My first post is about The New Handshake: Online Dispute Resolution and the Future of Consumer Protection, by my colleague, Amy Schmitz, and ODR guru Colin Rule.  It’s a great collaboration that takes advantage of Amy’s scholarship and Colin’s practical experience from being eBay’s ODR director and co-founder of Modria as well as from his current work as Tyler Technology’s VP for ODR.

ODR can help address a problem often referred to as “access to justice” (A2J).  In the plenary program of the ABA Symposium on ADR in the Courts, “ADR and A2J in These Complex Times,” retired Judge Eric Washington noted that the ADR and A2J movements generally haven’t recognized their overlapping interests.  Historically, people have thought of A2J in terms of access to lawyers and courts.  Of course, this is important.  And, of course, the legal system is unsatisfactory for handling most consumer problems.  ADR – and in this case ODR – can provide people with ways to handle problems when there are no other practical alternatives or where the alternatives themselves are problematic.  ODR can be especially valuable as a way to provide consumers with access to a process that could help them reasonably resolve their disputes efficiently.

Good ODR systems are ideal for situations involving large volumes of low-dollar issues.  In many e-commerce disputes, the parties are not in the same geographic area and there is no court system that can effectively manage these disputes.  ODR is especially well-suited for problems that can be easily sorted into clear categories such as non-delivery, damaged products, billing discrepancies, etc.  This enables system designers to create automated “wizards” to guide people efficiently through steps to identify problems and resolve them.

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