The TimesOnline reports that UK law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse yesterday became the first major, international law firm to establish a presence in a virtual world. Field Fisher Waterhouse has nearly 300 attorneys based out of offices in Brussels, Hamburg, and London — and now, Second Life.

Field Fisher Waterhouse has created an attractive, modern, in-world office building (SLURL below) that takes advantage of Second Life’s building tools better than one might expect of a major corporate law firm trying to grab the bleeding edge.

The office features lots of green glass and exposed beams, efficient conference rooms and client meeting areas, attractive outdoor landscaping, pleasing modern art, two fishtank walls, a balcony for post-deal cocktails, and of course, a lobby with lots of information about the firm. If there is anything to criticize, it is only that the lobby is, for now, somewhat anachronistically dotted with what appear to be cardboard information placards, though the information could easily be moved to the building’s many LCD panels and terminals after the opening festivities conclude.

A number of solo practitioners and smaller law firms have established presences in Second Life, but the larger international firms have, until now, stayed away. VB congratulates Field Fisher Waterhouse for taking this step. Although FFW will almost certainly not retain its position as the only major, international law firm in a virtual world for long, it will always be able to say that it was the first.

Virtually Blind is seeking an interview with FFW partner David Naylor (who has the Second Life avatar ‘Solomon Cortes’) and hopes to bring readers more details on FFW’s decision to enter this space shortly.

• SLURL to the Field Fisher Waterhouse Second Life Office
• Field Fisher Waterhouse Website

In a surprisingly underreported move of huge significance to the long-term prospects for private legal systems and governments in virtual worlds, Second Life creator Linden Lab announced last Friday that after several months of testing, it would soon be incorporating an “Estate Level Abuse program” which would “allow estate owners to receive and resolve their own abuse reports in the method in which they best see fit.”

Estates (which a Linden comment clarifies as consisting of “The Grid,” as opposed to the Linden-run “Mainland”) are privately held areas that are seamlessly accessible to Second Life users from Linden-managed land using the Second Life client.

According to Linden Lab, “Abuse is when anyone violates the Terms of Service (TOS) or the Community Standards (CS).” So once the Estate Level Abuse program is in place, estate owners will essentially get to choose how and when to enforce key provisions of the all-important Terms of Service that protect users (with notoriously mixed results) from stalkers, griefers, and other floatsam of the metaverse.

During the test, estate owners were “no longer subject to Linden’s ideas on how abuse could be handled.” Instead, “estate owners in the test had abuse reports filed on their land sent directly to their email.”

Commentary

So the big question is: What happens to the abuse reports after they’ve been “sent directly to [the estate owners’] email?” And the big answer is: whatever the estate owner wants. They could be efficiently dealt with by a benevolent king, ignored by an inattentive puppet governor, fairly processed by qualified private judge, “taken care of” for a fee by a corrupt despot, or posted to a blog and ridiculed by a griefer land baron.

‘Chadrick Linden’ confirms: “[R]esidents will have the option of resolving issues their way, or opting-in to the way Linden runs the Second Life grid.”

And believe it or not, Virtually Blind thinks this is all a very good thing.

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The popular website Something Awful found VB last weekend and linked to us not once, but twice, in a witty article by Chris “Petey” Peterson entitled Second Life Sucks: The Reckoning. Your faithful editor takes one in the teeth for starting the Second Life Bar Association and thus confirming that “the legal profession has indeed descended into irredeemable frivolity,” (actually, Petey, it’s been that way for awhile, see FN1) but the piece also quotes VB’s commentary on the Hillary ’08 headquarters verbatim, so while we’re probably not on the same page, or even reading the same book, we’re at least in the same, unbelievably geeky, section of the bookstore.

At any rate, the article is definitely driving a lot of traffic over here, so welcome, Something Awful readers. If you’re into legal issues or virtual worlds at all, stick around and see what happens.

FN1: “My suit has nothing to do with the assault, or battery, or poisoning, but is about three goats, which, I complain, have been stolen by my neighbor. This the judge desires to have proved to him; but you, with swelling words and extravagant gestures, dilate on the Battle of Cannae, the Mithridatic war, and the perjuries of the insensate Carthaginians, the Syllae, the Marii, and the Mucii. It is time, Postumus, to say something about my three goats.” — Martial, 1st Century

Belgian newspapers De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws reported Friday that “the Brussels public prosecutor has asked patrol detectives of the Federal Computer Crime Unit to go on Second Life” to investigate a “virtual rape” involving a Belgian user of Second Life. (Translations from FreeTranslation.com’s web page translator.)

Website WTFsrsly (that’s “what the f***, seriously,” for readers who don’t speak “l33t”), appears to have first reported the story outside of Belgium, and makes the following point:

Those who know Second Life a bit probably wonder how this was possible though. Sure there are modifications that you can make to your Second Life character in order to be able to rape other characters (these modifications can actually be purchased in-game from other players who develop them), but normally such modifications require consent from the other player. In other words: you can only get raped if you want to.

WTFsrsly is (while sort of crass) technically correct, which raises some interesting questions — most importantly, what is “virtual rape” anyway?

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