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"The government and senior judiciary have backed online dispute resolution as a way of removing lawyers from some parts of the system and reducing costs."

As one of the authors of the CJC Report that triggered the debate on ODR within the justice system, I have to take issue on the above perceived objective. Whilst ODR is indeed disruptive to current practices, it opens up opportunities to lawyers to focus more on delivering cost effective services at the high end of the skills scale than they are able to do without ODR technologies and, importantly, by significantly increasing access to justice and thus the number of disputes that the public are able to pursue through the justice system, increases the market in which to offer legal services. Lawyers who embrace ODR and seek to exploit creatively what is available will benefit over those who simply wish to be protected by old practices that have seen access diminish.

Jonathan Smithers is also quoted as saying:-

"‘Many cases will be too complex for users to lodge a claim on an online court,’ he added."

I suspect Jonathan is not aware of developments in ODR and how systems have developed way beyond the eBay model. In point of fact with technology benefits now starting to appear in practice such as assisted case framing, argument structuring, predictive analysis, intelligent solution suggestions, as well, not far beyond the horizon, cognitive computing , ODR has huge benefits to offer to the conduct and presentation of complex cases.

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