cryptography eliminates lawyers?

[James A. Donald]

At 06:05 AM 9/7/95 -0400, Duncan Frissell wrote:
> Well, if crypto reduces the role of government in human affairs, it will 
> reduce work for lawyers.  Telecoms will certainly break the professional 
> monopoly of lawyers (and other professionals).

The functional equivalent of lawyers will still have a role.  When
an escrow agent allocates large chunks of money in some fashion,
and somebody says X was bad, and X says that Y was bad, and the
reputations are worth real money, we will need a public 
examination to determine what really happened.

And if governments collapse entirely, and we get full bore anarchy,
lawyers will have even more work because instead of a few reputations
being worth large sums of cash, everyones reputation will be worth 
life and limb.

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