Ian Lopez, Legaltech News
For companies looking to leverage blockchain technology, compliance can be both cumbersome and confusing. Steptoe & Johnson is attempting to fight these notions.
Credit: enzozo/Shutterstock.com
The terms blockchain, bitcoin and cryptocurrency may ring a bell, but many couldn’t even begin to tell you what those technologies are, let alone what they do. Yet advocates of the technology would have you believe it’s the wave of the future, and in recent years, that number of proponents has gone from few to many.
Yet blockchain technology—which essentially functions as a sort of digital ledger that can record transactions—has been on legal’s radar for quite some time. Early among Big Law in jumping on the blockchain bandwagon is Steptoe & Johnson, which has an entire practice area devoted to blockchain and digital currency. This week, the firm announced that it was joining the Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), an advocacy group founded at the 2017 World Economic Forum with the self-described goal of educating businesses about the benefits of blockchain. In doing so, Steptoe will join as a legal services partner, in which it will advise the GBBC on regulatory and legal issues involving the nascent technology.
Speaking on the potential of the blockchain, Steptoe partner Jason Weinstein told Legaltech News that the technology’s transformative capabilities are akin to those of the internet 20 years ago. But unlike the World Wide Web, people “can see it coming,” he explained, and in his own practice, he’s already seeing it as “an important emerging area” for Steptoe clients.
“Over the past several years, we have advised just about every type of participant in the blockchain ecosystem—including investors, entrepreneurs, early stage companies, exchanges, transaction processors and retailers,” he said. In this period of time, Steptoe’s practice area has expanded to include attorneys from a variety of practice areas, like government contracts, intellectual property, compliance and cyber.
Beyond the legal practice, Steptoe’s ventures into blockchain also include co-launching and serving as counsel for the Blockchain Alliance, a forum for law enforcement and regulatory agencies that serves a number of functions: addressing blockchain-related crime prevention; accepting payments in bitcoin, the digital currency built upon a blockchain; and assisting clients with developing blockchain applications.
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