In: Finance
what could be the impact of blockchain legal industry (Smart contracts) ?
INTRODUCTION
Blockchain technology is becoming an eventual element which could disrupt every industry around the world. Widely known for its ability to store information in a transparent and immutable ledger, blockchain offers businesses a higher level of precision. Legal industries are also looking to revolutionize their operations with the distributed ledger technology.
IMPACT
the legal sector more transparent
Distributed ledger technology creates a shared ledger accessible by all parties to an agreement. Blockchain-based contracts have baked-in compliance, no surprises, and no room for misinterpretation. Additionally, non-technologists can better understand the transactions they enter into and what the smart contract represents.
bring automation to the legal industry
Lawyers spend up to 48% of their time on administrative tasks, including transferring information between software and updating client trust ledgers. Utilizing a legal agreement repository and pre-fabricated smart contracts, lawyers can automate non-billable administrative tasks and transactional work. Cutting down on excessive manual labor will also accelerate legal proceedings, which decreases costs to customers.
make the legal industry more efficient
Blockchain technology can streamline, re-engineer, automate, disintermediate, and secure many processes in the legal industry without losing any of the judicial authority. Optimizing various industry features will make the legal and financial sectors more efficient and productive while lowering friction and costs.
bring data integrity and transparency to the legal industry
Legal documents act as a honeypot for ill-intentioned hackers who seek to profit from the valuable confidential information created and maintained by lawyers. Instead of emailing sensitive data back and forth, lawyers can choose to store legal information on a decentralized, distributed ledger for append-only feeds, which increases data integrity. If evidence is tampered with or changed, the associated hash value will not match, making it clear that a change has occurred.
make the legal sector more accessible
Lawyers can leverage blockchain technology to streamline and simplify their transactional work, digitally sign and immutably store legal agreements. Using scripted text, smart contracts, and automated contract management reduces excessive time spent preparing, personalizing and maintaining standard law documents
reduce costs in the legal industry
Many of the manual tasks can be carried out automatically, which significantly decreases the hours allocated to drafting and amending legal documents. This cost is generally passed down to clients, which pushes hourly lawyer fees to astronomical rates. The introduction of smart contracts will accelerate and lower the cost of transactions between parties. A cost-efficient algorithm can automatically and transparently manage escrow accounts at a fraction of the cost of manual labor. Lower costs will increase the overall demand and accessibility for legal services
USES
Smart Contracts
Currently, legal contracts are written with physical signatures, which require a significant amount of time to accomplish for a binding legal agreement. Due to the manual processing of the legal documentation, it is vulnerable to the human error.
INTELECTUAL PROPERTY
Due to the lengthy approval process, it becomes challenging to examine who created the IP first.
Blockchain can bring disruption to the handling of patents and trademarks by reducing approval wait times and required resources.
Litigation and Settlements
Litigation is used to describe proceedings initiated between opposing parties to defend or impose a legal right. It is settled by an agreement between the parties, but sometimes also decided by a judge or jury in the court.