On Friday, April 29, 2022, at 2:00 PM, our Managing Partner and CIPM-credentialed practitioner Erdem Mümtaz Hacıpaşaoğlu joined the ILSA Istanbul IT Law Commission for a Zoom session dedicated to one of the fastest-emerging frontiers in legal practice: Web 3.0 and its legal dimensions.
The central thesis of the session was clear: Web 3.0 is not a marketing label sitting on top of crypto — it is a structural shift in how identity, ownership and value transfer are encoded on the internet, and the legal questions that follow it cut across data protection, securities, intellectual property, taxation and consumer protection in ways that don’t map cleanly onto any single existing practice area.
What the session covered
The conversation walked through the working surface of Web 3.0 from a legal perspective: tokens and their classification, smart contracts as enforcement automatons, NFTs and intellectual property, decentralized identity, on-chain custody and the regulatory perimeter around money laundering, taxation and consumer protection. The format was designed to be substantive enough for law students with prior background and accessible enough for those approaching the field for the first time.
Why student-led IT law commissions matter
Closing the session, Mümtaz returned to a recurring theme: student-led IT law commissions like ILSA Istanbul play a quietly decisive role in shaping the working vocabulary the next generation of lawyers will bring into practice. Bringing concrete practitioner experience into those forums is one of the highest-leverage interventions a working lawyer can run for the ecosystem they themselves operate inside.
