The development and emergence of new ways of human interaction are accompanied by the appearance of the question at every step: “Is this action legal?”. In the first months of the NFT boom, there was an urgent need for digital lawyers; they learned how to read intelligent contracts, defend copyrights for crypto art and explain how to pay taxes on digital profits properly. After NFT, a more advanced way of interaction appeared – the metaverse.
For example, our team, together with an experienced digital lawyer, helps investors and NFT authors comply with tax obligations, prove their case and legally organize digital startups.
What it takes to become a digital lawyer
Despite the abundance of online courses, it is still imperative for a lawyer to study full-time. And the point here is not in the crust, but the experienced university teachers will be able to convey it at lectures and seminars.
If you already have a sufficient amount of legal knowledge, you need to improve your cybersecurity and digital law skills. Getting acquainted with the court practice in smart contracts and tokens will be beneficial. It is also worth noting the necessary skills for any lawyer:
- the ability to express your thoughts correctly;
- communication skills to communicate with clients;
- the ability to search for information, analyze documents and find logic or violations in them;
- study of judicial practices;
- excellent knowledge of laws, legal procedures, and regulations;
- It will also be helpful for a digital lawyer to understand the metaverse technologies easily and how the blockchain, smart contracts, and NFTs work.
What tasks can a lawyer solve in the metaverse?
1. Dispute Resolution. Violation of copyright and any terms of a smart contract in the virtual world is quite a good reason for a lawsuit in reality. Here, a digital lawyer can be a consultant to a judge, a lawyer, or an independent expert.
2. Creation of an NFT startup and work on DAO projects. This task is at the intersection of the world of cryptocurrencies and reality. For many founders of digital companies and startups, it is important not only to open their business legally but also to minimize tax costs and possible legal restrictions. It is also necessary to constantly maintain intelligent contracts with a digital lawyer, this is more relevant for DAO projects.
3. Accompanying the purchase and sale of the property. Standard smart contracts with exchanges may reasonably regulate the exchange of digital objects for small amounts. Still, if you need to comply with additional conditions and prescribe them in the contract, then you cannot do without a lawyer.
4. Development of digital laws and smart contracts that would have a legal basis in the real world. This may require, as in real life, the work of not one lawyer but a whole council of experienced digital lawyers.
So far, to prove your case due to disputes in virtual reality, you need to go to authentic courts.
What are the prospects for this profession?
The lawyer of the metaverse is not a new profession but a new stage in the development of researchers of the letter of the law. Already today, there are private lawyers or small firms that specialize in digital tokens. For example, they often help legally sell large sums of digital property: paintings, land, real estate, digital clothing, etc.
The scope of digital contracts is expanding, and more and more people are immersed in the metaverse. This means that more and more types of interaction will appear, and they will need legal regulation. This profession in the metaverse has many tasks ahead of them, the main one being to enforce all the rules, contracts, and laws in the digital space.
