At the recent ILTACON show, the opening keynote speaker advised the collected law firm tech talent that the most important thing their firms should be doing is investing in developing NFTs. At that point I signaled the rest of the legal tech press the drinking game rules for that mention: “NFTs! Everyone chug bleach.”
It’s not that NFTs are dumb, it’s that they’re incredibly dumb.
If you make a NFT of a real diamond, and the diamond itself gets destroyed in a fire tomorrow, you still have the same asset.
Because the token still exists and is in limited supply just as before. Nothing has changed.
What NFT is doing to the concept of asset, few understand.
— Tascha (@TaschaLabs) August 22, 2021
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This is fair. Very few people understand it. But not in the “very few people understand it like quantum physics” way. More in the “very few people understand it like Logan Paul being famous” way.
For the record, the most important thing law firms should be doing right now is not developing NFTs.
But lawyers will have to understand them, if only to weather the next few years of twits filing 10K lawsuits over fake diamond NFTs or thinking that they own Dune because they happen to be gullible marks with big bank accounts.
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Herbert Smith Freehills offers a number of free workshops for aspiring attorneys on cutting-edge tech subjects, including NFTs.
HSF says one of the sessions will be streamed live from the metaverse (a virtual 3D world in which individuals can interact with one another) in a bid to bring these topical issues to life. If that wasn’t enough, course completion certificates will be transferred to participants as NFTs after they have been shown how to “mint” them (the process of converting a digital file into a digital asset stored on the blockchain).
The NFT certificate is a fun little souvenir. I assume it’s a bored monkey reading the Bluebook.
In all seriousness, just because a piece of emerging tech seems impractical (like the current iteration of the metaverse) or stupid (NFTs), that doesn’t mean those technologies won’t spawn a lot of legal work. And over a long enough timeline, some tech will have a broad cultural impact. The metaverse may be the chat room of the damned so far, but I suspect it’s like a penny farthing bicycle and we’ll look back on it and wonder what possessed anyone to build it that way.
There’s a lot of money to be made by digital lawyers who understand this stuff.
And by “a lot of money” I mean “cash” not crypto. Because lawyers know better.
HSF embraces the metaverse with new digital law course for students [LegalCheek]
Earlier: First Biglaw Firm To Buy Serious Property In The Metaverse
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.