Smart Contracts - The Future of Dispute Resolution?
Webinar
Smart contracts were first proposed conceptually in the early 1990s as a way of recognising that people were increasingly writing contractual obligations into computer code. “A smart contract is a computer program or a transaction protocol which is intended to automatically execute, control or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement.” (Wikipedia) Smart ledgers (aka distributed ledger technology or ‘blockchains’) are multi-organisational data structures with a superb audit trail and some embedded code. People are increasingly recording contractual elements into smart ledgers, and including computer code in these online contracts for future execution as part of contract fulfilment. While it might be assumed that dispute resolution will be ‘automated away’, some optimistic contrarians believe that alternative dispute resolution techniques might actually increase and play a more important role. Since 2015 a number of groups technical, legal, and business groups have been exploring what smart contracts mean for the future of dispute resolution. For arbitrators, these new approaches will mean change, they might also mean new markets and new roles. This interactive session will explore smart contract examples, the terminology, what goes right, what goes wrong, and the opportunities for Dispute Resolvers?
Date
Thursday, 17 March 2022
Time
18:00 - 19:00 GMT
Cost
Free
Speaker(s):
-
Professor Michael Mainelli
Chairman
Z/Yen Group