Compass, vLex and Justia bring a world of legal information to Canada | Colin Lachance | Pulse | LinkedIn

“With the continued departure of small independent publishers and the nascent state of the legal tech startup market, the need for strong and innovative commercial competition to LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters in Canada has never been more pressing,” says Compass CEO Colin Lachance. “Building on the backbone of the historic MLB collection and the active participation of great partners who bring advanced technology and successful track records of decades of legal innovation and disruption, we will provide th

Source: Compass, vLex and Justia bring a world of legal information to Canada | Colin Lachance | Pulse | LinkedIn

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Blockchain digital process: PwC

But over the long term, the greatest promise is with intricate forms of agent-managed peer-to-peer automation—a highly efficient Internet of Things empowered by an Internet and web of agents, smart transactions, and contracts. The rest of the 2010s likely will be a period of tinkering, comparable in some ways to the late 1990s. Considering there are hundreds of both blockchain and artificial intelligence startups, and sizeable venture capital (VC) investments across both, the possibility also looms of a boom-and-bust period that could mirror the dot-com era in its breadth and depth. By the time the last half of the 2020s materializes, companies might have made their way through what Gartner calls a Trough of Disillusionment to the adoption of a transactional environment very different from today’s.

Source: Blockchain digital process: PwC

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Blockchain importance: PwC

Instead of involving lots of humans in the transaction pipeline and paper processes that take days, weeks, or months to complete, huge volumes of transactions could be validated automatically. Other more complicated transactions that still require humans could at least be simplified with the help of mathematical validation.

From a legal standpoint, the system becomes a “person,” a virtual third-party enforcer that never sleeps. From a computing perspective, that “person” is actually a software agent. The use of agents will be essential to scaling recordkeeping and providing visibility to the historical record.

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Blockchain defined | PwC

In the simplest case, a smart contract would make it possible to lock out a driver whose authorization to drive a rental car had expired. In more complex scenarios, rental car companies could automate the operation of entire facilities.

From a legal standpoint, the system becomes a “person,” a virtual third-party enforcer that never sleeps. From a computing perspective, that “person” is actually a software agent. The use of agents will be essential to scaling recordkeeping and providing visibility to the historical record.

Source: Blockchain defined: PwC

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Blockchain Introduction and Forecast: PwC

Smart transactions enable smart contracts

Blockchain ledger technology opens the door not only to decentralized transactions, but also to smart (that is, automated and computable) transactions and smart (computable and self-executing) contracts that can take advantage of smart transactions. A smart contract is a digitally signed, computable agreement between two or more parties. A virtual third party—a software agent—can execute and enforce at least some of the terms of such agreements.

Source: Blockchain Introduction and Forecast: PwC

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The Blockchain Will Do to Banks and Law Firms What the Internet Did to Media

The “killer app” for the early internet was email; it’s what drove adoption and strengthened the network. Bitcoin is the killer app for the blockchain. Bitcoin drives adoption of its underlying blockchain, and its strong technical community and robust code review process make it the most secure and reliable of the various blockchains. Like email, it’s likely that some form of Bitcoin will persist. But the blockchain will also support a variety of other applications, including smart contracts, asset registri

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How Blockchain Applications Will Move Beyond Finance

In their seminal work on the theory of the firm, Michael Jensen and William Meckling defined the firm as a “nexus of contracts” — the idea that firms are nothing more than a collection of contracts between various parties, such as employees, customers, and shareholders. Cryptocurrencies may one day enable a completely new type of organization by allowing us to securely transfer value and allocate resources through smart contracts. Whereas this new type of organization may achieve the speed and efficiency of

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