Lessons from Online Dispute Resolution for Dispute System Design

This chapter addresses a need to integrate two bodies of literature in the ADR field – that relating to ‘disputes system design’ (DSD) and that relating to ‘online dispute resolution’ (ODR). In the eight years that have passed since the first edition of this book was published, ODR has grown and the interconnections between the DSD and ODR fields have strengthened. Nevertheless, there is still significant room for enhanced integration. To date, technology in dispute resolution has been relegated to the ODR field, viewing it as a niche area relevant mostly to disputes that arose online or are substantively connected to technology. As we will show, the reach of new technologies is far more pervasive and holds a promise for transforming in a very deep sense some of the ADR field’s most deep-rooted assumptions in the area of DSD. Indeed, the stark distinctions between ADR and ODR on the one hand, and between formal litigation and alternatives on the other hand, are being blurred with online processes becoming a design choice across the entire dispute resolution landscape. While our main focus is on the lessons of ODR for the DSD field, we believe that the merging of ODR and DSD provides important insights for both the DSD field and the ODR field. In terms of DSD, technology has been challenging some of the field’s most basic assumptions, but has also generated new means for addressing and preventing disputes systematically. For ODR, the DSD perspective highlights the need to think of dispute resolution in a systematic way and emphasize the prevention of disputes, rather than concentrate on tools for addressing individual disputes on an ad hoc basis. In the sections that follow, we describe the rise of both ODR and DSD in recent decades, as well as the impact technology has had and can be expected to further have on the evolution of DSD in the future.