Competition Rules (ICODR 2005)

Online Litigation Competition

A.    Purpose

The competition enhances student understanding of Online Dispute Resolution.  Students will experience every aspect of a first instance/trial court proceeding in a mixed civil law and common law jurisdiction - notice and response, procedure design (evidence gathering, including written and oral submissions), choice of law, deliberation and decision.  Students may participate as advocates or as judges.  Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals will be granted based on evaluations by distinguished professionals as to (1) the most effective advocate teams and (2) the most effective judges/tribunal.

B.    Participants

Law students from law schools around the world are invited to participate.

C.    Teams

Schools are encouraged to field both a (1) team of advocates and (2) judge(s).

1.      Advocates

Each school is requested to field a team of at least two persons.  During the competition each team will be represented by one “advocate” entity whatever the number of members of the team.

Teams will be paired by random selection so that each team will act as Claimant in one court case versus one team and as Respondent in a second court case against a different team.  Each team will be assigned a letter (e.g. Team A) and will be expected to refer to itself in that manner.  No evaluator, other team, or judge can ask a team to provide the name of its school.

2.      Judges

Each school is requested to field at least one person and up to three persons to serve as a judge.  Depending on numbers, more than one person up to three may serve as the court in a given room. 

The student judges will be appointed at random. The first instance court is located in the jurisdiction where the defendant resides. The jurisdiction is a mixed civil law and common law jurisdiction.  Insofar as possible, the judge/tribunal in a given court case will not be from the schools of either of the parties to the court case.  To the extent possible, each student judge will serve two court cases.  Each judge/tribunal will be assigned a name (e.g. Judge/Tribunal A) and will be expected to refer to itself by that name.  No evaluator, team or judge can ask a judge to provide the name of his/her school.

D.    Coaches

Our desire is that the contacts at each school be the coach for the school’s advocate team and judge(s).  The coach would assist the preparation for the online litigation.  We would ask coaches to provide the same level of assistance as they provide in offline competitions of this nature.  This preparation would include fielding student questions when they are working on the litigation, particularly the international commercial litigation issues, as well as familiarizing the students with the selected technology. 

In order to ensure complete fairness and neutrality, organizers of the competition who are listed as participants will limit their roles to administrative organization of their respective teams.

During the competition, it is desirable that the coach observe.  The hope is that the coach can watch carefully the experience to help in the evaluation of the competition.

E.     Sequence of the Online Litigation Competition

The competition is envisaged as running from February 15, 2005 through April 15, 2005 .

The schedule would be (all times expressed in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)):

September – November 2004 : Designation of Teams and Judges for participating schools

December 2004 – Allocation of Teams and Judges

January 5, 2005 - Provision of fact patterns to teams

February 15: Complaint due (to be filed in Documents section of the Workspace). Judge is present to deal with any matters that arise.

February 22: Response on complaint due.  The response will be made to the complaint of another team and the paired teams will continue the court case together.

February 22 – April 15: The court case will occur. The procedure will be determined by the student advocates with the student judge/tribunal.  The teams could address issues such as hearing of witnesses, scheduling of written and oral submissions and the subject matter of such submissions, etc.  Each advocate team may invoke any rules of law of any legal tradition. Each judge/tribunal is free to organize the proceedings as it sees fit in accordance with the rules it determines are applicable from any legal tradition.  The goal is that the decision should be one which would be likely to not be successfully appealable.

April 15: A written decision with reasons of the judge/tribunal is due, together with dissenting or concurring opinions (if any).  No extensions of time will be granted.

April 18: Student self-evaluations in their respective private rooms are due.

April 18 – May 7 :  Evaluators made up of distinguished practitioners and academics in the field of international litigation may watch the activities of the advocates and judges during the course of the litigations and will finalize their evaluations during this period.

May 15: Announcement of the most effective advocates and most effective judges as determined by the evaluators.

F. Timekeeping

Responsibility rests with the student participants for timekeeping.

G. Supplemental Materials

Supplemental materials may be used by the participants.  They should be posted at the documents section of the litigation room.  No documents should be added to the litigation room after the end of the litigation period (April 15).  No new documents should be added to the comments made during the self-evaluation.

H. Expectation of how the round should proceed

As soon as practicable after the beginning of the court case, each advocate team and judge/tribunal should enter into the litigation room and send a message advising that “We are Team/Judge/Tribunal (Letter) and are ready to proceed.” 

In the event no information is heard from a team/judge/tribunal after the first 24 hours, effort will be made to contact them to make sure there is no problem of access.  If a judge/tribunal fails to participate, then the advocate teams will be declared winner’s ex aequo et bono of their court case but will not be eligible for any medals.  If an advocate team fails to participate, then the judge/tribunal will have to determine how it will proceed. 

The advocate teams are to represent their respective clients in the litigation.

The judges/tribunals are to organize the litigation and draft a reasoned decision.

Each advocate team and the arbitral tribunal are free to determine how they wish to conduct themselves and invoke any rule of law of any legal tradition.

Over the three days after April 15, 2005 , each advocate team and each judge/tribunal is to enter into its respective private room and provide a self-analysis answering the following five questions.

1. What was your strategy and how well did you implement it?
2. What would you do the same and what would you do differently if you were in this type of litigation in the future?
3. What impact did the technology have on your litigating approach?
4. What did you learn from this experience?
5. What would you wish others to know about this type of experience?

I.    Evaluators

Evaluators are provided by the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution (CITDR) of the University of Massachusetts .

Evaluators will not be from any school in the competition.  Evaluators will have access to a webboard provided by CITDR in which they may wish to discuss their experience evaluating the competition.

J.     Scoring

Evaluators will observe teams in real time and/or through review of the litigation text. 

1. Evaluation of Advocate teams

Evaluation criteria forms will be used to rate each advocate team from 1 to 7 on 9 criteria scales.  The nine scales are as follows:

1. Litigation Planning .  How well prepared did this team appear to be?
2. Flexibility in deviating from plans or adapting strategy.   How flexible did this team appear to be in adapting its strategy in reaction to the other team?
3. Outcome of litigation.   How well did this team serve the client’s goals?
4. Relationship between the litigating teams.   Did the way this team managed its relationship with the other team and the judge/tribunal help or hurt it in achieving its client’s best interests?
5. Litigation Ethics.   To what extent did the team observe or violate the ethical requirements of the legal profession?
6. Use of Technology.   How effectively did the team use the technology to advance its client’s goals?
7. Skill in Expression.   In expressing itself, did the team seem hindered or helped by the technology?
8. General. Overall how well did the team use online litigation?
9. Self-Analysis.  Based on the team’s self-analysis in its caucus room, how adequately has it learned from the litigation?

The average neutral rating is 4.  To get above that rating the team has to do something that makes a significant favorable impact on the evaluator.  To get below that rating, the team has to do something that makes a significant unfavorable impact on the evaluator.

2. Evaluation of Judges/Tribunals

Evaluation criteria forms will be used to rate each arbitral tribunal from 1 to 7 on 10 criteria scales.  The ten scales are as follows:

1. Litigation Planning .  How well prepared did this judge/tribunal appear to be?
2. Flexibility in deviating from plans or adapting strategy.   How flexible did this judge/tribunal appear to be in adapting its strategy in reaction to the parties?
3. Outcome of arbitration.   How well did the judge/tribunal do in the procedure and preparing the award?
4. Relationship with the parties.   Did the way the judge/tribunal managed its relationship with the parties help or hurt it in reaching a decision that would not be successfully appealed?
5. Relationship within the Tribunal.   Did the way the tribunal managed its relationship with each other help or hurt it in reaching a a decision that would not be successfully appealed?
6. Litigation Ethics.   To what extent did the judge/tribunal observe or violate the ethical requirements of judges and/or the legal profession?
7. Use of Technology.   How effectively did the judge/tribunal use the technology to advance their goals for the litigation?
8. Skill in Expression.   In expressing itself, did the judge/tribunal seem hindered or helped by the technology?
9. General. Overall how well did the judge/tribunal use online litigation?
10. Self-Analysis.  Based on the judge/tribunal’s self-analysis in its caucus room, how adequately has it learned from the litigation?

The average neutral rating is 4.  To get above that rating the judge/tribunal has to do something that makes a significant favorable impact on the evaluator.  To get below that rating, the judge/tribunal has to do something that makes a significant unfavorable impact on the evaluator.

K. Evaluation Standards

The evaluation criteria attempt to capture various discrete aspects of the litigation process.  The evaluators should keep in mind at all times that the student participants come from around the world and from different legal traditions.

The standards are based on the premise that there are many ways to litigate and judge.  

Litigation effectiveness here can be demonstrated by persuasiveness, procedural suggestions and choices, manner of presentation, quality of drafting, etc.

Several points that could be considered:

• Is this a well-run court case?
• To what extent are the interests of the client, the other side, and the judge/ tribunal being persuasively addressed?
• Were the procedural suggestions and choices appropriate?
• Is the decision likely not to be successfully appealed?
• Have the parties and the judge/tribunal clearly understood each other?
• Will these parties be able to deal with each other more efficiently in case of any future differences?
• Would these judges be destined to be leaders of the judiciary?

L.   Note Taking 

Evaluators may take notes and decide whether to provide them to the participants.  A webboard is also available for evaluators to use to discuss the experience after they have completed their evaluation.

M.   Independent Decision Making

Each evaluator is to make his/her evaluations independently of the other evaluators.  Once the evaluations have been completed, the evaluator may feel free to discuss the competition in the webboard.

N. Reporting the results

The Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution will notify each team and post the results.

O. Third parties

Persons other than student participants, coaches, evaluators, or administrators of the competition are permitted to observe the court cases.  They may comment on a separate webboard page if they desire.

P.    Hypotheticals

An international commercial dispute between two companies will be the subject of the litigation.

Q. Controlling Rules

The litigation is to be conducted in English.

The litigation will be conducted in the first instance/trial court of the Respondent’s jurisdiction. The Respondent’s jurisdiction follows all legal traditions and the advocates and judges may invoke rules from any of those traditions.

Unless indicated otherwise in the problem, no controlling law will be designated. 

Within the confines of the fact pattern that is the problem, teams are free to be creative in presenting their cases.  Parties may designate factual or expert witnesses to be heard.  When seeking witnesses, parties are responsible for seeking out the individuals to play those roles and providing them a copy of the fact pattern.

All references to names of individuals and organizations set forth in the problem materials are fictitious.

R.    Online Dispute Resolution Service Provider for this competition

This year, we are pleased that Thomson West corporation, and eRoom Technology, Inc. are international sponsors and service providers of ICODR 2005.  They are providing the West WorkSpace technology platform for the negotiation, mediation, arbitration and litigation competitions.

Details of how to access their site will be made available in due course.  Each team and the judge/tribunal will be provided opportunities to familiarize themselves with the technology.  Each team and the judge/tribunal will be provided a specific username and password that will permit access to the litigation room in which the actual competition will be done.

S.    Asynchronous mode of communication only

For the competition, we are providing asynchronous (webboard type) modes of communication because of the difficulty of keeping a record of synchronous (chat type) messages.    

T.    Sponsor of the competition

University of Toledo College of Law and Hamline University School of Law are providing the financial support for the competition.

U.    Educational and Promotional Use

A non-exclusive license to use the ICODR 2005 contents for educational and promotional purposes has been granted by the ICODR 2005 organizers to Thomson West.

V. Competition organizers:

Benjamin Davis (Associate Professor, University of Toledo , College of Law –ben.davis@utoledo.edu),

Alan Gaitenby (Adjunct Professor and Assistant Director, Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, University of Massachusetts - gaitenby@disputes.net),

Ethan Katsh (Professor and Director, Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, University of Massachusetts - katsh@legal.umass.edu),

David Larson (Professor and Senior Fellow Dispute Resolution Institute, Hamline School of Law – dlarson@gw.hamline.edu), and

Franklin D. Snyder (Professor, Texas Wesleyan University School of Law– fsnyder@law.txwes.edu)

For enquiries about fielding a law school team, being considered to act as an evaluator or being considered to act as a dispute resolution service provider, please contact:

gaitenby@disputes.net

ben.davis@utoledo.edu