NewLawTech

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  Data flow

Inspiration

Lawyers work in an old-fashioned way and innovation is not really happening in the legal world. I'm a lawyer and I don't like working the rest of my life in Word. Verified data should flow like water through legal agreements. Moreover, we should start using Git based version control. I like the open source and knowledge sharing web3 community. That mindset is unusual in the legal profession. Legal agreements should be accessible for anyone, everywhere. Would be great to start a community of next generation lawyers drafting web3 enabled legal contracts based on verifiable truth and cryptographic evidence.

What it does

The tool is quite simple and flexible to bridge traditional legal agreements to web3. Lawyers and business people should be able to work with the application without the need of deep web3 knowledge. All data will be sourced using Chainlink's Any API and in future computation in contracts could be handled by Chainlink Keepers. Version control will make a lawyers life better, therefore contract templates are stored in Github. NFT asset data is imported directly from Opensea and can be included in any agreement. The agreed upon contract can be uploaded to IPFS. Moreover, all parties can receive a NFT for evidence and contract storage. All contract state is manipulated in the frontend and ensures GDPR compliance. Only the user will decide when and where to store data externally.

How we built it

We built the application in React. Web3 and e-mail authorisation is implemented with Moralis. Contract templates are stored in Github. We used the Opensea-Moralis Plugin to import NFT data into the application. Web3storage integration is developed, but unfortunately doesn't work with webpack 4 yet, work in progress:-). IPFS upload is also done through Moralis. All data is manipulated in EditorState and is the single source of truth while drafting and negotiating the agreement. The finished contract is rendered both in HTML and in PDF. Contract parties are free to publish and store the agreement anywhere, including EVM compatable blockchains.

Challenges we ran into

A lot of different challenges, as I'm just a lawyer and not a professional developer. Writing code is really hard but very rewarding if a feature works in the end.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Especially proud of the agreement template Library;-) and pulling NFT data into the application.

What we learned

That it is possible to build basically anything and that data is available everywhere. Innovation in the legal world is slow, but will be inevitable. Lawyers can learn a lot from developers and open-source projects.

What's next for NewLawTech

Challenge the legal profession by building a contract drafting tool that sources all kinds of verifiable data and helps design beautiful contracts. NewLawTech will make contracting a joy instead of a necessary evil;-)

Built With

• axios
• chainlink
• chakra-ui
• draft-js
• ipfs
• moralis
• nft
• react
• react-pdf