Priyankar Bhunia on OpenGovAsia.com:

“The State Courts in Singapore have introduced an electronic case filing and management system, called the Community Justice and Tribunals System (CJTS) on July 10, which allows parties involved in ‘Small Claims’ disputes to file claims and access court e-services from the comfort of their homes or any place with an internet connection.

​The Small Claims Tribunals are part of the State Courts of Singapore. The Tribunals were established on 1 February 1985 to provide a quick and inexpensive forum for the resolution of small claims (not exceeding S$10,000 or up to S$20,000 if both parties agree in writing) between consumers and suppliers. Types of claims could include contracts for the sale of goods or for the provision of services involving skill and labour, damage to property (except for damage arising from the use of a motor vehicle), certain cases under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading Act) such as the refund of motor vehicle deposits and lease of residential premises not exceeding 2 years.

Previously, claimants were required to go to court to file claims, make payments, and attend consultations and hearings. CJTS allows pre-filing assessment and filing of the claim to be done online. For pre-filing, users will be asked a series of questions to determine if their disputes can be filed in the Tribunals. There are guided online forms to help in filing cases, and users can upload attachments/ supporting documents for their cases.

CJTS offers an electronic diary to schedule hearing dates and timeslots for accepted applications. Users will be able to look up their case details online, view submitted documents and correspondences from court and check hearing dates.

The system also has an e-Negotiation feature, which allows the parties to negotiate and reach a settlement on the disputed claims without having to go to the courts.”

read more

If you haven’t heard of brāv.org you should check it out.  It’s one of the most innovative ODR sites available right now — and it’s tailored specifically to appeal to the younger generation.  The user experience is quite slick, and the platform is well thought out.

brāv is holding an e-event tomorrow at 12pm Eastern (9am Pacific) to train users on its platform.  It’s free to attend, and I think it will be quite interesting.  Please attend if you have the time… I look forward to seeing you there.

https://www.youtube.com/c/BravOrganization/live

Michael Cross has a new piece on the Law Society Gazette website detailing a lecture delivered this month by Sir Terence Etherton about the new UK Online Court.  From the article:

“The failure of a pioneering online court in The Netherlands should not deter efforts to build more ambitious version in England and Wales, the Master of the Rolls has said. In a lecture this month, Sir Terence Etherton laid out for the first time the scale of the ambition behind the proposed ‘Online Solutions Court’, which will be designed to operate largely without lawyers and to dispense with ‘preventive justice’… the online court would ensure the core functions of the civil courts are ‘not simply maintained but augmented’. While the process will be designed so that individuals can access the system without the need for legal advice, he conceded that lawyers ‘will no doubt continue to play an important role in many cases’ especially those that proceed to disposal by a judge.”

Read more at https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/practice/online-court-wont-repeat-failure-of-dutch-model-mor-claims/5061641.article

Great, frank assessment on the law-tech-a2j.org blog of the challenges behind the Rechtwijzer project, with some valuable takeaways and lessons learned:

“The main providers of justice – such as courts, legal aid boards, ministries and law firms – cannot implement online supported dispute resolution under the current regulatory regimes. Offering ODR to citizens as an independent service is an option, but it is uncertain whether it will succeed without some form of government support. Although many forms of alternative dispute resolution failed to make a breakthrough in the past, a smart ODR offering may yet be able to do this… The broader lesson is about innovation in legal dispute resolution systems. That is hard to achieve. ODR is no different from mediation, problem-solving courts, fast tracks, ombudsmen and countless other attempts to replace traditional court procedures by more innovative mechanisms. The demand for better procedures from citizens is huge. But the government institutions to which we entrust adjudication and legal aid do not have processes for implementing and scaling up innovation. Truly opening up to innovation. That should happen first.”

Read the full article here.

One of the most dynamic presentations in Paris at ODR2017.org was from Liam Moore, Founder and CEO of www.anolivebranch.com, an ODR platform based in Ireland.  There’s no replacement for seeing Liam in person, but fortunately he’s put together a youtube video that covers some of the same ground.  Check it out here:

Read more at http://www.anolivebranch.com/

Ayelet Sela, a long time ODR pioneer (and now Professor at Bar Ilan University Faculty of Law) has published a great article entitled “Streamlining Justice: How Online Courts Can Resolve the Challenges of Pro Se Litigation” in the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 26, No. 2, 2016.   This piece is an excellent distillation of the value ODR can bring to court and justice-sector resolution systems.  Check it out here.

Abstract:

“The tide of pro se litigation in the American justice system imposes significant constraints on self-represented litigants’ (SRLs) access to justice and courts’ ability to administer justice. Mitigating the challenges requires a systemic institutional and procedural reform. Advancing this approach, the Article proposes that online courts would alleviate many of the challenges associated with pro se litigation, and puts this proposition to an empirical test. To that end, the Article analyzes the challenges experienced by SRLs and courts and models the procedural and technological properties that would promote SRLs’ “day in court” as well as courts’ provision of fair and efficient access to justice. Based on the analysis and on a review of successful implementations of judicial online dispute resolution (JODR) systems, the Article proposes a detailed policy design framework for a JODR system for pro se litigation. Finally, the Article reports and discusses the results of an experiment evaluating the effect of the proposed framework on SRLs’ procedural justice experiences.”

Long time ODR pioneer Vincent Tilman was interviewed on the television program On N’est Pas Des Pigeons about the new Belgian Consumer Ombuds site ombudsmanducommerce.be.  Check out the video here: https://www.rtbf.be/auvio/detail_un-ombudsman-du-commerce-pour-la-belgique?id=2212151

Jayne Reardon in the ABA Journal’s Legal Rebels blog:

“According to the book Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes, disputes arise in 3 to 5 percent of online transactions, totaling over $700 million in e-commerce disputes in 2015 alone. Millions are overcharged, find credit report mistakes, are hacked, subjected to identity theft or are harassed while playing online games. ODR tools for resolving disputes include substituting software-based decision-making for the exchange of information that typically characterizes the mediation process. In 2012, eBay claimed it handled more than 60 million disputes between buyers and sellers by providing software that assisted the parties to negotiate a satisfactory outcome over 80 percent of the time. Alibaba, as of last year the world’s largest retailer, generating more revenue than Amazon.com and eBay combined, handles hundreds of millions of disputes per year.

So there are a lot of disputes, but the amounts at issue are generally small, and the buyer and seller are often in different countries, aided by distributors in yet a third or fourth location. This puts notions of subject matter jurisdiction and service of process a-spinning.

That’s where technology enters the picture as a way to efficiently and equitably resolve disputes. The premise of the Digital Justice authors is that access to justice can be enabled by software and mouse clicks just as in the old days, it was affected by the hours a court was open or how distant it was located from one’s home. Experimentation in small claims online courts is happening in the United Kingdom, British Columbia, the Netherlands and spottily in the United States.

Beyond resolution, the authors challenge us to think about how people could be better served by the law if we focus on preventing the relationship from erupting into a full-blown dispute in the first place…”

Read more

Jim W Hildreth, a private and court appointed mediator active in both California & Louisiana, has released a new skill for Amazon Echo called My Mediator.

From his article on Mediate.com about the new skill:

“Alexa has a Mediation Skill.
Amazon #AskAlexa, just approved the first Mediation skill on the planet.
Take a guess–it’s called My Mediator.
Its under the Skill  Business and Finance.
The description is My Mediator for Alexa can give details on how to resolve California Real Estate Disputes via Mediation versus Litigation.
Deposit Disputes, Probates, Partnerships, non-disclosure are examples used.”

I just installed it on our Echo here in the Modria office and tried it out — very interesting.  One day, we all may rely on devices like Echo and Google Home to counsel us when we encounter a disagreement.

You can add the skill to your Echo here.

An announcement from the EU on March 24th indicates that the new EU ODR platform has handled more than 24,00 cases since launching last year.  More than a third of the complaints concerned cross-border purchases within the EU. Most complaints were about clothing and footwear, airline tickets and information and communication technology goods.

From the press release:

“While there are strong rules in place in the EU to protect consumers, in practice consumers sometimes encounter problems getting redress when their rights are violated, particularly cross border.

When consumers have made their purchase online, they should also be able to solve such problems online. Be it a seller refusing to repair a defective laptop within the guarantee period, or a travel agent not willing to refund a ruined holiday, such disputes can be settled faster and cheaper online and outside the court, via an Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platform, launched by the Commission on 15 February 2016.

Věra Jourová, Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, said: “While we are still in an early phase of this new tool, we can already say that the Online Dispute Resolution platform has been well received by consumers. We also see that the mere fact of a consumer using the platform often is incentive enough for traders to resolve the dispute. We are giving consumers a practical tool to help them benefit from their rights in practice. On the other side, traders also have a lot to gain from this platform and should use it more. Particularly for online traders it is essential to be seen as reliable by potential consumers. Using this tool will help them earn consumer trust, whilst providing them with a simple and fast way of resolving disputes.”

Examples

• A consumer from Italy complained about a defective ICT product bought from an online trader in Belgium. The platform sent the complaint to the competent dispute resolution body in Belgium. As a result, the Italian consumer was reimbursed.
• A consumer from Luxembourg complained about a car rented online from a trader in Greece. The platform sent the complaint to the competent dispute resolution body in Greece. The dispute was amicably settled within 60 days. The trader fully reimbursed the additional expenses incurred by the consumer.
• The platform often also works as a channel of first contact between the parties and a solution is often found bilaterally without taking the complaint to a dispute resolution body. For example, A Belgian consumer had been complaining for months about a defective dryer to a Belgian trader, with no success. When the trader received the complaint via the platform, he contacted the consumer and offered to replace the dryer with a new one.

Read more: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-17-727_en.htm