Ethan Katsh, Founder

Founder, National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution
Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Co-author (with Orna Rabinovich-Einy) of Digital Justice: Technology and the Internet of Disputes (2017, Oxford University Press)
Recipient of  2017 D’Alemberte-Raven Award  from the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution

Professor Katsh is widely recognized as the founder of the field of online dispute resolution (ODR). Along with Janet Rifkin, he conducted the eBay Pilot Project in 1999 that led to eBay’s current system that handles over sixty million disputes each year. With Professor Rifkin, he wrote Online Dispute Resolution: Resolving Conflicts in Cyberspace (2001), the first book about ODR. Since then, he has published numerous articles about ODR and co-edited Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice (2nd ed., 2021). The frequently mentioned metaphor of technology as a “Fourth Party” was first proposed in Katsh and Rifkin’s Online Dispute Resolution (2001).

Professor Katsh is a graduate of the Yale Law School and was one of the first legal scholars to recognize the impact new information technologies would have on law. In The Electronic Media and the Transformation of Law (Oxford University Press, 1989) and Law in a Digital World (Oxford University Press, 1995), he predicted many of the changes that were to come to law and the legal profession. His articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the University of Chicago Legal Forum, and other law reviews and legal periodicals. His scholarly contribution in the field of law and technology has been the subject of a Review Essay in Law and Social Inquiry.

Professor Katsh has served as principal online dispute resolution consultant for the US Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), a federal agency mandated to provide mediation in Freedom of Information Act disputes. During 2010-2011, he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Haifa (Israel). He has been Visiting Professor of Law and Cyberspace at Brandeis University and is co-editor of the International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution. He was principal dispute resolution advisor to SquareTrade.com and was Chairman of the Board of Advisors of Modria.com. His principal current research involves the resolution and prevention of healthcare disputes. (see How Patients Can Improve the Accuracy of their Medical Records).

Since 1996, Professor Katsh has been involved in many activities related to online dispute resolution. In 1997, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, he and Professor Rifkin founded the National Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts. From 2004 – 2010, Professor Katsh was co-Principal Investigator, with Professors Lee Osterweil, Lori Clarke and Dr. Norman Sondheimer of the UMass Department of Computer Science, of two National Science Foundation funded projects to model processes of online dispute resolution. This work was coordinated with the United States National Mediation Board.

In 2014-2015, he was an  Affiliate of Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Professor Katsh received the Chancellor’s Medal and gave the University of Massachusetts Distinguished Faculty Lecture in October 2006.

Recent publications include

  • Mohamed Wahab and Ethan Katsh, ““Revolutionizing Technologies and the Use of Technology in International Arbitration: Innovation, Legitimacy, Prospects, and Challenges” in Piers and Aschauer, Arbitration in the Digital Age: The Brave New World of Arbitration (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press) 2018)
  • Orna Rabinovich and Ethan Katsh, “Lawyers and Online Negotiation” Negotiator’s Desk Reference (2018)