Legal processes are often quite time-consuming and full of complexities. It gets tough for people to keep managing litigations and lawsuits, as the processes are quite tedious. The laborious procedures also conjure up an aura of mysticism as a lot of things go beyond the understanding of the defendant and the respondent. The paper work is so much that it takes time to gather all necessary documents and get some evidence moving to support one’s case. Drafting and amendment of legal documents also takes time, adding up to the time and fee charged by the lawyer. Clio’s Legal Trends Report 2018 states that lawyers spend 48% of their time on administrative tasks, which leaves them with less productive time to focus on how to fight the cases for their clients. This is aggravated by the enormous paperwork that lawyers have to perform for the management of the historical records of cases.

Blockchain comes as a perfect solution to all these hassles. From paperwork to management of the records to signing on a horde of documents, blockchain promises to simplify everything that plagues the legal sector today. Smart contracts and immutable storage of data can ensure that a huge workload of lawyers is waived and they get more productive time to focus on fighting the cases, so that the lawsuits can be dealt with quickly and the number of pending cases in the court come down significantly.

Higher accessibility through Blockchain

Often physical signatures become the bottleneck in the process of legal contracts, as it takes time to reach out to all stakeholders and get their signatures. Moreover, there are always chances of human error in the process. Blockchain can help to automate the process of gathering signatures and managing them on the legal contracts. The parties in the legal contract will have to sign up on a portal or an app that connect them all on a single platform. The legal contract will be prepared with consent of all the involved parties and as per the agreed terms among them. Once the contract is ready, the lawyer who would be on that portal or app will be notified of the new legal contract and the tool will highlight the essential segments in that contract. The lawyer will have to simply check all the clauses and the regulations to which the contract must adhere. Once done, the lawyer shall approve the contract and share it with the involved parties for their approval. The contract is also sent to the signing authority, which commits an organization to the agreement.

Once all the digital signatures are taken from all the stakeholders, a smart contract kicks in and automate the process of bringing the legal binding agreement into effect. The legal contract which has consent of all stakeholders is added to the distributed ledger and no single person can alter the agreement for any fraudulent practice. No need for any paperwork, no need to reach out to people in person for signatures, and no need for any maintenance of papers in termite-ridden files. Everything about the contract goes digital and people can access the single copy online anytime from anywhere on-the-go.

Digital forensics on distributed ledger

Evidence is always prone to damage and modification by the unscrupulous parties in a lawsuit. One or some of the parties in a legal case may end tampering with the proofs and evidences for getting a verdict in their favor. This makes the paper-based evidence recording system quite dubious when it comes to data protection. Blockchain, with its feature of immutability, can be a beneficial tool for collection and maintenance of evidence in a secure fashion. Chain of custody of evidence has to be documented carefully, in order to have traceability of who collected the evidence, location of the discovery of the evidence, how it was stored, who all handled it in the process and a horde of other details that are necessary. This is especially important for those cases where an evidence which was classified as unimportant initially becomes crucial link to solve the case later. One can imagine the enormous amount of paperwork required in the process, and the chances of human intervention for corrupt intentions.

However, with blockchain, a lot of concerns can be dealt with. We need to have an application made available to police authorities, forensic experts and custodians of evidence. Once an evidence is collected, the details of the same will be fed into the application and the details will be shared digitally with all the participants. Once all participants approve of the evidence, a block containing all details of the evidence will be stored in the distributed ledger with everyone’s consent. Once stored, the evidence can be deleted or altered only with the consent of all stakeholders, which essentially implies immutability. This is because for a corrupt person to do the evidence tampering, he/she will have to get an entire group of people as partners in crime, which would be impossible with a large group of people handling the ledger.

Forensic experts from the crime investigation units can go through the digitized versions of the evidence and conduct their preliminary analysis of the digital documentation. Yes, physical evidence will also be required for detailed investigation; however, the first level analysis and understanding of the case can be facilitated by the digital documents on the ledger. Their analysis can be pushed as a block on the ledger, so that no one can tamper with the results and insights. Moreover, if there is any error in the results or derived interpretations by any single forensic expert, the other approving entities can point it out and get it rectified before pushing the block on the distributed ledger. This ensures utmost transparency over the process of evidence collection and maintenance. The next time the court or the lawyers need to revisit the piece of evidence, they can simply go and access the evidence on blockchain and use the non-tampered version for the benefit of the case.

Intellectual property management gets simplified

The process of gaining IP rights is quite cumbersome and involves a lot of paperwork, along with waiting time for the registration to be complete and even for content consumers to access the protected content. Moreover, the tangible version of the content has to be passed from one department to another to complete the process, and there is every less visibility on which stage the IP rights registration process has reached. This is where blockchain can be indeed useful. Instead of going through the paperwork and the content doing rounds of various departments for review purposes, the content creators can simply upload their content on an application portal, where the creator provides all information related to the abstract, type of work, owners’ details, fee paid and classification of the content. An application ID is generated. After authentication, a smart contract kicks in and asks for payment of fee. Once the payment is made, the approval process is started automatically.

The registrar of IP rights can then access the content using the application ID and add the approvals as blocks in that chain. The content creator also gets visibility on the stage where the approval and registration process has reached. And once all the approvals are in place, the smart contracts execute a code to establish the IP rights and notify the content creator on the same. Blockchain ensures that the work is not manipulated or duplicated by anyone else, because any such practice will have to be approved by the content creator, and obviously no content creator is going to allow for unwanted manipulation of one’s work. The time-stamped digital documents can act as the undeniable and immutable proofs of ownership.

Entities that wish to use the original content can place a request for access. A smart contract jumps to action and asks for payment of royalty fee. Once the payment is made, the fee processing is done automatically and the access is given without bothering the content creator.

Also, issues crop up at times when during the timeline of the IP registration process, some unscrupulous entity may happen to use the work and claim it as their own. With blockchain, it becomes even easier for the original content creators to cite the date of their submitted request for IP registration and compare it with the date of use by the deceitful party that has tried to steal the work. The lawyers can access the blockchain content on that particular content and using the application ID, the claims can be settled.

Remote litigation and settlements

Litigation are proceedings that aim to impose or defend a legal right, and are usually settled by mutual agreement by the warring parties. However, in some cases, a jury or judge in a court may also have to step in. In the case of litigation, the plaintiff and the respondent can bring the entire legal case on blockchain. The plaintiff can file a case using an online application that connects to a distributed ledger. Once all details of the case are filed, a lawyer is suggested automatically by the system or the plaintiff can choose to search for a lawyer manually. The respondent gets notified and is asked to file the documents in defense. The respondent also searches for a lawyer and then the chosen lawyers access the documents digitally, without asking either party to appear in person before them. Even if a judge or a jury in court is required, they can also access all the documents online and be assured of their originality since nothing can be tampered on blockchain without the consent of all stakeholders.

The fee for paperwork is reduced and so is the cost of traveling to the court or meeting the lawyer. Such costs are traditionally passed down to the clients, which leads to enormous costs of hiring lawyers and getting involved in legal processes. The high expenses sometimes keep people away from demanding legal action, even though it is necessary. With blockchain eliminating the huge costs, people will be more inclined towards getting their disputes settled in the most peaceful manner, with adherence to the law. Less of paperwork and more of digital justice will make the legal processes more efficient and swift. Border-less cooperation in the online space will lead to growth of Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAOs), where algorithms and vote of stakeholders result in automatic execution of decisions.

Tokenization to become seamless

Tokenization allows content creators, artists and innovators to convert their rights to an asset into digital tokens. These tokens can be sold online to grant consumers the access to the content. Smart contracts automate the process of fee payment and subsequent grant of access of tokens. The tokens act as medium to purchase the original content of a creator. This way, using their IP rights and the micro-transactions of blockchain, content creators can sell fractions of their assets on the distributed ledger in a legal fashion and get paid through the real-time royalty payment programs. The creators will have to log their creation on the blockchain and create a license around it though.

Property rights to be digitized

Land records are often not properly maintained and in rural areas, paperwork goes for a toss during natural disasters and artificial incidents, like arson or collapse of building or even theft. With the loss of paperwork, it becomes all the more difficult to establish ownership of lands. This is where blockchain can be instrumental as all property documents can be digitized and stored immutably for later reference. Land registry processes can be automated as the claimants can file an application online with reference to the digital documents on blockchain.  Smart contracts enabled by the government authorities can automatically complete the authentication process and notify all stakeholders about the same. Any conflict of interest will be settled by taking reference of the immutable digital documents on the distributed ledger and this will make the land registry process much faster. Costly central intermediaries can be avoided, thereby bringing costs and time down for the process.

Closing thoughts

Blockchain has caught the world by a storm and is compelling everyone to rethink the way manual processes are done. The distributed ledger can bring in faster processing capabilities, automation of tasks and higher efficiency in the legal process. All stakeholders get complete visibility over the progress of processes, which leads to higher transparency in the process and zero risks of data manipulation. Costs of legal processes will be brought down, while the processes themselves will get accelerated, leading to reduction in number of pending cases in the courts. Digital delivery of justice will be a new reality and the world will be more just place to live in.