The government’s chief scientific adviser Mark Walport has said that ‘distributed ledger technology’ can potentially reduce fraud, corruption and the cost of paper-intensive processes, such as contracts. A distributed ledger is a database of assets – such as legal data – shared across a group of users, with each member having an identical copy. To stay secure, it relies on a tamper-proof chain of encrypted data known as a block chain, which is used to secure the virtual currency Bitcoin.

‘Cryptographic certainty’

The report by Mr Walport says that the technology could be used to make ‘smart’ contracts with ‘cryptographic certainty’ that the agreement has been honoured in the accounts, databases or ledgers of all parties. 

Profoundly change law and legal services

Timothy Hill, technology policy adviser at the Law Society, said that lawyers need to be aware of distributed ledger technology, describing it as a ‘powerful innovation’ that has the potential to profoundly affect the law and provision of legal services. Source: The Law Society Gazette