The Court ODR Podcast

In this episode Colin chats with former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca (Becky) Kourlis.  After her service on the bench, Becky founded and lead the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System (IAALS) at the University of Denver, which continues to tackle some of the legal system’s most entrenched problems. Becky's public policy work over the years has focused on court procedures, legal ethics, regulation of the legal profession, water, oil and gas, jury trial reforms, and education issues. Becky now serves as a full-time neutral at her ADR firm Decisioncraft, where she is available for arbitrations, mediations, public policy facilitations, and court and moot court services.

More about Becky: https://decisioncraftadr.com/becky-kourlis

In this episode, Colin interviews the Honorable R. James (Jim) Williams, retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia, Family Division.

Born in Alberta, Justice Williams graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Alberta in 1972, a Master of Social Work from the Maritime School of Social Work in 1974 and a Bachelor of Law degree from Dalhousie University in 1977. He was admitted to the Nova Scotia Bar in 1977 and the Alberta Bar in 1986.

Justice Williams’ career has been devoted to Family Law and Legal Education. He worked in private practice in Halifax for ten years until his appointment to the Family Court of Nova Scotia in March 1987. Twelve years later, he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia (Family Division).

A lifelong learner, Justice Williams earned a Certificate in Mediation from the University of Toronto in 1982 and a Master in Judicial Studies from the University of Nevada National Judicial College in 1996.

Justice Williams served as Associate Director with the National Judicial Institute, the independent institution providing education to Canada’s Judiciary from 2000 to 2016, co-chaired the Federation of Law Societies National Family Law Conference from 1994 to 2022 and was President of Family Mediation Canada from 1990 to 1992. Through these organizations he chaired or co-chaired more than 40 national Family Law conferences.

Justice Williams was President of the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family at the University of Calgary from 2005 to 2009. He is a past chair of the Canadian Bar Association Family Law Subsection. He served as a member of the Canadian Judicial Council Education Committee (2013 to 2016), a board member of the Canadian Superior Court Judges Association (2015 to 2021) and on a number of other court related committees. 

Justice Williams taught at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University for over 30 years. He also taught or lectured at the University of Alberta Law School, the University of Calgary Law School, the University of Saskatchewan Law School, the University of Sydney Law School (Australia), the University of Hong Kong Law School, the University of Surrey Law School (U.K.), Westminster Law School (U.K.), the University of London Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the Maritime School of Social Work.

Justice Williams served as Host Chair for the World Congress on Family Law and Children’s Rights in Halifax in 2009. He has delivered innumerable presentations to the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, various Bar Associations, the National Judicial Institute and has spoken or consulted internationally on many occasions. He was a member of the Family Law Review's editorial board from 2000 to 2021 and has published several journal articles and book chapters.

Justice Williams was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from Dalhousie University in 2015. He was the first Canadian puisne judge awarded the University of London’s Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Inns of Court Judicial Fellowship in 2015.

Read an article by Jim on eCourts: https://tbla.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/R__James_Williams___Taking_a_Shot__Access_to_-re-changing-face-of-famil....pdf

In this episode Colin interviews Dana Schmidt, who manages the mediation programs at the Tennessee Supreme Court. Dana oversees an innovative Court ODR program to help Tennesseans resolve medical debt before it escalates to lawsuits or credit damage. Through the TN Med Debt platform, patients owing money to Erlanger Hospital can initiate private, convenient negotiations—often with help from trained mediators—on payment plans or reduced amounts. The program is free, voluntary, and accessible via smartphone, offering an alternative to court that eases strain on the legal system and on struggling families.

Tennessee faces some of the nation’s highest rates of medical debt, and this effort aims to change that. With backing from the State Justice Institute, Tennessee Supreme Court, and Legal Aid of East Tennessee, the pilot offers a compassionate, scalable solution that benefits both patients and providers. Erlanger supports the approach as a way to avoid collections and preserve patient relationships. Leaders hope to expand the program statewide and plan to build a new system, launching in September, to introduce new features to the system.

Information on the program: https://www.tncourts.gov/news/2021/05/18/new-online-dispute-resolution-platform-offers-hope-those-medical-debt

Current (June 2025) landing page for the Medical Debt ODR Program: https://cii2.courtinnovations.com/TNMEDDEBT

In this episode of the Court ODR Podcast Colin interviews J.J. Prescott, the Henry King Ransom Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. JJ founded Court Innovations Inc. and developed Matterhorn, an online dispute resolution platform that helps people facing warrants, fines, minor charges, and other legal issues resolve their disputes with the government and other parties online and without the need to hire an attorney. Colin and JJ discuss the development of court ODR, lessons learned, and the potential for new approaches (such as asynchronous evaluative processes) moving forward.

Much of JJ's research is empirical in focus, so the podcast also touches on data collection and continuing evaluation of court ODR. JJ's current research projects include exploring the role of technology in improving access to justice and legal decision-making; studying the consequences of criminal record expungement and record-clearing reform; measuring the importance and role of noncompetition agreements in the US labor force; evaluating the effects of prosecutorial discretion and decision-making on short- and long-term defendant outcomes, including disparities; and investigating the nature and repercussions of partial settlements in litigation.

More about JJ: https://michigan.law.umich.edu/faculty-and-scholarship/our-faculty/jj-prescott

JJ's article "Next Steps in Online Courts: Accelerating Access To Justice Through Court Technology Through Court Technology" from the Alaska Law Review (discussed in the podcast): https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4067&context=articles

In this episode Colin chats with Katherine Alteneder, Director Emerita of the Self-Represented Litigation Network (SRLN, now called the a2jnetwork) about the best words to refer to court users (e.g. parties? litigants? users? plaintiffs/defendants? customers?)

Katherine is currently Principal at Alteneder Consulting, where she provides independent consulting services on matters relating to judicial ethics, court rules, geospatial analysis, digital inclusion, and the optimization of technology. She is a well known national leader on strategies for systemic advocacy and reform to build more equitable and inclusive justice systems for people without lawyers, and thereby improve public trust and confidence in the judicial branch.

More about Katherine: https://www.srln.org/node/37/katherine-alteneder

Sign up for the Access to Justice Network (a2jnetwork) here: https://a2jnetwork.org/

This is the fourth episode of Michael and Karen Aurit's podcast "Inside the Mediation Room," devoted to hearing stories and insights from some of the world's most experienced mediators and dispute resolvers. In this episode their guest is Graham Ross, an experienced mediator and the United Kingdom's leading pioneer in online dispute resolution (ODR). Graham co-founded the first ODR service in the UK, WeCanSettle, and designed the blind bidding software at the heart of the system. Graham subsequently founded TheMediationRoom.com, for whom he designed their online mediation platform. Graham speaks regularly at international conferences on the impact of the law on the Internet and e-commerce and on the application of technology to ADR. Graham was host of the 5th International Conference on Online Dispute Resolution held in Liverpool, UK, in 2007. 

This is the third episode of Michael and Karen Aurit's video podcast "Inside The Mediation Room," devoted to hearing stories and insights from some of the world's most experienced mediators and dispute resolvers. In this episode their guests are Susan Guthrie and Woody Mosten, co-founders of Mosten Guthrie Academy: https://mostenguthrie.com/

This is the second episode of Michael and Karen Aurit's video podcast "Inside The Mediation Room," devoted to hearing stories and insights from some of the world's most experienced mediators and dispute resolvers. In this episode their guest is Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq., who developed the high conflict personality theory to explain the driving forces behind people who present the most challenging behaviors. He is an expert on managing disputes involving high conflict situations and 5 high conflict personality types, including a subset of those with narcissistic, borderline, antisocial, histrionic, and paranoid personality disorders. He has trained over 200,000 professionals in 10 countries on understanding and managing high conflict disputes.

This is the first episode of Michael and Karen Aurit's video podcast "Inside The Mediation Room," devoted to hearing stories and insights from some of the world's most experienced mediators and dispute resolvers. In this episode their guest is the legendary Don T. Saposnek, Ph.D., a clinical-child psychologist and family therapist in practice since 1971, and a child custody and family mediator and national and international trainer and consultant in child psychology and mediation since 1977. He was director of the family court services in Santa Cruz County for 17 years and has mediated over 5,000 child custody and visitation cases in both the public and private sectors. He has published extensively in the professional literature on children and families and is the author of a number of books on the topics of children, families, divorce, and mediation.