The UK arm of Taylor Wessing, the 1,100-lawyer global firm, launched an employee incentive scheme powered by blockchain tokens. Staff can award the firm’s LAW Tokens to other lawyers whom they judge as making a strong contribution.
Recipients can only trade the tokens with other lawyers given there is an Allowed List to access the coins. Alternatively, they can redeem them with the law firm for non cash benefits such as vouchers. Or they can use the tokens to make charitable donations.
Rather than making the experience super user friendly, lawyers in the corporate, IP and financial services teams must use the Metamask wallet. That’s a useful learning curve, which is one of the primary objectives.
Because of the allow list restrictions and internal usage, there’s no secondary market for the tokens and they fall outside the Electronic Money Regulations. Plus there’s no need to register with the Financial Conduct Authority.
“A very significant number of our clients in the tech space are developing distributed ledger applications and we are representing an increasing number of blockchain and crypto businesses, as well as investors in – and acquirers of – those businesses,” said Angus Miln, Taylor Wessing Partner. “We want our people to develop the skills necessary for us to continue to expand our practice in these areas.”
Law firms dig into DLT, crypto
It’s not surprising that Taylor Wessing is targeting this space. So are several other major UK lawyers. Standouts included Clifford Chance, Ashurst, Hogan Lovells and DLA Paper.
In a few cases, they’ve taken it further and launched their own solutions. DLA Piper has a DLT security token platform, TOKO, and Hogan Lovells has a smart legal contract solution, DriveChain. DLA Piper and Dentons are both on the Governing Council of the Hedera Hashgraph DLT, which usually involves operating nodes.
