Today the final report on the modernization of the UK courts was released, and essentially all the ODR recommendations of the Susskind commission were accepted by the author, Lord Justice Briggs.  The portion relevant to the Online Court starts on page 36.

This is the biggest step forward yet in the mainstreaming of ODR within the courts.  Consequently, the announcement is getting a lot of attention — this tweet is from one of the the founders of Legalzoom:

From the formal announcement:

“Lord Justice Briggs has today published his final report into the structure of the civil courts: The Civil Courts Structure Review (CCSR)…

The final report follows an extensive series of meetings with judges, practitioners, stakeholders and users of the civil courts, and a series of detailed written and oral submissions following the publication of the review’s interim report in January 2016.

The review makes a series of recommendations intended to inform the current programme of wider court modernisation being undertaken by HM Courts and Tribunals Service… These are summarised below:

• The Online Court – a new court, designed to be used by people with minimum assistance from lawyers, with its own set of user-friendly rules. It is anticipated that it will eventually become the compulsory forum for resolving cases within its jurisdiction, and on inception should be dealing with straightforward money claims valued at up to £25,000. Recommendations are made on helping people who need assistance with online systems. Complex and important cases to be transferred upwards to higher courts. Open justice and transparency issues to be addressed.”

Read the full report here.