Ashurst joins R3s Legal Centre of Excellence

R3 created the LCoE to educate, collaborate with and gather feedback from the legal sector, helping to increase members' awareness of Corda, an open source blockchain platform which enables financial institutions to use smart contracts to manage and settle transactions between themselves in real time.

Members of the LCoE have access to R3’s research on distributed ledger technology, monthly project demos to give members a practical understanding of real world distributed ledger applications, as well as Corda training workshops which have been specifically developed for lawyers. This will afford LCoE members exclusive access to engage and collaborate with R3's technical experts, enabling them to provide the most cutting edge insight and thought leadership on the technology to their clients.

David Futter, partner in Ashurst's digital economy practice, commented:

"We are delighted to have been invited to join R3's Legal Centre of Excellence. Our fintech practice focuses on supporting the world's leading financial services providers in designing and delivering their end-to-end digital transformation strategies, and this partnership further exemplifies this.

"The fintech industry is evolving rapidly, and by joining R3 we will be able to collaborate and exchange ideas with industry experts, sharing invaluable knowledge and expertise. The LCoE affords us a unique opportunity to access real world applications of Corda's blockchain platform as they are being developed, giving our lawyers and legal technologists an even deeper understanding of the smart contract ecosystem, in what we see as a future of distributed ledger based financial services."

Jason Rozovsky, senior counsel and head of the Legal Centre of Excellence at R3, said:

“Lawyers hold a key position in the financial services ecosystem. Many of our clients are also clients of the world's leading law firms, a number of which have joined our Legal Centre of Excellence. There is an overall benefit to our membership and the Corda community at large to collaborating with these firms about Corda and its capabilities early on, and to obtaining their valuable insights into the legal and regulatory environments in which Corda operates.”