At this Step, the Parties participate with their Resolution Professional in a Resolution Session.
  

• Assigning a Resolution Professional: Your Resolution Professional is selected in accordance with 10 criteria - Legal Expertise; Subject-Matter Expertise; Industry Expertise; Dispute Resolution Methodology; Language; Jurisdiction; Cultural Factors; Experience; Complexity; and Conflicts of Interest. Information provided by the Parties at Step 2 - Intake - is matched with information provided by our Resolution Professionals to make the selection.
    
    
• Setting an appointment: Once all Parties have filed their Submissions and any Amendment and Additions Forms, an appointment for your Resolution Session is set. The Electronic Courthouse guarantees its customers that it will make an appointment available to them within 72 hours, subject only to the Parties' own availability. The Resolution Session is 4 hours long and each Party will be asked to submit 3 4-hour time frames, which will be coordinated with the Resolution Professional until a mutually agreeable date and time can be set.
    
    
• Allocation of time: The Resolution Session is one 4-hour session. Unless you have jointly agreed in writing to use one of The Electronic Courthouse's alternate processes, our stepped mediation-arbitration process will apply. Under this process, at the end of the first two hours your Resolution Professional is required to move to arbitration in order to ensure that your dispute is resolved within the 4-hour time frame. However, if your Resolution Professional assesses that the Parties are very close to settlement, the Parties and their Resolution Professional may agree to spend up to 1 more hour in mediation. As this will reduce the time available for arbitration, all Parties must agree that further mediation is the most prudent course.
    
  Under our other methodologies, the 4-hour session is used to carry out that methodology alone, whether mediation alone, arbitration alone, or early neutral evaluation.

Tools:

The Electronic Courthouse uses a number of tools to facilitate the Resolution Session. These tools fall broadly into one of the following 3 categories: voice tools, imaging tools, and data tools.

1.  Voice Tools:

• Voice continues to be an important tool that humans rely on for important communications.
    
• While data links can be cheaper than traditional telephone links, quality is often sacrificed and results in lost time and poor communication.
    
• At The Electronic Courthouse, we use voice communications networks to set up quality audio communications links during your 4-hour session. These audio links include security, archiving, play back and the related advanced audio and voice communication features.
    
• To enhance the security and quality of voice communications, our Resolution Professionals use “land lines” and wire-based networks and equipment, rather than wireless or cellular telephones, and we encourage all Parties to do the same.
    

2.  Imaging Tools:

• Parties want an image of their Resolution Professional and the other Parties with whom they are communicating.
    
• Most Parties find that an exchange of photos by email is sufficient. Photos of our Resolution Professionals are posted on our Web site and we ask Parties to submit a photo of themselves prior to their Resolution Session.
    
• Video imaging may be included in your session, at an additional cost to the parties, where all parties have access to video conferencing equipment. However, most parties find that images of others' faces take up valuable screen space, are frequently an irritant and a distraction rather than an aid to resolution and, therefore, video imaging is seldom requested or used by the parties.  For further information, see Customization Options at Step 6.
    

3.  Data Tools:

• Most disputes involve the interpretation of some written documents and contracts.
    
• Our principal tool for managing documents is our The Electronic Courthouse ResolutionRoom™. Here the parties can securely file, store, retrieve and view all documents; make and track proposals; identify and track individual issues; vote on issues; carry out messaging in a secure environment. The ResolutionRoom™ allows for secure “asynchronous” communications required in advance of the Resolution Session itself, allowing different Parties to file different documents on different days.
    
• During the Resolution Session itself, a secure online conference room is set up for your 4-hour session. This Room allows for secure synchronous communications – allowing all parties to collaborate and work with the same documents and tools at the same time. Tools available in the conference room include White Board, Web Chat and one-way video conferencing, which are supplemented by your voice conference call.

Click on our Gold Seal below to log in to your secure Electronic Courthouse ResolutionRoom

Return to your Forms and Documents.
  

Email us at info@ElectronicCourthouse.com with any general questions or concerns.
  

Proceed to STEP 8.