ODR group

The Civil Justice Council is exploring how online and internet-based techniques can be more widely used to resolve disputes valued at less than £25,000.

Professor Richard Susskind will chair a new advisory group on the role of online dispute resolution (ODR) in civil disputes. It will look at the resolution of disputes across the internet, using e-negotiation and e-mediation and other techniques.

Susskind says: “ODR is already used widely. Perhaps its best known application is on eBay where, each year, over 60 million disagreements among traders are resolved using online techniques and not the courts. We are going to explore the limitations and drawbacks of ODR—while our starting place is that ODR offers great potential, especially for sorting out lower value claims, there will inevitably be issues that need flagging up to protect consumers and businesses.”