I believe a couple of statements from my last post need some clarifications, the most important being that it is most certainly too early for lawyers to start looking for new qualifications – if ever at all.
Self-enforcing contracts can’t replace human lawyers, and won’t do so in foreseeable future. There will always be a place for a well-drafted written contract, just as there will always be a place for professionals knowing how to compose it.
There are no contradictions here. Self-enforcing contracts have a very specific application area. They are perfectly suited for defining and enforcing relationships where the parties are subject to well-defined obligations, which can be formalized and verified in mathematical or logical way. Particular examples of those are cryptocurrencies, stock exchange, automated tellers and vending machines, and various kinds of automated non-repudiation and proof-of-identity check mechanisms. And yes, you will still need a lawyer for anything harder than that. Both traditional and self-enforcing contracts will therefore find their own place under the sun.
Even more, the evolution of self-enforcing contracts will give rise to a new legal specialty of a self-enforcing contract professional. This function will need to possess and combine typical skills of a lawyer with those of a mathematician/cryptographer, to be able to produce robust and provably secure self-enforcing contracts.
These changes, in fact, are no different to changes we are observing in nearly any other area being transformed by the computer-led innovation – let’s leave the creative stuff for us humans, and let the computer do the routine.
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