The global legal system is changing as the world moves towards the ‘information society’. Most lawyers, judges, legal administrators and their clients are regular users of IT and increasingly expect to rely upon modern systems in their daily practice. Even the courtroom, which is often thought of as the last bastion of antiquated working practices, is opening its doors to new technology. Leading edge computing will soon provide massive dispute-resolving capability for a fraction of today’s price. This growing scale, added to greater connectivity between users around the globe, offers tremendous opportunities to build intelligent systems, i.e. platforms that can adapt to their users’ requirements and can learn from experience.
However, despite concerted efforts by judges, professional bodies and court administrators, the UK still has a number of lawyers and litigators who are reluctant to embrace new technologies or other alternatives. The desire to ‘carry on as before’ may be one reason why the universal adoption of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) has developed at a slower pace in the UK compared with the US. Another may be a lack of awareness among business people of the full power and cost-effectiveness of ADR techniques in helping parties to resolve their disputes in a timely (and private) manner.
