Did you know that 57 percent of the world’s population (that’s 4 billion people!) live outside the shelter of law? It seems like a steep statistic, until you factor in the costs of missing work for court dates, transportation, childcare and the emotional toll of entering a potentially confusing and hostile environment.
This conversation with Attorney and Founding President of the Collaborative Lawyers of Saskatchewan Brad Hunter is taken directly from our recent, widely popular webinar, “Online Dispute Resolution: Making Justice Effortless and Accessible.” With a specific focus on how ODR has shaped his 30+ legal career, especially in family law, Brad walks us through the key benefits afforded to both participants of the justice system and every type of legal practice. Speaking from decades ago through to today, even pre-pandemic, Brad shares his best practices for adopting online dispute resolution into your service.
If you haven’t already listened to part one of our ODR series, “The Recovering Lawyer’s Perspective,” you can do so here. To learn more about ODR and/or request a free demo, please visit www.ResolveDisputes.com.
Read the Transcript
Steve Glisky: |
Welcome to the paperless productivity podcast, where we have experts, give you the insights know-how and resources to help you transform your workplace from paper to digital while making your work life better at the same time. |
Tim Zarzycki: |
Thanks for joining me today. My name is Tim Zarzycki, your host for today’s podcast. Today’s episode is the second installment of a three-part series discussing online dispute resolution. One of the technologies helping to create access to justice in the U.S., Canada and around the world. |
Vince Hanson: |
I’m joined today by Attorney and QC Brad Hunter, who’s been practicing law for over three decades. He’s been very active in the legal community, serving as the founding president of the Collaborative Professionals of Saskatchewan. He’s a board member of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals. He’s chair of the Canadian Bar Association, National Family Law Section, and has taught at the bar admission course for many years. Brad has a passion for the law. He’s trained many professionals in collaborative practice across Canada, the U.S. and Australia. And Brad has covered a variety of civil and criminal practice areas over his career over his career. But his preferred practice area is family law with a focus on dispute resolution. Thank you and welcome Brad. Truly great to have you. |
Brad Hunter: |
Thanks, Vince. |
Vince Hanson: |
Great. So, so Brad as you know, we’re here today to talk a little bit about the ever-changing area of the courts. I think more so than ever in really because of the pandemic this year. The entire justice system courts, prisons attorneys are all dreaming up new ways to conduct business due to COVID many folks in the legal community have been looking to extend the reach of technology to help with these challenges. Some of that tech is relatively simple. Utilizing zoom and conference call technology, but you know, after practicing law for so many years, could you maybe tell us a little bit about some of the changes that you’ve experienced what your new vision of the future looks like and how technology might play a role in that future? |
Brad Hunter: |
Well, Vince, I’ve been around for a long time. Thanks for pointing that out. And actually, actually there’s been surprisingly little change in day-to-day law practice and it’s time for there to be a lot of change in day-to-day law practice. When I started as a lawyer, I had that traditional education and I thought that, you know, you go in, you find the documents, you present your legal argument, and everyone would settle. As time went on, I realized that I needed to have different skills. And so, the whole development of the dispute resolution field over the past 30 years has been quite traumatic. Mediation has become far more sophisticated, collaborative law came into existence within the past 30 years and there’s a numerous other processes to try to, try to resolve disputes. So, we’ve seen over my career, I think we’ve moved from lawyers, and by the way, when I started family law was barely a field of law. It had just, there was a bunch of legislative changes here and elsewhere where all of a sudden it started to occupy a huge amount of court time. And in, I think most jurisdictions it’s the biggest thing next to criminal law. Most judges are a significant portion of judges and court resources are spent on family law. So because of what I’ve done over my career involved, a lot of I’m trying to understand how disputes get resolved, teaching people how to try to resolve them better than we did and understanding, and interest based negotiation and how to work those things through. |
Vince Hanson: |
No, not at all. Not at all. Great, great input, Brad. Thank you. |
Brad Hunter: |
Well, the potential is enormous. We’ve been talking about ODR for 40 years and the, yeah, there’s always a silver lining to these clouds. Maybe one of the benefits of, of the pandemic and the lockdown is we’re now forced to see that in fact things work and in fact, there may be better for everyone. And in a lot of different way. I know I’ve done a couple of court hearings in front of our court of appeal and I, in a way thought. The online experience was better than the in-person experience. And it was much easier to communicate with the judges. Certainly, for the courts system, I think there’s opportunities to engage and increase efficiencies. The province of British Columbia has an online, or has a civil resolution tribunal, which is online and is, which is trying to take certain smaller types of disputes out of the court system fairly successfully. There’s certainly opportunities for the courts to make some or all of their processes online from online filings and online completion of forms to online service, to online disclosure, certainly online dispute resolution processes, such as mediation or even mediation arbitration, arbitration can be facilitated easily online. And even, even online hearings, I know in, the United Kingdom I think the equivalent to a small claim, what we’d all call it. They’re actually at the point where they’ll be at resolutions without hearings, you’ll file your material. And someone will make a decision in a small dispute. And certainly, it will enhance the life of court staff and judges. We often focus in on judges, quite frankly, it’s court staff who are responsible for the system and, and help the judges to, to do their jobs. So, I think there’s all kinds of potential benefits. However, it depends, think a lot on designing the system, just putting in what we’re doing now, online may not be so help may not be as efficient as trying to find better ways to do what we do and recognize what people want is solutions. They don’t wanna, they don’t want a fair trial. They do want a fair trial, but their goal in life is not to have a fair trial. Their goal in life is to get whatever the issue is resolved between them and the other party. |
Vince Hanson: |
So, so Brad in the family law area will ODR be used to help the parties going through divorce? Or do you also see it being used post-divorce for issues that could come up between the parties after they’ve officially been separated by the court? |
Brad Hunter: |
It’s it to answer the first question, if all of the areas of law where I think the tools can make things more effective, it’s in the family field divorce is a complex problem. Everything is on the line and most of my clients, even sophisticated business people or lawyers themselves, or even judges come in somewhat scared that their kids are at question right. Often all their properties at question their future income. Your job is at question because you may be paying support for a whole lot of reasons. So, sorting through that process, I think we can get far better supports. I know when I speak to a client and tell them the law and give them, you know, kind of the way I would normally do it, I suspect they retain about 10% of what I’ve told them in that first meeting. And it takes a while. So, there’s certainly ways to help move through the processes more effectively and more and more simply, and certainly with respect to negotiation, it’s the same thing. So, the whole thing we talked about, the asynchronous communication, I think the timing prospects are great. Not just that they don’t have to be in meetings together necessarily, or don’t do many of those, but also you should be able to compress the timeframes. I mean, divorce is if you’re going through lawyers, even if they’re a fairly non-adversarial, they’re going to take a year or longer and a lot of cases. |
Vince Hanson: |
That’s great. Brad, we know your, a preferred practice area is family law, but do you see this being used with other types of legal cases? Maybe any cases from the past that resonate as being a good fit for this type of technology? |
Brad Hunter: |
I really do. I’m not going to talk about criminal, I think criminal has its own set of issues. But on the civil side, certainly a lot of what legal disputes are, are disputes. They’re not really disputes over the law its disputes over information. So certainly, online processes such as sharing of documents can facilitate that quite, quite traumatically. And there’s no reason you can’t use a hybrid system, even if you’re going to end up in a bricks and mortar courthouse for a settlement hearing or a trial that a lot of the discovery processes can’t be dealt with early. Certainly on smaller case, I would say that it makes more sense to try to do things online than it does to try to do things in a bricks and mortar courthouse. |
Vince Hanson: |
That’s awesome. So, so Brad, last question, before we, we move into the demo for today’s webinar, for folks in the justice community or potential parties to a case and what advice would you give? Best practice things to avoid helpful tips would love to hear your, your thoughts. |
Brad Hunter: |
I’ll just give you a few. The first is that look at doing more than just replicating what you’re doing now. So just setting up a face, setting up online meetings versus face-to-face meeting. See if you can do more than that. Many people are far more comfortable doing things face-to-face than not. Or, or that’s what I’ve always done. So, if you put, make me do something new, like do it online, I won’t like it and I will default to it. So, try to add some extra value. Take advantage of the ability to share information, gather documents, consult with people ahead of time. Certainly, in mediation, there’s far more ability to do things like set up some kind of bot or some kind of a chat function with people. And that way you can prepare them in, in ways that people do now, I’m a baby boomer. I’m not much of a baby anymore, but I think the baby boomer generation to really control the court system right now because judges and the like my age we may not be used to it, but the rest of the society is using, using other ways of communicating. And that way you can build towards a settlement meeting to try to create a culture within your community of using alternate processes to keep matters out of quarter, to resolve them out of court. It may take a while, but if you have the online tools, some people will start to use them. And if they are successful, they will help the rest. |
Vince Hanson: |
Brad. Thanks so much for your insights and, and experience in this area. We, we greatly appreciate it. |
Brad Hunter: |
Thanks, Vince. |
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Tim: Zarzycki: |
It’s been an enlightening session with bred Hunter to better understand the day of a life of a family law attorney, the key benefits of ODR and the impacts of the participants in the justice system. If you haven’t already done so, download part one of the ODR series, and if you’d like to learn more about opportunities online dispute resolution can bring to your court system or practice. |
Steve Glisky: |
Thanks again for joining us on this podcast. To learn more about image soft, please visit image soft, Inc com that’s image soft I N C.com. If you haven’t already done. So be sure to subscribe to paperless productivity, where we tackled some of the biggest paper-based pain points facing organizations today. |
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