International lawyers start advising on blockchain finance

Blockchain player R3 says ten international legal firms have agreed to help develop advice on the legal aspects of the emerging technology.

The aim: bring together law firms to collaborate on best practices, gather feedback from the legal sector and also help them to better engage with the stuff.

The New York-based firm, which positions itself as building an OS for financial markets with a new distributed blockchain platform called Corda, has launched a Blockchain Legal Centre of Excellence.

The first wave of signatories include Ashurst, Baker & McKenzie, Clifford Chance, Crowell & Moring, Fasken, Holland & Knight, Perkins Coie, Shearman & Sterling and Stroock.

The firms will have access to the company’s research, get monthly project demos to give a practical understanding of blockchain applications and specialist software training, it says.

The vendor claims law firms are increasingly involved providing specialist advice on the legal aspects of the technology, like how to best structure business networks and in drafting smart contracts, which it defines as legal documents written into code and stored on the blockchain.

“Lawyers hold a key position in the financial services ecosystem,” says Jason Rozovsky, senior counsel and head of the R3’s new legal centre.

“Many of our clients are also clients of the world’s leading law firms, a number of which have joined our legal centre of excellence.”

Launched in September 2015, R3 was born out of a common frustration amongst banks and other financial institutions with multiple generations of disparate legacy financial technology platforms that struggle to interoperate, causing inefficiencies, risk and spiraling costs.