Professor Donna Redel and her Blockchain-Crypto-Digital Assets course at Fordham Law were featured in an article published in LLM Guide.
Cryptocurrencies have captivated financial markets recently with prices for digital assets such as bitcoin and interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs) soaring this year. Now, law firms are chasing a piece of the crypto action, offering clients a degree of confidence that their digital investments are legally compliant.
And, as the legal grey areas in this field open up a wide array of career opportunities for lawyers, a number of top law schools are responding to the market’s call by incorporating cryptocurrencies and other digital assets into the LL.M. curriculum, training their students to become future trusted crypto advisors.
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In 2018, Donna Redel developed a course on Blockchain-Crypto-Digital Assets at Fordham Law school in New York. “It’s gone crazy,” she says. “There is so much interest and opportunity, the law firms cannot scoop up enough talent. They just need them desperately as law firms carve out specialties in these digital assets. All of the major banks are thinking about crypto too.”
Her course covers blockchain, bitcoin, stable coins, central bank digital currencies, NFTs, ransomware, and smart contracts from a historical legal perspective. But she cautions that LL.M. students cannot learn about digital assets in isolation.
“There is no such thing a crypto lawyer, you have to know securities law, intellectual property law, contracts, and then specialize,” says Redel. “If you want to go into decentralized finance, you won’t be as interested in NFT and how music and art is being released digitally.”