St. John's University Law Faculty Blog

On October 30, Professor Elayne Greenberg co-presented with Noam Ebner “Strengthening ODR Justice” at the International Online Dispute Resolution Conference, sponsored by the National Center for State Courts, in Williamsburg Virginia.

The presentation explored why lawyers, as justice stakeholders, have been conspicuously eliminated from the design, implementation and delivery of court-connected ODR services, at the expense of compromising the quality of ODR justice outcomes. Professor Greenberg and Ebner then suggested constructive strategies for courts and ODR designers to engage lawyers in the delivery of ODR justice. A special thanks to John Inzetta for helping to design the props used for this presentation.

The presentation was based on Professor Greenberg’s co-authored article with Noam Ebner, “Strengthening ODR Justice.” The article has been accepted for publication in the Spring 2020 edition of Washington University’s Journal of Law & Policy.

Here is the abstract:

This paper adopts a systems-design approach to focus courts and lawyers on the hitherto unexamined question of how involving lawyers in the design, development, and implementation of online dispute resolution (ODR) programs, will strengthen ODR justice outcomes and court-delivered justice overall.

Behind the scenes of every courthouse in the United States today, justice system professionals are grappling with the same set of basic questions: how to get by on fewer resources, how to cope with the access to justice crisis, and how to provide better justice outcomes. To help solve these justice problems, courts have begun to appreciate technology’s potential to streamline processes, increase access, and reduce costs. Indeed, over the course of the past few years, courts across the United States have been designing and piloting online dispute resolution (ODR) systems. We are currently at a tipping point, at which court ODR, at once a new approach to caseflow management and a court-implemented alternative to litigation, is poised to become the default justice process in an increasing number of jurisdictions.

While court administrators, judges, ODR experts and the public have all been involved in the process of conceptualizing, designing, and implementing ODR systems in courts, one key stakeholder in the justice system has been conspicuously absent from the table: the legal profession. In the development of some ODR systems, lawyers have been excluded; in the design of other ODR systems, the lawyers, themselves have chosen to be absent from the design process. The result of this lack of lawyer involvement is that many of these court-annexed ODR systems effectively design lawyers out of the legal process itself. This has deep implications for the very nature of the procedural and substantive justice disputants will experience and receive in the ODR-infused court system. In this paper, we show how constructive engagement by and with the legal profession, with an eye towards justice rather than professional protectionism, can improve justice in Court ODR.

At the end of October, during the PIABA Annual Meeting, Professor Christine Lazaro completed her term as president of PIABA.

Professor Lazaro also presented on two panels at the conference.  On the first, “Broker-Dealer Standards of Conduct,” Professor Lazaro discussed the SEC’s recently adopted Regulation Best Interest and its impact on broker standards of conduct. She also wrote an article for the panel entitled, “An Overview of the Regulation Best Interest Rule Package.”  On the second panel, “Business Development Companies and Product Cases,” Professor Lazaro described the regulation of business development companies and common claims that may be made by investors who have been put into these products.  She also submitted an article for this panel, “Business Development Companies – The Basics.”  Finally, Professor Lazaro moderated the panel, “Review of FINRA DR Activities and Developments in 2019,” which included FINRA Executive Vice President and Director of Dispute Resolution Richard Berry.

Professor Lazaro has also been appointed to the FINRA Investor Issues Advisory Committee.

FINRA describes the committee as follows:

The Investor Issues Committee is composed of subject matter experts, including academics, consumer advocates, former securities regulators, institutional investors and individuals affiliated with non-broker-dealer asset management firms. The committee advises FINRA staff on matters that significantly affect individual and institutional investors, including proposed rulemaking, policy initiatives and other issues, and to help inform FINRA’s economic analysis from the perspective of investors. In addition, the committee routinely reviews rule proposals and regulatory initiatives before they are brought before the FINRA Board.