Blockchain for Lawyers Inside Out
After blockchain succeeded within such areas as finance and logistics, its expansion in other industries is inevitable. One of the spheres where blockchain can benefit is legal services. Blockchain can guarantee a faultless accomplishment of agreements, improve integrity, and ease up operational workflows at law firms. Its inherent decentralization makes blockchain stable against hacking. At the same time, the witnessing of transactions guarantees data validation.
According to PwC, 41% of law companies are using or plan to use blockchain for transactional legal services, 31% — for high-value legal services, and 21% — for business support. Hereby, PwC considered smart contracts the most influential feature of blockchain to disrupt the legal services industry.
Blockchain Enables Smart Contracts
To understand how smart contracts can benefit law firms, let’s start with the definition. Smart contracts are self-executing agreements that guarantee a certain task will be carried out upon predefined triggers. Engrained in blockchain, smart contracts are immutable. Additionally, decentralized storage makes smart contracts close-to-impossible to hack.
Now let’s look at smart contracts in practice. Imagine two companies, A and B, which signed a contract about A purchasing B’s assets once A hires employees for certain positions. Acting as a digital ledger, the smart contract will verify the fact of employment. As soon as it’s done, the money transfer and change of the asset owner will be carried out automatically.
But how can law firms embed smart contracts? It’s possible to develop blockchain-based software from scratch, or to use the genEOS blockchain platform to make it much quicker. Opting for an off-the-shelf solution such as OpenLaw is another viable option.
Blockchain Enhances Integrity
How can blockchain strengthen integrity? Let’s consider this using the example of the genEOS blockchain ecosystem. Decentralized and encrypted data recorded there is secure from hacking. In addition, as blockchain manages permissions itself, unauthorized participants can’t access any information. By requiring its blockchain members to witness each record, genEOS guarantees data invincibility.
Apart from developing a decentralized application (Dapp) to enhance the integrity, it’s possible to use ready-to-go services. One of them is Integra Ledger, a blockchain-powered solution to improve document protection.
Blockchain Helps with Management Routines
Blockchain can help with routine tasks such as time-keeping, filing cases, or managing transactions with plenty of participants. As blockchain logs all alterations made to the records, its traceability allows reducing time spent on looking for any details. In addition, being inherently digital, blockchain can structure cases by search criteria better than any paper-based system.
What’s more, since every new element of a particular blockchain will contain all the previous information already recorded to that blockchain, data becomes immutable. This is vital for handling transactions with plenty of parties, such as in mergers and acquisitions.
For example, K&L Gates New York has already adopted their own blockchain-based solution for easing their routine tasks. Any law firm is encouraged to do the same either by building a Dapp from the ground up or by using a ready-made platform like genEOS.
No Need to Issue Tokens to Benefit from Blockchain
“You don’t need to be doing initial coin offerings or issuing tokens to benefit from blockchain,” says Judith Rinearson, a partner in K&L Gates’ New York and London offices. This is exactly how lawyers can adopt the disruptive blockchain technology.
Blockchain allows making data impossible-to-hack, safe, transparent, traceable, and immutable. Smart contracts built on blockchain guarantee the accomplishment of any agreement upon required conditions.
