My first published article of 2018 has appeared in Law Practice magazine and it’s called “Thinking Smartly About Smart Contracts.”

The editors of the magazine approached me a while back to see if I wanted to write a blockchain article that would introduce lawyers and others to the blockchain concept and its implications. I told them that I felt that the article Gwynne Monahan and I wrote last year (“Lawyers Get Ready, There’s a Blockchain Coming“) was still a good starting point. However, I said, I was willing to write an article that was a primer about “smart contracting,” which is a next big step in blockchain evolution. They liked the idea and the result is this article.

Smart contracts can be thought of as “apps” that run on blockchains and embed “if-then” logic so that certain activities occur automatically. People have been intrigued by how they might take the place of standard legal contracts in certain situations.

My article introduces the key concepts, gives some examples, and suggests ways that smart contracts might impact lawyers and the legal system.

The money quote:

Smart contracting could help people who can’t afford lawyers or in areas like online commerce where lawyer involvement in every dispute is not practical because of the amounts involved or volume. Removing commodity legal work also frees lawyers to do more creative, high-value work.

This article is my contribution to getting conversation started about blockchains and smart contracts. I’ve been very pleased by the positive reaction the article has gotten already. Let me know what you think. And check out the rest of the issue of the magazine – there are some very good articles on important topics.

 

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

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