The Japan Consumer Network (Jaconet) has launched an ODR research project.  Information in English on Jaconet is available here:

http://www.japanconsumernetwork.org/english.html

Information on the  ODR Research Project, available only in Japanese, is available here:

http://www.japanconsumernetwork.org/odr307403135020250.html

Also available (only in Japanese) is the  “Report of the Research Project regarding Resolution of Transboundary E-Commerce Troubles (ODR Research Project)”, issued on July 20, 2016.

http://www.japanconsumernetwork.org/odr307403135020250225772157826360.html

The full report is available in .DOC format here: http://myspace.private.coocan.jp/odr/2015/2015_main.docx

For non-Japanese speakers, after summarizing the current framework for resolving transboundary E-commerce troubles, Jaconet  proposes that “Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency or METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) should establish a study forum for constructing ODR system. The study should aim at creating a prototype of ODR based on discussion of related parties, and conducting demonstration experiments by applying it in practice.”

(h/t Hiroki for the links and translation)

New ODR article from Robert Condlin at the University of Maryland entitled: “Online Dispute Resolution: Stinky, Repugnant, or Drab”

From the abstract:

“Scholars, judges, and the organized Bar have begun to see Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) as a partial answer to the “access to justice” problem faced by people of limited means, and even the “wave of the future” for most if not all forms of civil dispute resolution. Attracted by the possibility of faster, cheaper, and more convenient dispute resolution, companies, states of the union, and countries around the world now have begun to create ODR programs on a scale that makes the process, along with outsourcing, AI-based practice management software, and non-traditional legal service providers, one of the principal forces redefining the traditional practice of law.

Often overlooked in this cost and convenience über alles perspective is whether the cheap and efficient processing of disputes is a capitulation to the conditions of modern society more than a superior system for administering justice. Most ODR programs require parties to describe their claims in fixed, predefined categories that may or may not capture all of the claims’ dimensions; limit the opportunity to argue the substantive merits underlying the claims worth; and resolve differences on the basis of private software algorithms that raise fairness issues not present in dispute resolution systems run principally by humans. It’s a little too soon to know if this “wave” of the future breaks on the beach or the rocks.”

Read more: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2873918

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.