Smart Legal Contracts: Digital Technology and Contracting

• CPD Points: 1 [PM] [PS]
• Price: $88.00
• Area: Contract Law; Digital and Information Technology Law; Legal Skills & Technique; Workplace, Business and Career
• Delivered: April 2023

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Description

In this session, Associate Professor Jason Allen, Singapore Management University Yong Pung How School of Law discusses smart contracts and provides information for legal practitioners on current legal issues raised by increasing applications of digital technology to contracting. This session provides practical points from a new book that covers this and more. He will be joined after the seminar by book chapter contributor, His Honour Justice Estcourt AM who will provide a keynote to a mini launch of the book.

The book, Smart Legal Contracts: Computable Law in Theory and Practice is a landmark investigation into one of the most important trends at the interface of law and technology: the effort to harness emerging digital technologies to change the way that parties form and perform contracts. While developments in distributed ledger technology have brought the topic of 'smart contracts' into the mainstream of legal attention, this volume takes a broader approach to ask how computers can be used in the contracting process. This book, edited by Jason Allen, Senior Research Fellow, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Peter Hunn, UK Jurisdiction Taskforce, assesses how contractual promises are expressed in software and this can be incorporated within more conventional legal structures. With contributions from members of the judiciary including His Honour Justice Estcourt AM, legal scholars, practitioners, and computer scientists, this book frames the borders of an emerging area of law and starts the dialogue between the various disciplines involved in the evolution of 'smart contracts'. This provides essential insight into future trends and innovation in the law. 'The beauty of the law lies in its ability to adapt to changing circumstances and this volume honourably upholds that tradition. I look forward to the next edition as SLCs continue to attract attention.' – David Glass, consultant solicitor at Excello Law, Law Society Gazette

Blockchain has brought “smart contracts” onto the radar, but what are they actually? Beyond blockchain, coders and legal technologists are rendering legal prose into machine-readable terms. Are we about to enter a world in which everyday law is enmeshed with software-based technical processes fundamentally? What will change, and what stays the same?

This session introduces five central concepts to navigate the changing landscape, look past the hype, and to embrace the benefits of digital contracting for the legal profession as it matures: Transactional Scripts; Ricardian Contracts; Law’s “Excel Moment”; Pragmatics and Computation; Contracts as Assets. In light of current developments, it also looks at the intersection of Computational Law and Generative AI, aka “prompt-based legal engineering”. This session will also include discussion on:

• a brief technology-neutral understanding of 'smart contracts';
• a look at the earliest judicial responses to these contracts as well as into current law reform; and
• information for legal practitioners on current legal issues raised by applications of digital technology to contracting.