Welcome to the muck digital governance offered to you by the Germany center of excellence on digital governance. My name is Farshida Zafar Director of ErasmusX at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands and a senior fellow in the Germany Center of Excellence on digital governance. In this following series of videos, we will be discussing the topic of online dispute resolution and online courts in today's digital is worth Many of us use dozens of online services. We shop online, we get medical advice and prescriptions online, we study online, we get governmental services online, we even manage our bank accounts online, and these are just a few examples. This module in particular focuses on a fairly recent development going to court online and while for many of us, this idea might seem odd, even inappropriate in recent years, a growing number of countries have started operating online courts as an alternative to traditional courts. Online courts are a very exciting development when you think about it unlike other industries, courts have been quite resistant to change they have been operating in quite the same way for hundreds of years. However, in recent years, it has become clear that the traditional court model is not working well for all courts and for all people as courts are overburdened with cases and many people are unable to use courts in view of the technological, social and economic development of our age, there are calls for rethinking how courts might redesign their procedure to help lay people claim and defend their rights Online courts are a key piece in this puzzle. We'll be talking about this exciting development with Dr. Ayelet Sela from the Faculty of Law at the Bar Ilan University in Ramadan. Dr. Sela specializes in online dispute resolution systems, or ODR for short, and she is particularly interested in how online courts can improve access to justice. In our conversations we will explore with her how moving civil courts online can help make them more accessible, relevant effective, especially for people who go to court without a lawyer. This introductory video is the first of a series of videos on online courts after completing this video, you'll be able to explain what motivated the creation of online courts and what is the basic promise of online courts in terms of improving access to justice. Dr Sala welcome to the first video in the series. Let's start with a basic question, what are online courts? >> So online courts are basically publicly administered online dispute resolution systems and they are intended to supplement or at times replace traditional in person proceedings in traditional courts in brick and water courthouses. So online courts are basically a subset or a particular kind of online dispute resolution systems we call this for short ODR and these are digital platforms that enable the users to complete a full dispute resolution process from filing the case through the formulation of an outcome on an online platform. And this outcome can be reached through a mutual agreement in negotiation or mediation or it could be the product of the decision of a neutral 3rd party, whether it's an arbitrator or a judge and in some online courts we also see the ability to enforce the outcomes of the court procedures on the ODR platform itself, simple example, is to just operate an online payment system that allows the parties to pay what they've decided at the end of the dispute. So there are different procedural models for online courts and there are different technologies that are used in online courts and we're probably going to discuss them later in that conversation but before we get into understanding the technology and these procedural models, I think it's important that we understand what motivated court policymakers to create online court. And probably the best way to demonstrate is to just begin with some start experiments so, imagine, for example, that someone owed you money and that they refused to pay that money to you and that in order to get your money back, you decided that you're going to file a case in court so, file a lawsuit against them. And if you had decided to do so, then you would have to figure out how am I going to formulate that lawsuit, where and how am I going to submit it? What am I going to write in it? What kind of evidence do I need to present? How do I develop my legal arguments so that my claim can be legally considered. And assuming you would be able to pass this barrier, then you would wait for the other party to respond to the claims, potentially had to take a day off from work so, you could go to court and present your claims and here the claims of the other party presented before a judge and then you would wait for the judge to issue a judgment that would determine legally who has the merit in this case. Another option would be that you and the other party, once you file this case in the court would engage in some sort of settlement negotiations and you would settle the dispute in some mutual agreement even before the judge would reach the case. But either way you can see that taking a case to court or even defending yourself from lawsuits filed against you in court can be a fairly complicated task it can be quite demanding, it can be expensive if you need to consult with someone on how to formulate this claim and on how to gather evidence, if you have to take a day off of work. And so for many people and it's probably more people than what you would think, it is quite difficult and if they can't afford paying a lawyer to help them in this process and they can't afford actually accessing court. And for this reason, there are quite a lot of people that have justiciable problems good cases good, not good cases, but legal problems that could have been resolved through court or that they have good defenses against claims filed against them in court and they don't turn to court either in the first place or to defend themselves. And some of them, even if they do turn to court, don't manage to survive, so to speak, the process all the way through they drop out of the court process before it ends and the result is that we actually have a huge access to justice gap in many courts and in many countries. And it means also that courts themselves are challenged in performing their primary social illegal functions there challenging resolving disputes effectively and peacefully between parties they're challenged in applying and interpreting the law on a representative sample of cases and all together, there are challenges to holding the to upholding the rule of law. >> So doctor Sela can you explain to to me and to the viewer how these online courts come into play, enclosing this justice gap? >> Sure, so online courts leverage technology and they not only do that, they create radically different concept of court and under this new concept, courts are conceived as an online service, not necessarily as a place. And in this online service, lay persons can use courts from any location if they have an internet connected device and they can participate in the process effectively, even if they're not assisted by a lawyer and to achieve this goal or this new concept of courts, online courts rely on what we call human centered design. We can talk more about that later and they rely on technology to create some streamlined and simplified procedures that let's say, the average Joe and Jane can complete, another piece of this concept is that online courts encourage parties to enter disputed mutual agreement rather than wait for that judicial determination of the dispute. And I think that we'll do that in another video where we discuss how this concept is actually effectuated in practice, and we can provide some examples of concrete court platforms. What I do want to say now is that it should be clear to our viewers already that online court procedures are not suitable or desirable for all cases and for all users but as we'll see for some case types and for some users, online courts are not just a good enough cheaper alternative to traditional courts there actually a desirable development, they can offer qualitative benefits that improved access to justice and to redress for court users. >> Thank you so much, again, I will see you in our next video, cannot wait for more content on this topic is very interesting so, we will see you again in our next video. This muck module will familiarize you with the online courts and will help you critically evaluate the new developments, join us in the next video about ODR, where Dr. Sela will review the key features of early e commerce ODR systems, which later greatly influenced the design of online courts. And then in another video, she will explain in greater detail how ODR improves access to justice in courts using some of examples of current online course as illustrations and of course we will also discuss some of the risks and challenges that are involved with online courts. So join Me and Dr Sela in our next video on ODR systems.
