Every industry has been revolutionized by technology over the last two decades, from finance to medicine to entertainment. Within each of these industries, business functions have similarly been transformed, from workflow process to data storage to knowledge management. As technology has flattened the world, domestic supply chains have become global supply chains, and regional teams have become virtual teams, stretching around the world and reaching into every time zone. Business is inexorably moving into the cloud as they are adopting technologies more quickly in order to keep up with the accelerated pace of commerce.
The way we resolve disputes, however, has not kept up with other business functions. Commercial transactions may circle the globe in milliseconds, but if a problem arises, resolutions are still largely tied to separate geographical jurisdictions and in-person, paper-bound processes. If business is now largely virtual, dispute resolution is still primarily an in-person endeavor.
