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How might blockchain technology revolutionize the legal industry?

Joseph Raczynski  Manager, Technical Client Management, Thomson Reuters Legal

Joseph Raczynski  Manager, Technical Client Management, Thomson Reuters Legal

Blockchain impact on the legal industry is sure to be long-lived

While Bitcoin may disappear in a few years (doubtful, but possible) its underlining technology is by far the most important development going forward. Furthermore, I have little doubt that blockchain technology will revolutionize the legal industry in the coming years and that it will be a significant disrupter to the legal profession and the overall market on many fronts.

What is blockchain?

Blockchain is a public ledger. It can be applied to almost anything that you would normally save to a database or spreadsheet. Take Bitcoin, for example. The blockchain shows the exchange of all the money that has ever changed hands in Bitcoin transactions. It does not list who owns the coins per se, just that they exist or that they changed hands. It is controlled by no single person, but by all parties connected to the exchange.

This public, but encrypted “spreadsheet in the sky” is, in theory, more secure and open than our current system of money exchange. The network maintains a collective history of all of the transactions that have ever occurred on the network.

You can view all of the Bitcoins changing hands every moment of the day at And as you see the transactions scroll up, you soon identify several important legal implications.


While Bitcoin created the first blockchain, many other such chains have been created since. (For example, there are other cryptocurrencies that use the technology.) However, where this becomes most interesting is how related businesses could use a ledger-based blockchain platform.


So how will blockchain revolutionize the legal industry?

Creation of legal contracts


For example, I could create a contract which stipulates that when my patent was approved by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), my four partners would receive a 10 percent share in my company. How would that work? The contract on the blockchain would check to see if the patent was approved, then trigger a process releasing the shares to the partners.

All of this would be automated and fall outside of human legal action. Indeed, you could go one step further and tie in a payment system so that when that patent was granted, bonus funds could be dispersed automatically into the accounts of said partners.

Intellectual property rights management

If blockchain is ripe for anything, it is IP. This technology creates a publicly accessible, indisputable ledger of each filing which could be held not solely by jurisdiction but on a global scale benefiting everyone.


Land registry and deed management


Agricultural land parcels are shown next to the desert in the Imperial valley near El Centro, California.
Agricultural land parcels are shown next to the desert in the Imperial valley near El Centro, California. REUTERS/Mike Blake




Establishing public records


Estate planning and personal finance

The banking industry also is jumping into this arena. The theory is that our stock exchanges will become blockchain-enabled. The idea is simply that every stock bought or sold would be on the ledger. You could trace back your own ownership of that equity and even tie that to your estate planning documents.


Behind-the-scenes or tangible technology?

Personally, I have little doubt that blockchain technology will revolutionize the legal industry in the coming years. The question is if it will be more like HTML (a behind-the-scenes technology) or if it will be a more obvious, almost tangible technology that we will all reference by name.


Learn more

View this story as it originally appeared on the Legal Executive Institute blog.

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