Contracts, just smarter

Our Smarter Contracts project at LawtechUK demonstrated how technology is transforming contracts across industries and sectors.

‘Smarter contracts’ are legally-binding digital contracts that use technology to provide benefits over conventional contracts. They span a wide spectrum, ranging from simple applications like electronic signatures, to human and machine-readable digital contracts, to sophisticated ‘self-executing’ smart legal contracts, which may be integrated with blockchain technology.

• Paper-based and manual ways of contracting result in businesses missing out on 9% of revenue each year. Technology makes this unnecessary.

• Moving from paper to digital trade documents is anticipated to free up an estimated £224 billion in efficiency savings and generate £25 billion in global economic growth by 2024. 

• Smarter contracting is predicted to become standard in the next 5 years.

The Report and interactive webpage are here and were referred to by John Glen, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, at his keynote speech at the Innovate Finance Global Summit during Fintech Week 2022.

You can watch the launch event chaired by me, with speeches from the Master of the Rolls, Law Commission and World Contracting and Commerce (amongst others), and demos from a range of use cases here.

12 case studies demonstrating digital first legal solutions to real-world problems