Global law firm Taylor Wessing has launched an employee-incentive scheme that will allow its lawyers to receive crypto-based tokens.

The firm says that the programme, which it says is the first of its kind in the legal sector, is designed to provide “micro-incentives” to the firm’s lawyers and enhance the firm's blockchain, digital-asset and crypto-currency practice.

As part of the scheme, lawyers operating within Taylor Wessing’s corporate, IP (intellectual property) and financial-services teams will each hold a Metamask wallet, enabling them to interact with tokens issued by the firm, called LAW tokens.

Lawyers will be able to award LAW tokens to other lawyers who demonstrate “an outstanding contribution to the firm's culture and its responsible business objectives”.

Compliance with regulations

In turn, according to Taylor Wessing, these lawyers can either trade them with other lawyers on the blockchain, redeem them with the firm for benefits – including non-cash vouchers – or use them to make donations to a number of charities.

The firm adds that the scheme has been designed to allow LAW Tokens to be transferred between white-listed individuals only, preventing the creation of a secondary market.

“This secure and innovative structure allows for compliance with applicable regulations and has the benefit of falling outside the scope of Electronic Money Regulations, whilst also not requiring Taylor Wessing to be registered with the FCA under the Money Laundering Regulations,” it stated.

“The initiative will give Taylor Wessing’s lawyers first-hand experience of interacting with distributed-ledger technology and its unique characteristics – in short, they will be understanding their clients’ technology and using it themselves,” the firm added.