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It's a complex matter about real-life jurisdiction and the potential for some metaphysical jurisdiction that people could create across boundaries called "The Metaverse".

Already, the experience of Second Life is that RL jurisdiction begins to encroach on the mental construct of the global shared reality, as soon as say, German and Dutch prosecutors come looking for even fictional or anime child pornography that would be legal in the U.S., or a merchant whose bed design has been ripped off and resold mounts a real-life case involving intellectual property, or when casinos and gambling are banned due to new U.S. legislation.

In all these cases, it is not the government that intervened first; it isn't even RL authorities in various individual cases; it's individuals battling other individuals or non-state actors in groups. They file the complaints over child pornography and gambling; they file the complaints over intellectual property theft.

There is a real struggle to be had between game gods and the mortals who inhabit their worlds. One thing is certain: lawyers are not the ones needed or wanted to rule these worlds. The worst thing possible would be for a Global Bar Association to get started, as some at SL Bar Association are trying to do, trying to get people to certify their avatars as credentialed RL lawyers and build a global base. This sounds interesting at first, until you remember there is no global executive, legislature, or judicial branch which would restrain these zealous lawyer-activists, some of whom are merely anonymous avatars with sectarian agendas.

Lawyers might be counted on to help, if they are willing to struggle for the rights of avatars and not only represent corporate interests that undermine those individual rights.

No one has asked lawyers to regulate Second Life. People already regulate their Second Lives at the microlevel, making leases without any lawyer required, making contracts for micropayments that work fine to fuel the economy. Lawyers and regulators should not be interfering or meddling or creating "global model contracts" at that level -- only at the point when people cash out their virtual currency for real-life dollars do governments have authority for taxation.