In the second episode of the series, Phillip Kelly (a partner in our Technology Disputes team) is joined by Dan Jewell (a legal director in our Technology Disputes team) to discuss smart legal contracts and the issues businesses need to be aware of when embedding smart contract technology into their legal agreements. Smart legal contracts are very much on the government’s and the courts’ agenda, with the Law Commission providing advice in late 2021 on whether the existing law of England and Wales can accommodate this new technology. In this podcast, we discuss issues including the role of code and its interaction with natural language in smart contracts, allocation of risk when things go wrong, considerations regarding the selection of governing law and jurisdiction, on-chain dispute resolution mechanisms, and the suitability of arbitration as a forum for disputes.