Blockchain: The Digital Gavel
The legal system is flawed (fact) and I’m sure we can all come up with reasons why. Whether those are fact based or grudge based, the truth is nothing can be perfect. We’re human beings — at times we make bad choices, wrong decisions, and have poor judgment.
On a day-to-day basis this might not be such a huge deal, unless of course you insensibly ask someone if they’re pregnant when they’re really just a smidge out of shape (not one of my proudest moments). Jokes aside, in the world of law, mistakes can cost people their careers, reputations, and possibly their lives.
Humans make mistakes. Computers don’t.
Remember blockchain back in 2016? I think it’s time we pay him a visit and ask him to right our wrongs.
(just in case you need a refresher on blockchain and smart contracts):
Another Day at the Office
The job of a lawyer is no easy task. Lawyers are known for working long and often grueling hours, with most lawyers working more than 40 hours a week. Obviously these numbers depend on a variety of circumstances but you get the picture.
Clients interact with their attorneys, attorneys interact with each other, depositions are made, settlement agreements are discussed and either signed or dismissed, all until the last step of the path where people may find themselves in court. This process is exhausting for clients, attorneys, and for me to talk about. So let me stop boring you and instead give you access to the juicy stuff.
The blockchain is essentially a distributed ledger that multiple parties have access to. This ledger holds information (a lot of it) and in the world of law, information is evidence (you see how that’s important). Lawyers can leverage blockchain technology to streamline and simplify their transactional work, digitally sign and immutably store legal agreements.
“So that makes the lawyer’s job easier, but what else does it do?”
The truth is a lot of people hate lawyers. A landmark study for the American Bar Association found even harsher truths underlying the popular perception of attorneys:
- 74% of those surveyed agreed that “lawyers are more interested in winning than in seeing that justice is served.”
- 69% believed “lawyers are more interested in making money than in serving their clients.”
- 57% claimed that “lawyers are more concerned with their own self-promotion than their client’s best interests.”
- More than half (51%) agreed that “we would be better off with fewer lawyers.”
Although blockchain can’t paint lawyers as angels, it can clear up some gray areas around their stigma.
Distributed ledger technology creates a shared ledger accessible by all parties to an agreement. A huge problem with the work of a lawyer is deception. Blockchain-based contracts have baked-in compliance, no surprises, and no room for misinterpretation. Non-technologists can better understand the transactions they enter into and what the smart contract represents. All ledgers and contracts are fully transparent to everybody, which puts the “just” in justice (you can go back to loving Harvey Specter now)
“Time Is Money”
Let’s talk about how expensive lawyers are, and by expensive I mean EXPENSIVE.
For this reason, thousands of people are unable to afford an attorney to represent them in court, which may be the exact reason that they are wrongfully convicted for a crime. One might argue that legal aid is available for those who can’t afford it, but if we’re being honest, it’s just a band-aid solution so that the government isn’t attacked for being stingy.
Take a look at Canada:
- In Alberta, legal aid isn’t available to anyone making over $20,000 a year
- In Ontario, the threshold is $17,731
- British Columbia’s limit is $19,560
- Quebec’s is $22,750.
Ian Savage, president of the Calgary Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association, says hiring a lawyer for trial can range from $1,500 to $10,000, depending on the lawyer’s experience.
…… I’m sorry, what?
Assume for a second you’re a citizen of Ontario and you require a lawyer to represent you in a domestic abuse case. You’ve tried hiring low-end lawyers as your salary is $20,000, but your case has continuously been dismissed and you are facing the risk of being sued for defamation of your spouse who is the CEO of a very well known engineering company.
Since this is an expensive case, the only lawyer that you trust to properly represent you is worth $10,000. Because of your salary, you are unable to qualify for legal aid, meaning you are forced to pay for an attorney with your own money. But, you make $20,000 a year minus all costs of living and taxes..? I don’t think that’s fair and I’m sure as hell you don’t either.
The real reason why lawyers are so expensive is because of the long, grueling hours they work (remember I mentioned that earlier). And these hours are so long and grueling because drafting and amending legal documents takes an absurd amount of time. Time is costly, and this cost is generally passed down to clients, which pushes hourly lawyer fees to astronomical rates. Also, lawyers spend up to 48% of their time on administrative tasks, including transferring information between software and updating client trust ledgers.
Hmm… ledger…… where have we heard that word before?
Remember when I also said that blockchain is simply just a distributed ledger? Implementing blockchain in a lawyer’s line of work makes their job easier, which in turn largely reduces the amount that clients have to pay.
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 clients.
Now you can afford that lawyer!
A Sealed Cookie Jar
So, the other day I was re-watching Lethal Weapon (10/10 show would 100% recommend), and the police chief was under the threat of getting exposed for using fake evidence to essentially frame a criminal because the actual evidence was damaged in transportation. The criminal had multiple counts of pedophilia related assault, and the evidence being lost meant that he would be able to walk. So the chief thought if he presented fake evidence that served the same purpose as the real evidence, he’d be able to put the criminal away for good. It ended up working, but, fabricating evidence is a serious crime and if he ever got caught it would call for a lot of consequences.
Now, all of this is fictional and part of a plot for the show to follow, but chain of custody issues similar to the example I just mentioned happen in real life all the time. In most cases, nobody has the balls to fabricate evidence, so felons who have piles of evidence against them walk because even a small portion of this evidence is lost. Whether this be an honest mistake or a planned sabotage, losing evidence can absolutely destroy a case and there’s nothing anyone can do about it… unless we could (no, I’m not saying we should legalize evidence fabrication)
Chain of custody is the process of handling evidence from the time it is collected until the time it is presented as evidence in a court of law. Evidence exchanges hands numerous times; interested parties log evidence in and out of storage, physically sign forms that create a paper trail to record its movements (a long process with a huge margin for error). Unfortunately, this process creates several opportunities for nefarious actors to taint the evidence. It also opens the door for defense attorneys to claim the evidence has been tampered with (lawyers never play fair).
Utilizing blockchain technology, one could generate and track a unique evidence token for every item of data collected and received — stored and auditable in a public/private blockchain. This way, it minimizes the risk of sabotage and authenticates the evidence so that it is presentable in court.
Upgrading the System
Think back to when you were a young kid for a second. Picture your best friend from your childhood. You would play with them everyday at school or at the playground or wherever you hung out with them. You loved this friend, but sometimes you disagreed on something or had some arguments; maybe even fights. Whenever these happened, usually there’d be a grown up who would try and calm the situation down and made sure everyone got what they wanted in the end.
Well, now we’re grown up. Now we don’t argue or fight. We have disputes (a very fancy way of saying arguing and fighting). And when the adult gets involved trying to settle things, that’s called arbitration. With arbitration, the people in a conflict hire a neutral person (an arbitrator) to make decisions about their dispute they will be bound by. The arbitrator listens to the evidence each party presents and decides the issues. Arbitration is less formal and more flexible than court, and the primary reasons why employers across both public and private sectors prefer arbitration to litigation is its timeliness and cost-effectiveness. The Supreme Court itself has noted that the arbitration process has many advantages to litigation because it is less expensive, less disruptive, and more flexible.
Moral of the story: arbitration makes everyone’s life easier because it’s so much less of a hassle and it isn’t ridiculously expensive.
But there’s a slight inconvenience issue with an arbitration system: it seems like a pretty complicated process for just a slight disagreement between two parties. If only there was a way to remove the middleman using some sort of technology that would make this whole process a walk in the park for everybody (hint: you already know the answer)
In a blockchain-based arbitration system, users program their agreements into a smart contract that manages the arbitration procedure. These agreements seamlessly interact with smart contract code to ensure the enforceability of any arbitral awards.. An integrated reputation system could help the community select arbitrators to resolve disputes. Blockchain-based arbitration systems will create a global, universally available judicial system that delivers low cost and high-quality dispute resolutions fully online.
What the Future Entails
Despite its earliest roots being found in 2008, blockchain technology is still relatively new. Only recently have large businesses found ways to implement this technology to better their services and increase their appeal. The good news is that blockchain is slowly finding niches in multiple industries across the globe; the law industry being one of them. No large law firms have fully adopted blockchain, but there is a large rise of “blockchain lawyers” making appearances in the world of law. It’s only a matter of time before blockchain takes the world by storm, and best believe you want to be on the winning side when it does.
That’s all, Your Honor.
Hey! I’m Zaheen Asif, a 16 year old fueled by the curiosity found in emerging technologies with a passion for worldly change. Find me on Medium to see more of my content. Thanks for reading!
