By Stephanie Beyersdorf, Management Analyst, State Court Administrative Office (SCAO) Field Services
In late 2020, the SCAO's Office of Dispute Resolution was contacted by TASC Consulting & Capital, Israel’s largest consulting firm, on behalf of the Israeli Ministry of Justice. The Israeli Ministry of Justice performs functions similar to the SCAO. It also houses Israel’s Attorney General, Civil Legal Aid Administration, and nearly a dozen additional units of the Israeli government. The Ministry and TASC wanted to learn about MI-Resolve, Michigan’s new online dispute resolution (ODR) system.
Doug Van Epps and Michelle Hilliker from the Office of
Dispute Resolution made an early morning Zoom conference call with numerous
ministry staff and consultants. It was a
late afternoon Zoom meeting for the Israeli participants since Michigan and
Israel are seven time zones apart.
Van Epps and Hilliker walked through the design, piloting,
testing, and implementation stages. They
provided a demonstration of MI-Resolve from the vantage points of public users
and site administrators. The consultants
and ministry staff seemed particularly interested in Michigan’s unique design of
administering the ODR system through a network of 17 Community Dispute
Resolution Program centers. Across the
US, all other ODR programs are administered individually at the local trial
court level, meaning that Michigan remains the only state to offer statewide
access to its ODR system.
The Israeli ministry officials and consultants focused on
access and use of the system. MI-Resolve
use is split evenly between users who access the system using a smart phone versus
a computer. Participation in the MI-Resolve
system is voluntary. Some courts that
order cases to mediation are suggesting parties attempt resolving their
disputes through MI-Resolve. To
encourage participation, some courts include the service and the MI-Resolve URL
on hearing notices.
The Office of Dispute Resolution created a number of videos
about MI-Resolve and mediation; these links were provided to the Israeli group.
The MI-Resolve video can be accessed
from courts.mi.gov/HowToMIResolve.
Van Epps and Hilliker discussed the
press releases, notifications to courts, and media presentations conducted thus
far and explained they continue to research other ways to let parties know
about the services. The office also
published “Considerations in Implementing Court ODR Systems” in early 2020.
MI-Resolve video
Van Epps and Hilliker shared that countries, states, and localities just now beginning research on ODR systems have the benefit of jump-starting efforts by being able to build on the foundation of the few programs—like Michigan’s—that were three or more years in the making. For example, today, customers adopting Court Innovation’s Matterhorn platform (on which MI-Resolve resides) are for the most part accessing a platform that was largely conceived and designed with Michigan SCAO participation. The Office of Dispute Resolution purposely designed MI-Resolve to not only accommodate its interest in administering a program through local dispute resolution centers, but it also had in mind how other courts and dispute resolution agencies might use the platform.
As with most states researching ODR systems, the Israeli Ministry
and consultants were first focusing on traffic citation negotiation (online
plea bargaining) and small claims cases.
This is often a starting place because these cases are high volume, low
value claims that usually do not involve lawyers or complex legal issues.
Overall, the Zoom meeting was very similar to those the
office has with states throughout the US, despite participants being an ocean
apart. Otherwise, the Israeli Ministry
staff and consultants had the same key goals as the Office of Dispute
Resolution had in creating an ODR system.
They want to increase access to justice by creating an easy-to-use
online system accessible by phone or computer 24/7, at no cost to parties, where
parties can resolve their dispute on their own or with the help of a mediator.