This blog entry has its origins in two threads of conversation. First, as I write, we are just three weeks out from the 2018 Forum on Online Dispute Resolution, to be hosted by the NZ Centre for ICT Law and Auckland Law School. What has been an annual – even flagship – Forum is now…

The arrival of the internet age has posed many new challenges as a larger part of the economy has started to operate online and transnationally with a new emerging framework. After the spread of the global computer network and the rise of online business activities and operations, it became necessary for disputes between contracting parties…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is unquestionable one of the hottest topics at the moment. At the 2017 International Bar Association Annual Congress, that has just ended in Australia, one of the most recurrent and discussed question was: Will Artificial Intelligence ever be able to replace lawyers or the Law practice as we currently know ? Before…

In 2011, a computer gained fame as a celebrity. Its name was Watson*, of IBM. This was right after taking part in a very popular Q&A show on American TV (Jeopardy), in which Watson, with its ability to understand our language using only information recorded in its memory, and working offline, managed to successfully overcome…

A few recent observations prompt this blog about language and the world of words that we work with in mediation. First, in reading around the burgeoning literature on online dispute resolution and – especially – at the algorithm-based, automated end of the scale, I note the suggestion that dispute resolution and mediation are based just…

I begin with two poetic images. One is from an 8th century Taoist poem – I asked the boy beneath the pines. He said, “The master’s gone alone Herb-picking somewhere on the mount, Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.” [Chia Tao (777-841)] And the other, more recent, from W H Auden’s poem “Law Like Love”: And always the…

  At the end of March, when I finally arrived back to  Prague after weeks full of traveling (I almost flew the globe around), I sat down and wanted to share with you some experiences I had having attended the Global Pound Conference Series launch in Singapore. Then I realized that the time did not…

In this blog, I’ll follow up on Deborah Masucci’s overview, and in doing so I’ll offer a three observations about technology and one about a very non-technological aspect of mediation. First, on the technology: as those who were there will know only too well, and those who have followed at arm’s length will appreciate, the…

“Stand by your devices”; or “Access through the [virtual] looking glass” I take the first phrase of this blog title from a throw-away line in one of the recent comments by a student in my current Negotiation and Mediation class. The context is this: my university has implemented an Emergency Preparedness Teaching and Learning [EPTL]…