During the May’ 2020 lockdown when I was whiling away my time in my village in Jharkhand, I received a call from the Legal Head of one of the top life insurance companies from India with a question. Can your law firm help me in settling 6000 disputes (basically claim settlement disputes) spread across the country? Basically, what he wanted was that not to go to court and fight litigation but settle the dispute outside the court with the claimants and pay whatever could amicably be decided between the parties thus helping both the company and the clients. I needed some time to get back to him as it was logistically not possible to manage all the disputes in all the locations. We had few discussions here and there to thrash out the modalities of conducting the settlement processes. The biggest question that came in front of us was the cost of conducting the settlement process as it has to be conducted pan India. Since, it was the lockdown period and almost everything had gone online so, quite automatically we agreed that an online mode of conducting the meeting can be thought of.

During my stint as practicing lawyer, for almost every case my first approach towards a case is to convince a client to look for an alternative way to resolve the legal conflict without going to the court. There have been many instances wherein I have helped the parties to come to the table and negotiate the terms and settle the disputes and thus bring down the acrimony and negativity around all of us. Doing all this has time and again proven that there is always hope and positivity even in most negative aspects of life.

My other common observation is that most of the litigants look forward for out of court settlement even if the settlement results may not be as desirable as they initially wish to be while filing a case when they are quite charged up with emotions. In most of the civil cases even courts honour and accept if the parties go for out of court settlement or compromise agreement and thus bring an end to the case. This all go to say that many people willingly look for alternative ways of settling the dispute rather than going to the courts and file cases in courts given a choice.

Indian Legislators brought in the alternative methods of dispute settlement in the year 1996 by promulgating Arbitration and Conciliation Act of 1996 and thus opened the era of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). This paved the way for people and especially the corporates with commercial contracts to avoid the time taking litigation procedure and go through the ADR ways to save time, cost and effort in resolving their contractual disputes. The ADR mainly followed the principles of Arbitration, Medication and Conciliation but the readers would tend to agree with me that the main ingredient in all of these are the negotiation.

During the whole period of 2020 and 2021 the world has been a spectator of a changing world where a newer way of working and living is being formulated - less human interaction and more technology driven interaction. Since last few years human society had been trying to move online gradually and the pandemic became the impetus that along with schooling, medical, consultancy, working even judicial system went online. Till some time back the ADRs were being conducted in physical mode and in many parts of the world, state of the art Arbitration and Mediation Centres have been designed and erected to facilitate the proceedings. But as we all are seeing and observing around us that when litigation and judicial proceedings can be conducted through virtual mode then the Alternative Dispute Resolution can certainly be conducted in online and virtual mode. This gives birth to the ODR- Online Dispute Resolution.

How ODR is going to change the ecosystem?

ADR was destined to change the way the organizations and corporates were going to save their litigation cost and finally impact their top line. Similarly, the ODR is going to further impact their operation costs. Since the proceedings will be conducted from the precincts of the offices and homes without any travels and with lesser numbers of hearing the arbitration cost will further go down. Decision and negotiations-based decisions can be fast leading to faster resolutions. By employing technology like e-signature, the execution and documentation will happen quickly.  Overall, this looks to be a great future for all.

On the other hands service industries like banking, credit card, insurance etc. who would like to settle their small value claims or disputes will find it a boon for themselves. At a very low cost of conducting the ODR they can get their bulk claims and disputes settled and resolved in a swift and quick manner.

Vidhi SamaaDhaan – Vidhikarya Centre for Dispute Resolution

Yes, ODR is the future for dispute resolution and the world is looking forward to it with lot of anticipation and positive attitude. www.vidhikarya.com which has completed its five years of existence has launched Vidhikarya Centre for Dispute Resolution (VCDR) which is an online platform to settle the dispute from the comforts of your home and office using the virtual mode. Many individual clients are approaching the platform with a request for ODR through Vidhikarya. Vidhikarya has a pool of more than 6000 lawyers from across the country who can act as Presiding Officers and thus there is the ability that the proceedings can be conducted in the local vernacular languages too.

This is an endeavour from the team of Vidhikarya to help and create a better environment for people of India as far as dispute settlements are concerned.

Please visit to this link to know more about VCDR https://www.vidhikarya.com/online-dispute-resolution