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Essay / The use of Blockchain technology in legal and judicial systems
Table of contentsCriminal casesSmart contractsNotarization and intellectual propertyThe future of blockchain in lawOne of the advantages of blockchain technology is the possibility of affixing a digital label on objects and documents allowing movements to be followed either physically or online. This feature opens up huge possibilities in the joint work of blockchain and law, one of them being proof of service. For example, the court sends written instructions to a party to a lawsuit when they are directed to appear in court. In this process, a proof of service document is the court affidavit that the person received. Typically, companies that use paper services are called process servers, and ServeManager is one of them. Earlier this year, ServeManager partnered with a blockchain company called IntegraLedger. Companies have focused on testing a proof of concept using the IntegraLedger blockchain to ensure delivery of service documents and ultimately serve as reliable proof of delivery of those documents. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayCriminal casesThe legal system could also benefit from blockchain by using it to improve the criminal justice system with ledger architecture distributed. Therefore, law enforcement, prosecutions, courts, probation departments, defense attorneys and corrections agencies could access criminal charges shared and tracked in a ledger. When charges are added or removed, this information will also be published in the ledger, allowing for a quicker outcome and more efficient overall administration of justice. Smart Contracts The legal industry relies heavily on legal documents, whether contracts between companies or witness and victim statements. However, it is necessary to sign and retain a document for it to be binding, which is a lengthy process that does not exclude human error. Blockchain technology could be the solution to this problem, by integrating accessibility into the documentation process and potentially even allowing a third party (a lawyer) to be excluded. Nonetheless, it shows how such a change could pose a threat to individual lawyers, while also being beneficial to the industry on a large scale. Smart contracts often become the center of discussions regarding blockchain and law. There are various reasons why such contracts cannot currently replace a standard legal contract on their own. For example, sometimes new situations arise, but no one thought about them when negotiating the contract. However, blockchain is permanent, so modifying smart contracts that have not been programmed for further modifications could be much more difficult than it currently is in the offline world. More importantly, a smart contract alone constitutes only the execution of a particular agreement, not the agreement itself. Therefore, even if a smart contract executes the agreed terms, the contract itself still requires the involvement of a lawyer. Notarization and intellectual propertyIn general, blockchain is capable of playing the same role as a notary since biometric data would allow stronger authentication. of a presence than the use of a private key which can be stolen. For example, BlockNotary uses.