Editor's blog | Tomorrow's small claims courts will be online

Modria can boast star pedigree too. Between them, its founders and senior executives set up the online dispute resolution platforms of eBay and Paypal, several are trained mediators, all have experience in the tech industry, and they have seed investment from venture capitalists such as Foundry Group and Palo Alto-based Advanced Technology Ventures.

This week the company set foot in the UK, having enlisted the support of former solicitor Graham Ross about a year ago to head up its European operations. As a lawyer Ross specialised in personal injury and product liability - he led the group action by HIV-infected haemophiliacs against the government. And you are likely to be using every day one of his most well-known creations so far, online law reporting service Lawtel, which he co-founded with barrister Gerald Impey in 1980 and is an early example of technological disruption in the sector.

Modria’s big idea is to take eBay’s online dispute resolution model to the general public and make it available to private organisations and public bodies to resolve customer disputes. In this current set-up, it means consumers will only have access to it if the entity they are in dispute with has signed up to the system.

Taking lawyers out of the dispute resolution process may sound misguided but it is likely to have the ear of lawyers in high places. Richard Susskind has long been a proponent of online dispute resolution schemes. In March, the Lord Chief Justice’s IT adviser berated the Civil Justice Council for “failing to even look” into the potential of ODR. And only last month Lord Neuberger said in a speech at the Institute of Government that the courts “may have something to learn from online dispute resolution on eBay and elsewhere”.

And soon we could see ODR schemes take off in Britain. In March, the European Union adopted Regulation 524/2013, which makes it compulsory for all online retailers to offer access to an ODR scheme by the end of 2015, together with Directive 2013/11, which requires all EU member states to implement the new rules by July 2015. In addition, each member state will have to appoint an official national ‘ODR contact point’, which will be connected to its counterparts across Europe via a ‘network of contact points’.