Dr. Charis Savvides on “Uber for Lawyers” And More

Frederik Bussler
Nov 1 · 3 min read

From October 30th to November 1st, hundreds of blockchain professionals from industry and academia are joining forces in Athens, Greece at Decentralized 2019 to engage in workshops, talks, and networking. One prominent keynote speaker was Dr. Charis Savvides, whose talk was titled Who do you Trust to Create the Trust Layer of the New Internet?, representing Stelios Americanos & Co. LLC.

From the standpoint of a lawyer, he discusses his viewpoint on blockchain:

“For lawyers, we face a specific challenge: The first is to understand the technology in order to be able to advise our clients. The second thing is unique, which is the fact that the potential of the technology is so significant, we want to learn how we can adopt the technoloy to make our services better in terms of quality, in terms of speed, in terms of cost.”

It comes down to understanding and applying blockchain, so what are some ways to use blockchain in law?

“What I see is that there are two ways of using blockchain in law: Blockchain from lawyers and blockchain for lawyers. In terms of the first one, there are a number of proof of concept applications that show the benefits that we can get as service providers when we engage with the technology. The second one, in other words, is how lawyers can use blockchain to reach clients in a legitimate way.

Blockchain in the legal practice is not new, for example, it’s already in IP protection, land registries and property deeds, evidence law, and many more applications.

What lawyers are looking for is to get the right piece of evidence to win a case. Blockchain is something that gives this extra element when it comes to evidence law.”

Clearly, blockchain is already alive and well in the legal space, and Dr. Savvides has begun as well:

“What we did as a law firm, about a year ago, is we started Blockhain Share Certificates. We wanted to start with something simple because we wanted everyone to be familiar with the concept. We upload the certificate on Ethereum to get a unique fingerprint, and then the shareholder has a unique, immutable digital copy.

The benefit from a Digital Share Certificate (DSC) is that anyone who holds this share certificate can simply, in seconds, drag and drop in the interface to get two possible results: A green result, that it’s valid, and everything is right, or a red result, that it’s invalid, which means that it’s been previously revoked or has never been uploaded on Ethereum.

We simplify the procedure, giving this opportunity to corporate clients, opening a channel of communication to anyone interested.

We started this to have something tangible, and we are building on this.”

Regardless of the industry, certificates are a common and well-tested application of blockchain, and the legal industry is no exception. There’s more:

“Another is ‘Uberizing’ the legal practice. Uber for lawyers addresses some of the key challenges: certainty, costs, accessibility, and fine-tuning of matchmaking between the right lawyer for the job and the right client. How it works is that you code the job, and in seconds you get offers from nearby lawyers.

75% of the requests of lawyer service requests are mainstream requests that don’t require a physical presence in the court. These could be provided from home, remotely. Virtual is the new law firm reality as described in a 2019 American Bar Association report.”

Given the increasing amount of remote legal work, this is the perfect application for blockchain. Trust is also a critical factor:

“Service providers need to show trust. Also, for lawyers, there should be trust in the clients’ side that they get paid on time for the job performed. We need to make sure that blockchain technology will be utilized to boost trust in such cases and boost trust in providers.

We can ensure that whoever participates has a license to provide legal services and exclude unauthorized practice. We need to make sure there’s some sort of control when it comes to lawyers and discipline so that there’s an oversight as to proper job performance.”

Ultimately, there are many applications to blockchain for law, and time will tell which prove truly useful and which are gimmicks.

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