How Digitisation Can Transform The Indian Legal Industry Here's how blockchain technology can be used to make a legal documentation more robust and secure
By Gauravkumar Kate •
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The digitalization of Legal Documents is need of the hour and it is a fast moving industry in India. Legal Documentation by its very nature is complex and time-consuming due to old rules and lengthy processes.
Legal Documentation is divided into three broad steps
1. Drafting
2. Stamp Duty Payment and Signing
3. Validation of Document by Concern Authorise.
With the Help of technology drafting the documents are digitized at large. There are many state-of-art software and technologies available for digitalization of the drafting part.
Unfortunately, Stamp Duty Payment, signing, and Validation of Documents are still manual process in the most part of India.
Government Receipt Accounting System
To ease the availability of Stamp Papers, many state governments have taken steps to digitize the sales of stamp papers. Using the SHCIL (Stock Holding Corporation of India) services many states are issuing e-stamp papers. Some states like Maharashtra and Haryana has its own GRAS (Government Receipt Accounting System) portals for the issue of e-Stamp.
AADHAR
With the use of AADHAR stack and digital literacy, complete digitisation of Legal documents has finally arrived in India. UIDAI enables the Indian citizen to sign documents using AADHAR (By the way of OTP or Biometric Verification) under the section IT act 2000. The legalisation of Digital signature was the important milestone in the history of Legal Industry. Acceptance and wide use of digital signatures have drastically reduced the human efforts for Legal Documents. For example, earlier for any registration of Leave and Licence agreement under Maharashtra Rent Control act 1999, Landlord and Tenant had to visit sub-registrar office along with 2 witnesses and spend at least a working day to get it done. Now using AADHAR stack, one can get the same registered Leave and License agreement, commonly known as Registered Rent agreement completely online without visiting any government office physically. Similarly, Marriage registration, mortgage intimation, and many other personal documents are be done completely online, making legal documentation as easy as ordering it on an e-commerce website.
Apart from personal legal documents, enterprise legal compliance documents can be prepared completely online using Aadhar stack. The organization can get Company Incorporation, different registrations and licenses like Trademark Registration, Patent filings, Shop and Establishment, FSSAI Licence and employee registrations can be completed online and in a transparent manner.
Other Innovations
Though many constructive measures have been taken by the government to boost the digitalization of Legal Documents; still digitalization of Legal Documents is in the very nascent state. Legal Documentation in India is 60000 CR + Industry and growing. There are many things possible using robust technology to make Legal Documentation easy, secure and accessible to Masses of India.
Notarization which is used in many Legal documents is driven by Notary Act 1952, these age-old laws need to be amended to accommodate new technology and digitalization. USA has stopped the Notary Services, one need not go to the Notary Public's office, and Notary is based on the digital signature of parties involved.
Blockchain Technology can be used to make a legal documentation and registry of Legal Documents more robust and secure. Block Chain will curb the false Data Entry, duplicate documents and forgery of documents. As mentioned earlier, in this fast-moving world, Digitisation of Legal Documents is important.
