eQuibbly Takes Mediation Online & Social
Launched in 2012 in Ontario Canada, eQuibbly wants to change the way we resolve disputes by being a quick, easy and free Online Dispute Resolution service across North America and eventually to a city near you.
According to Lance Soskin, founder and president of eQuibbly. eQuibbly is a free web application combining online arbitration and mediation with crowd voting and social network involvement for free, fair and fast justice than the traditional court system.
eQuibbly’s platform allows one to post a dispute online asking the other party in the dispute to respond. One can either post a dispute out to the public online so they all vote for the side they believe is right or a dispute is posted privately and those who see or vote on it are limited.
Soskin completed his J.D. & MBA degrees at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Schulich School of Business and worked with the law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt.
After the Bar, Lance went on and worked as an investment banker for Scotia Capital in Toronto and the former Merrill Lynch in New York under Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance and later held various management positions with venture capital, commercial debt collection, and real-estate development firms.
Why eQuibbly
Lance founded eQuibbly after witnessing how painfully slow, mind-boggling complicated, and prohibitively expensive traditional methods of litigation and dispute settlement typically are. Lance wondered how many others had abandoned a legitimate dispute, conceded to an adversary, or pursued a resolution in court to the point of becoming financially destitute since few alternatives were available.
Lance decided to launch eQuibbly to provide a quicker, simpler, cheaper and more equitable way to resolve disputes.
Soskin adds that it offers both legally-binding and non-binding options to help users resolve their disputes.
eQuibbly is simple to use
Creates a user profile, posts your dispute, and indicates an email address for the accused.
An automatic email notice is sent to the accused for a response and proposed resolution. If its open to the public users can contribute with a “thumbs up”or a “thumbs down” if the proposed resolution is reasonable or not respectively.
The online crowd can then for seven days vote for who they think should win the dispute based on their argument and their proposed resolution. The one with majority of votes is declared the winner.
Yes, it is Crowdsourcing For Justice!
eQuibly works on the Crowd voting or the “wisdom of the crowd” principle which claims that normally masses of people are more intelligent than an individual and particularly online where both legal professionals and specialized professions like engineers, doctors among others add to resolve the dispute.
Supporters of Crowd voting argue that it allows diversity of opinion, independence of opinion, decentralization, aggregation which might not be found in a traditional court system.
According to Soskin says that it’s well sure that almost any other method of resolving a dispute or conflict is better than the traditional justice system.
Costs
He says on his blog, “Once you hire an attorney, it’s extremely difficult to get away with paying anything less than a few thousand dollars for pre-trial procedures, even if it is for small claims court. And if your case goes to trial, you’re almost certainly going to be out-of-pocket at least $10,000 and often times tens of thousands of dollars.”
And it’s not only money Soskin is concerned about. The time commitment and aggravation involved in pursing litigation even cost more than money.
You might spend more on the litigation than you claim and also if you ever ‘live’ online i.e shop, socialize, read or comment on pieces online. One can also use the online litigation if they want confidentiality, as they invite only the people they think have substance to help in the dispute.
