Jusletter IT

The traditional judicial mechanisms have not previously offered an appropriate solution for settling disputes in online environment. Online dispute resolution (ODR) has emerged as a pragmatic response to this unsatisfactory situation. It cannot however be seen only as an out-of-court dispute settlement tool (as it is often wrongly understood), as the instruments of ODR are fully usable also in the court decision-making process and should be understood as part of it. In our article we would like to focus on the direction in which ODR should be further developed. The main suggestion currently considered promising is linking the non-binding forms of ODR with judicial proceedings in one functional unit. This should reveal further potential of ODR and adequately combat the lack of efficiency of judicial decision-making. The main aim of the article is to discuss further the interconnection of ODR and its non-binding phases (online negotiation and online mediation) with binding court proceedings and to show the only partly verified potential of such an approach. The gradual use of online tools in decision-making processes should eliminate at least some simple cases; the court would then deal during the binding phase only with the more complex cases. Moreover, we will provide some results of the tests of such multi-tier dispute settlement.