Making Litigation Faster and Cheaper

Recently, I posted on the question of where an ExpertPreneur could be sued based on their online activities.

One interesting side issue on this general topic is how to handle disputes amongst expertpreneurs  or between they and their customers to avoid the hassles and limitations inherent in having to either sue out of state ( or around the World ) or face lawsuits there as well.

This month’s ABA Journal has an interesting article on the growth of a procedure that’s increasingly being used to bring justice to litigants in their own homes and laptops.

The concept is Online Dispute Resolution or ODR.

ODR differs from private arbitrations, which, by and large, are alternatives to court litigation.

ODR, instead refers to taking advantage of technology to try to reduce costs and speed up resolution of court disputes by using some or all of various web and digital applications to essentially litigate or negotiate long distance.

While you can read more about this field in the article linked above, the important thing for you to think about as an expertpreneur is the degree to which you might wish to build these procedures into your commercial agreements so that your joint venturers and, perhaps, even your customers, would agree to use these time saving and sometimes money saving techniques in the event of any disagreements that lead to litigation.


Technorati Tags: ODR, Online Dispute Resolution, litigation, arbitration