Electronic Mediation Handbook

This book is a welcome contribution to the literature about technology and dispute resolution. Technology is transforming the landscape of disputing. Even more than in the past, “conflict is a growth industry”1 as consumers have problems with transactions, citizens worry about their identity, businesses face threats to their reputations, social networks foster anti-social behaviour, governments struggle with security and everyone encounters poorly functioning Web sites. The merger of the physical world with the virtual world has brought with it a new range of transactions and relationships, many of them complex, novel and valuable. At the same time, as we become accustomed to Big Data, we are also finding bad data and along with more innovation often comes more bad design and more bad communication.
As Professor Conforti understands, the phrase online dispute resolution (ODR) is an umbrella for many different approaches to resolving disputes. All ODR processes share some common goals in that the communications systems employed need to be trusted and accessible. All ODR systems also share some challenges such as when choices need to be made between synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication. There are, however, also differences in that there are laws that apply to particular forms of dispute resolution and not to other forms. This book provides clear guidance about the legal context for e-mediation.
There is a need for books, such as this one, that focus attention on the details of particular kinds of online dispute resolution processes. This book is, I believe, the first to focus specifically on e-mediation. It takes into account both Spanish and European law and the manner in which they affect the security of communication and the privacy of the parties. It explains how digital signatures should be employed to build trust and insure the identities of the parties. Much of the writing on ODR from the United States neglects these topics, in that both offline and online mediation in the U.S. are informal and less subject to data protection and other types of European-based directives.
If one follows the guidance Professor Conforti’s provides in this book, our strategies for intervening in disputes will be greatly improved.
Ethan Katsh

Professor Emeritus of Legal Studies and Director National Center 
for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, 
University of Massachusetts