Blockchain Will Disrupt the Legal Industry
Blockchain is poised to disrupt virtually all industries including legal. Numerous use cases have been well documented. For example, smart contracts that automate the payment or non-payment for services. This eliminates the need for the long legal paper trail requiring a lawyer to be instructed about the history of the deal, decipher the details and correspond with opposing side.
Another use case is intellectual property where royalties from streaming could be coded into the blockchain to ensure artists are paid immediately. Land ownership in developing countries and chain of custody demonstrate blockchain’s effectiveness at ensuring certainty in transactional history in a highly encrypted database.
Some law firms are looking at how to help clients understand how they could make use of blockchain technology.
Kennedys, a UK top 40 firm, is distinguishing itself as a law firm leader when it comes to blockchain. Karim Derrick, head of research and development at Kennedys, says his firm has built a fraud-focused insurance prototype on IBM hyperledger software.
“Most of fraud happens because clients have their own databases and there is very little interaction that is automated, so fraudsters operate in the gaps between these databases,” Mr Derrick explains. “Blockchain will enable insurers to share their books with each other without exposing their books. This enables them to cross-reference claims and make it difficult for fraudsters to exploit the ignorance between them.”
Kennedys is also exploring the use of blockchain in motor claims, to enable insurance carriers, repair garages and hire companies to process claims automatically.
Law firms are not the only ones showing interest in blockchain technology. One of the most developed examples of a working application comes from the legal team at CME Group, the financial markets company. Working alongside with UK’s Royal Mint, lawyers created a blockchain-based platform to trade digital gold. The underlying technology will allow a new digital gold product, the RMG, to be traded securely and efficiently using a distributed ledger.
Currently they are in live testing with major financial institutions. The product is backed by up to $US1 billion in gold bullion.
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