Web3 Legal Hub

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

A legal hub housing a Web3 legal webinar series and a directory of Web3 lawyers.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

Lawyer, and former legal fellow focusing on blockchain and cryptocurrency at a U.S. based Securities law firm. Experienced project manager, content creator, key partnerships lead, and community education organizer. Business, marketing and legal strategies advisor.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Web3 Legal Hub

Many Project Catalyst funded projects, and Web3 projects in general, need legal support and guidance. 

While new technology is exciting for its developers, the legal field is often left playing catch up. This makes it difficult for projects to find adequate legal support because not enough lawyers have been trained to support Web3 organizations. Also, it may be difficult to locate Web3-friendly lawyers that already exist, and even if they are located, these lawyers may be unwilling to take on projects because they lack the capacity to take on additional clients.

To help solve these issues, we’ll:

1.  Organize a webinar series on Web3 legal topics
2.  Create a directory of Web3-friendly lawyers

The Web3 Legal Hub’s impact will: 

1. Grow the number of Web3-friendly lawyers available to projects hoping to operate in the United States
2. Provide some legal guidance to projects
3. Provide projects with an easy way to locate Web3-friendly lawyers

I. Webinar Series on Web3 Legal Topics

A. Web3 Education for Lawyers

The webinar series will provide an overview of relevant legal issues facing Web3 projects. Each webinar will feature lawyers who are experts in their field. We would offer multi-state, participatory 2-hour/unit continuing legal education (“CLE”) courses. 

In the United States, each state oversees requirements for licensure as there is no singular federal licensing body, and each state requires CLE credits to retain one’s license to practice law. CLE’s are used to keep lawyers updated on legal issues as well as educating them on new legal topics. Each state oversees course accreditation.

We’ll seek course accreditation with the most important jurisdictions related to cryptocurrency and blockchain: California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New York, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

B. Legal Issues Covered by the Webinar Series 

1. Business Organization
2. Token Sales
3. Tax
4. AML / KYC
5. SAAS
6. Copyright
7. Stablecoins
8. Smart Contracts

C. Legal Webinars Benefit Funded Proposers

And, while the live webinars are geared to the legal community, the webinars will be recorded and made available on the Legal Hub for accessibility by funded proposers. The legal information in the webinars will help Web3 project teams by providing some legal guidance on operating in the United States.

II. Directory of Web3-Friendly Lawyers

The leading lawyer directory (avvo.com) fails to cover relevant practice areas like startups, privacy, blockchain and cryptocurrency law.

Not only will the webinars provide important information for lawyers, it will also serve to bring them into the hub, where they can upload their profile and practice specialties into the directory.

Through additional research, in-webinar surveys, and follow-up with webinar attendees, we’ll collect a list of lawyers who are ready to support Web3 projects.

This directory will be made available to the Project Catalyst community to make it easier for funded proposers to locate legal support.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

Legal Webinar Series Aligns with the Challenge KPIs

Use Case: The legal webinar series will serve funded proposals with projects that will operate in the United States.

Impact: The webinar series will provide training to lawyers in order to increase the number of attorneys available for funded proposals hoping to operate or find investors in the United States. The webinar series also provides direct legal guidance to funded proposals.

Scalability: Making the recorded webinars available on Youtube means that more people will be able to benefit from the webinars. The directory is scalable as an infinite number of attorneys may be included.

Adaptability: Webinars will be able to be accessed anywhere in the world. This would help funded proposers, and also legal professionals outside of the U.S. provide general guidance to projects that may be operating outside of the U.S. as they consider operating within the U.S.

Marketing Plan

LinkedIn Events - A 2020 American Bar Association survey found that LinkedIn rated as the social media platform most popular among lawyers (link to article). Thus, the live webinars will be marketed as LinkedIn Events.

Sponsored LinkedIn Events advertisement

Partnership Outreach - connecting with law firms and legal associations.

Existing Project Catalyst Channels - we’ll outreach to existing channels like Catalyst School, Cardano Women, and Catalyst Swarm to help spread the word of the recorded webinars availability on Youtube.

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

Challenges and Risks

Risk #1: Recruiting knowledgeable Web3 legal experts

Mitigation: Relying on the strength of our network to connect with legal experts. And it’s why our marketing strategy includes partner outreach and paid advertisement – to connect with the great possible number of attorneys interested in the subject.

Risk #2: Attendance

Mitigation: We’re hoping that providing lawyers the live webinar series free of charge will incentivize attendance. (Continuing legal education courses can cost anywhere from $25 - $350 per credit/hour).

Risk #3: Content obsolescence

Mitigation:  While changing laws are a reality, CLEs are constructed to cover foundational issues. When laws change they usually expand on existing law, not nullify it. This means that in terms of spotting potential legal issues, they still be useful, even if there was an update in the laws. The legal guidance in these webinars is not meant to replace working with a lawyer (keep in mind that it’s a lawyer’s job to keep abreast of changes to the law), we're going to have to build into our UI/UX a way of communicating major updates.

Risk #4:  Website maintenance

Mitigation: The future plan is to shift to paid content for updated webinars for lawyers, while continuing to make content free to funded proposers. The site will also likely include some kind of donation and/or advertisement model. Finally, in terms of long term maintenance, we’ll consider pursuing acquisition by or partnering with a law firm.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Roadmap

Month 1-3

• Website design and launch
• CLE accreditation applications and processing period
• Schedule webinars 1-4
• Market Webinar 1

Month 4

• Begin partnership outreach
• Webinar 1 - hold event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels
• Market Webinar 2
• Webinar 2 - market event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels
• Schedule Webinars 5-8

Month 5

• Webinar 3 - market event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels
• Webinar 4 - market event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels

Month 6

• Webinar 5 - market event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels
• Webinar 6 - market event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels

Month 7

• Webinar 7 - market event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels
• Webinar 8 - market event, collect attendance data, upload recorded session, share through Project Catalyst channels

Month 8

• Follow up with webinar attendees for additional directory profiles

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Budget

Total speaker fees to be paid to legal experts: 8,800USD

Total fees to be paid to webinar moderators: 800USD

Sponsored LinkedIn Events advertisement: 1,200USD

Webinar software for up to 500 attendees: 1,860USD

CLE application fees: 3,530USD

Completing CLE applications: 2,450USD

Website copy: 500USD

Website graphic design: 2,500USD

Website development: 4,500USD

Website operational costs: 1,500USD

Project Management: 7,500USD

Total: 35,140USD

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

@Shirah - Project Manager

• Over 2000 LinkedIn followers
• Licensed U.S. lawyer
• Graduate of the top-tiered University of Southern California Law School
• Graduate of the University of Arkansas Law School
• Graduate of Pepperdine University
• Over 15 years of project management experience
• Over 10 years of sales and marketing experience
• Over 5 years of experience organizing community education events

Kandianne Pierre – Web Development

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kandianne/

kandianne.herokuapp.com

• Experience in HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, AngularJS, Bootstrap, Node.js, Express.js, Cordova, and Sass, Angular Material, Nodemailer, MongoDB, Mongoose, Google APIs, Cloudinary, Passport.js., CSS3, and PHP

Linda Bucaram – Graphic Design

https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-bucaram/

https://www.behance.net/bucaramlinda

• Skilled in Photography, Bridge, WordPress, C++, and InDesign.

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

It's likely we will seek further funding for the Web3 Legal Hub in future rounds in order to:

• expand countries covered,
• include a forum where projects could pose questions for legal guidance,
• organize virtual "legal cafes" where funded proposals could get a free consultation.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

Progress Tracking

Milestone #1: Live legal webinar (1-8)

Deliverables (for each webinar):

• Link to LinkedIn Event page
• Screenshot of LinkedIn Event ad
• List of attendees
• Transcripts of any in-webinar surveys or discussions

Milestone #2: Recorded webinar uploaded to website

Deliverables: 

• Link to video on website

Milestone #3: Directory of Web3-friendly Lawyers 

Deliverables:

• Link to directory on website
• List as spreadsheet

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Project Success Criteria

• Eight (8) live legal webinars held
• Availability of legal webinar recordings communicated through Project Catalyst channels
• Availability of directory of Web3-friendly attorneys communicated through Project Catalyst channels
• At least 50 lawyers listed in the directory by Month 8

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is a new proposal.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rating

SDG Goals

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

• Subgoal (5.5): Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life
• KPI (5.5.2): Proportion of women in managerial positions

Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

• Subgoal (9.b): Support domestic technology development, research and innovation in developing countries, including by ensuring a conducive policy environment for, inter alia, industrial diversification and value addition to commodities
• KPI (9.b.1): Proportion of medium and high-tech industry value added in total value added

#proposertoolsdg