Norton Rose Fulbright advises on the launch of the UK Legal Schema for digital documents and the development of a UK SmartCo
Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright advised the launch of a UK legal scheme to provide a universal structured data format for the creation and interactivity of digital documents (including smart contracts). The team also advised on the development of the UK ‘SmartCo’ project to enable existing UK corporate forms to be operated and administered using Legal Schema.
The Legal Schema is an open source initiative that provides a common language for creating and managing legal documents as data. As the world moves towards widespread digitization of the procurement process (reflecting the digitization of most aspects of society), the need for this common language grows. In the same way that schemas underpin and enable web development, UKLS not only supports the development of individual digital contracts but, more importantly, allows them to interact with each other (and with existing technologies). . The result being that the emerging smart contract and digital asset industries in the UK can benefit from a strong legal and technical foundation.
The legal scheme complements the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce’s legal statement on Crypto-Assets and Smart Contracts, the Law Commission’s ongoing review of the Smart Contracts Act, the Digital Dispute Resolution Rules recently released by UKJT and the UK Government’s National Data Strategy.