different codebases across banks to broader adoption of common utility functions to common business logic. Additionally, long-term academic research was outlined which could lead to source languages which can be automatically translated into both executable code and legal prose; even longer term research could result in formal languages which themselves are admissible in court. To help manage this complexity, we sketched an initial set of requirements for a common language for specifying different solutions across the design space of Smart Contract Templates. These new technologies could benefit not only financial services but also other industries that could use automated legal agreement. This has a potential to provide opportunities for new types of jobs, including highly-skilled roles. 4.2 Further Work TheCLACKlanguageisbeingspecifiedandprototypedtosupportSmartContractTemplates. Next steps include fully specifying: (i) intra-document and inter-document referencing including ambiguity and conflict resolution strategies, (ii) syntax and semantics of expressions within higher-order parameters, etc. Our aim is to report on further development of the CLACKlanguage in a subsequent academic paper, including an abstract syntax and concrete examples. A benefit of looking to the future is that it helps to identify a potential roadmap for applying academic research within industry. In this case, Smart Contract Templates have already demonstrated a way to link standardised agreements to standardised code and so, in the near term, it may be possible to utilise them within existing infrastructure. In the longer term, they could be utilised on shared ledgers. There are many open questions for the future. We have explored some of these questions in this paper, but we will end with one more: is it possible to provide straight-through-processing of financial contracts, with full confidence in the fidelity of the automated execution to the operational semantics of the contract? This, of course, will require substantial work from academia working with lawyers, standards bodies and the financial services industry. References [1] L. Braine. Barclays’ Smart Contract Templates, 2016. Barclays London Accelerator, https://vimeo.com/168844103 and http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/barclays-smart-contract- templates-heralds-first-ever-public-demo-r3s-corda-platform-1555329. [2] R. G. Brown. Introducing R3 Corda: A distributed ledger designed for finanial services, 2016. http://r3cev.com/blog/2016/4/4/introducing-r3-corda-a-distributed- ledger-designed-for-financial-services. [3] R.G. Brown. A simple model for smart contracts, 2015. https://gendal.me/2015/02/10/a- simple-model-for-smart-contracts/. [4] CommonAccord, 2016. http://www.commonaccord.org/. [5] Ethereum, 2016. https://www.ethereum.org/. [6] The Gale Group Inc. West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. 2nd. edition, 2008. 14