership.
