Online justice has arrived in Canada. Darin Thompson gives an update on British Columbia’s Civil Resolution Tribunal

“The proposal to create online courts for England and Wales has been well documented in the Civil Justice Council Advisory Group Report on online dispute resolution (ODR), Lord Justice Briggs’ Reports on the Civil Courts Structure Review and more recently by a joint paper published by the Ministry of Justice, the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals.

As the online courts initiative moves into development, some stakeholders will continue to monitor the Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT), an online civil tribunal that began operations in British Columbia (BC), Canada on 13 July 2016. The CRT’s design has some strong similarities with the proposed online courts, and could provide insights into the transition toward technology-facilitated justice in England…”

Read more: http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ed49918

New Australian ODR provider Guided Resolution has now made their platform available for academics who would like to give their students an ODR platform to use for simulations and exercises.  They’re just put out a new brochure detailing the functionality of the system and how it can be used in education.  From the brochure:

• Guided Resolution designs and custom builds web-based software applications that experientially educate tertiary students in Alternative Dispute
  Resolution (‘ADR’) practices.
• The online process introduces an innovative platform to teaching win/win negotiation techniques; one that is principled, objective, and recordable.
• Students require no pre-requisite knowledge or skills as the application (‘App’) provides a guided online preparation and interaction tool to augment their in-class sessions.
• The system’s primary ADR reference model is interest based negotiation (‘IBN’), the same as what mediators use to establish a non-adversarial framework.
• Students are prompted to think about and categorise essential information early and thoroughly in order to promote productive engagement in face-to-face (‘FTF’) role-play exercises.

To learn more, view the brochure here, or contact Guided Resolution’s CEO, Ross Paull, at  rp@guidedresolution.com.au.

New Zealand radio did a segment on ODR today that specifically mentions the Rechtwijzer and Fairway: “Can robots make good judges? Phil Pennington investigates the crossroads between artificial intelligence and justice.”

http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201813374/can-robots-make-good-judges

Roger Smith, the legendary writer and thinker on legal services, has a new blog chronicling the advances in technology and access to justice.

The blog has some excellent advice about the current state of ODR, particularly from the Ministry/Court perspective.  From his latest post:

“My own advice (would that anyone would listen) to any Ministry or Court wishing to dip its toe into the waters of ODR is: wait; see what works and what does not. The chances are HiiL and Modria will come through well but some systems – probably those built in house – will fail. Watch; wait; prepare; move decisively into the market in 2018. But, who in these days of instant movement and rapid technological change wants to hear boringly sensible advice like that?”

Definitely worth the browsing time.  Read more at http://law-tech-a2j.org/

The Hague Institute for Innovations in Law (HiiL) has just released their latest Trend report titled “ODR and the Courts; The promise of 100% access to justice?”  This report will be distributed to the world’s judiciary, executive, legal professionals, innovators and wider ODR community.  It comes directly out of the conversations at ODR2016.org, which was hosted by HiiL and held in The Hague a few weeks ago.  This report is the product of a huge pooling of collective experience across many sectors, and it will likely make a big splash within legal and judicial communities around the world.

From the Executive Summary:

“The report, bringing together best practices from various legal systems, illustrates how citizens, courts, ministries of justice and the legal profession can all gain from broad implementation of ODR and related procedural innovation. Courts can improve the services to citizens, regain their market share and avoid being overburdened. Government budgets for courts and legal aid can be brought under control by a smart system of user fees for better services to citizens. The law firms working for individuals, now often struggling as a business, can add more value to more people’s lives and serve more people more effectively and efficiently. What is needed is a coordinated effort to open up the legal framework so that new roles and procedural models can freely emerge and be continuously improved.”

The Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) has just released a paper that calls for the implementation of the Rechtwijzer/MyLawBC ODR portal to courts in the United States.  This paper is based on a two-day conference convened by IAALS at the University of Denver in June 2016.  The paper calls for the creation of a “Family Law Portal” (FLP) that will have a large ODR component.  From the report:

“To help plan for the FLP, at the A Court Compass for Litigants convening, attendees were shown two tools designed to help people resolve their family law issues: Rechtwijzer 2.0 used in the Netherlands and MyLawBC used in British Columbia. The latter replicates the functionality of the former and adds an additional Guided Pathways feature. The features common to both include an online dispute resolution (“ODR”) system that helps families that are getting divorced with a minimum of judicial intervention. This process is based upon a concept developed for resolving consumer disputes on eBay—a system that resolves over 60 million disputes a year. The parties start the process online by following guided interviews that help them identify the issues and learn ways to resolve them. If the parties reach an impasse on an issue, they can request the assistance of a professional mediator.23 Again, this is all within the online system. Should they not be able to reach agreement through mediation, 24 they can request a decision on the issue from a non-judicial hearing examiner. At the end of the process, the parties have a settlement agreement that will be filed with the court and signed by a judge.”

The report further recommends that the Rechtwijzer/MyLawBC platform be extended to multiple courts in the US to test its effectiveness in the US market.  From the conclusion:

“Rather than reinventing the wheel, IAALS proposes to replicate the features of Rechtwijzer and MyLawBC on a platform that can be scaled throughout the United States. In addition to the features described, it will incorporate the work that is being done by the Stanford Design School to facilitate natural language search inquiries, so that users do not need to cite legalese. The Stanford project plans to work with Google to identify the terms “real people” use when looking
for answers to their legal problems. This natural language approach will be used throughout the process.”

The full report can be read here.

The winner of the 2014 Tech for Justice Hackathon held at the ODR2014 conference in Silicon Valley has released a version of their app for the 2016-2017 school year.  Check it out at otterkids.com.

The OTTER platform:

• Mitigates bullying (Conflict resolution and SEL tools mitigate bullying)
• Offers built-in training (Kid-friendly, teacher-developed, conflict resolution training)
• Provides positive reinforcement (Encourages student reflection on the positive through guided questions)
• Is self-managing (The software helps students resolve their own conflicts)
• Delivers rich reporting data (Provides valuable SEL data in multiple areas for teachers and administrators)
• Sports an easy-to-use interface (Simple interface designed for kids. Works on desktop, tablets, and phones)

Very cool system, and definitely worth checking out.  Learn more at otterkids.com

Check out Rolando Ortega Hernandez’s new bi-lingual ODR blog odrobserver.blogspot.com.es

As he explains in the first post:

“Welcome to my blog, our blog, I’ve created this space to share information, opinions and it’ll be a free open space about Online Dispute Resolutions and access to justice, and other related subjects for citizens in the digital world. This blog will take and publish information both in English and Spanish.

Bienvenidos a mi blog, nuestro blog, he creado este espacio para compartir información, opiniones y funcionará como un espacio abierto referido a la Resolución de litigios en línea y el acceso a la justicia, y otras materias relacionadas para los ciudadanos en un mundo digital. Este blog, tomará y publicará información en Inglés y en Español.”

Feel free to visit the site and share your thoughts and feedback.

(Also remember that the latest news on ODR in Latin America, is always available at http://odrlatinoamerica.com!)