I am Graham Ross, a UK lawyer and mediator dedicated to helping people resolve their disputes without the delay, stress and cost of going to court.
I am also a leading expert in Online Dispute Resolution and the application of technology to aid the resolution of disputes - see my bio here as well as
my profile on the UK Business Forum.
See You Out Of Court not only offers traditional mediation processes that take place in person but new techniques developed with the aid of technology, whether to enable negotiations to be conducted online (especially useful when the parties are at a physical distance or, as in the current Corvid-19 situation simply cannot take place 'in person') or, whether mediating online or 'in person', to enable Artificial Intelligence to assist the mediator to improve the prospects of resolution.
Two key pieces of AI driven software used by me are:-
SmartsettleONE is a ground breaking visual blind bidding system that, by enabling the parties in dispute to enter not just offers seen by the other party but offers not seen by the other party, and in encouraging parties to more quickly move to their bottom lines, speeds up reaching agreement over an amount of money.
The mediator can also conduct discussions separately with each party in private chat rooms. This conversation can be used to set conditions of the bidding as in “I will make an offer on condition that you agree to….”
Smartsettle Infinity – this is a development for more complex disputes with multiple parties and multiple elements to be included in a settlement.
Although using AI, Infinity requires an Infinity trained mediator not just to operate it properly but,importantly to use his or her skills to be able to help the machine learn the comparative preferences of each party in the various elements of a settlement to such an extent that it can put together proposals more likely to be acceptable to both sides. When packages of proposals are put to a party, that party does not know if it has been made by the other party, by the mediator or by the machine. In this way, emotion has less of an influence on the decision on how to respond to a proposal.
To avoid misunderstandings the Smartsettle software does not involve delegating decision making to the machine. On the contrary it improves the control of the mediator and the impact of his or her skills. No settlement is reached without it coming within the range of what each side is agreeable to.
Importantly, even when both sides reach agreement on a proposal by using Smartsettle Infinity, the system then considers whether any value has been 'left on the table' by either side and, if so, can offer an improvement on the settlement that adds more value to one or other of the parties without reducing the value to the other.
See a short 5mn video here explaining both ONE and Infinity in a family law dispute.
You can obtain a quotation for a mediation, by clicking here or click here to arrange a telephone call to answer your questions and explain how mediation works.
