Every industry has been revolutionized by technology over the last two decades, from finance to medicine to entertainment. Within each of these industries, business functions have similarly been transformed, from workflow process to data storage to knowledge management. As technology has flattened the world, domestic supply chains have become global supply chains, and regional teams have become virtual teams, stretching around the world and reaching into every time zone. Business is inexorably moving into the cloud as they are adopting technologies more quickly in order to keep up with the accelerated pace of commerce.

The way we resolve disputes, however, has not kept up with other business functions. Commercial transactions may circle the globe in milliseconds, but if a problem arises, resolutions are still largely tied to separate geographical jurisdictions and in-person, paper-bound processes. If business is now largely virtual, dispute resolution is still primarily an in-person endeavor.

One might argue that applying technology to the law with e-filing and legal process outsourcing and ABA Tech Show are sufficient to keep up with the speed of commerce. But adopting these types of technologies, which merely enable preexisting processes to work more efficiently, is insufficient.

We believe that the time has come for the law to embrace the transformative power of technology. If the law is to stay relevant to the challenges presented by global and online business, the system must be reinvented to adapt to the new realities of a networked world.

Enter Alternative Dispute Resolution, or ADR. ADR has long promised efficiency as one of its primary benefits. ADR can save time by expediting processes, providing expert neutrals that require less orientation, and cutting back on delaying tactics and endless discovery. Traditionally we have thought about ADR as, literally, an alternative process. There in the name it is clear that ADR is an alternative to the courts. As Harvard Law Professor and conflict resolution scholar Robert H. Mnookin has put it, ADR works “in the shadow of the law,” always acting as an alternative, never the default.

Read original article


Tags: business functions, Technology