Ready Lawyer One: Lawyering in the Metaverse

The metaverse is the emerging cyberspace realm were people and entities (and various forms of algorithms and artificial intelligence) will interact, engage in games, sports, and entertainment, buy and sell “real world” and “in the metaverse” goods and services, and otherwise get into legal disputes just like IRL (“In Real Life”) persons and entities. Many lawyers will try to ignore the metaverse, but this is a short-sighted strategy because our clients will not be ignoring the infinite growth potential of this new realm of cyber existence. It is anticipated that the future metaverse could accommodate virtually every kind of legitimate or criminal human activity, and so legal problems could arise from the metaverse relating to a huge variety of activities. Short of crimes that involve actual bodily harm, the list of legal concerns might be endless.

As the builders of the metaverse try to create a whole new world of opportunities for present and future clients, lawyers will do well to go at least a little way down the rabbit hole so we can help clients navigate this brave new world. The concept of the metaverse opens the door to a myriad of complications brought about by legal subject matter, transactions, and occurrences that happened in no particular place in the real world but very much happened in the metaverse world. Basic questions about jurisdiction, venue, choice of law, and conflicts of law are not basic questions when the metaverse is concerned. Lawyers will need to start thinking of answers to these questions if their clients are running full tilt to the metaverse.