Benjamin Mendelson

Associate, Founders Law

Ben qualified in South Africa before joining Linklaters’ Legal Operations in London to help manage the firm’s Paralegal and Support Lawyer services.

Ben has a background in commercial law, with many years of experience consulting in the tech sector, advising private clients on a wide range of Fintech–related matters and opportunities, including on Blockchain technology and Cryptocurrencies.

In 2021, Ben joined the team at Founders Law to fully-realise his passion for Fintech and to provide legal advice to some of the biggest up-and-coming technology companies in the UK’s booming tech sector.

Contributed to

2

Blockchain—key legal and regulatory issues

Practice notes

This Practice Note introduces blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) and explains terms such as public blockchain, private blockchain and permissioned blockchain. It considers relevant legal issues such as decentralisation, applicable law, transparency and confidentiality, data protection, cybersecurity, competition law, dispute resolution, taxation and governance. It also looks at the legal status of a distributed or decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) and examines potential legal issues with initial coin offerings (ICOs).

TMT

Smart legal contracts

Practice notes

This Practice Note explains what a smart legal contract (or smart contract) is and provides a summary of the Law Commission’s advice to UK government which concluded that the current legal framework in the UK is able to facilitate and support the use of smart legal contracts. It includes a breakdown of the legal principles surrounding the formation, form, formality and interpretation of contracts under UK law, and provides a comparison between the way in which those principles are applied traditionally and the way in which the Law Commission say they could apply to the main types of smart legal contract.

TMT