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At one time, Artificial Intelligence was a creative plot in movies and literature. Now, it’s creeping into seemingly every aspect of life. In the legal world, we’ve seen AI grow from automating routine tasks to expediting legal research. It’s now entering alternative dispute resolution (ADR).

Benefits and Drawbacks of AI in ADR

The usefulness of AI in ADR continues to expand. A primary benefit is its ability to make dispute resolution faster, more efficient, and more cost-effective. It can also reduce human bias from the process, making it potentially fairer to all parties. Additionally, AI can assist in identifying ethical issues that may need to be addressed.

On the other hand, AI may be incapable of recognizing certain human factors in ADR, such as the impact of human emotion and cultural or complex sociological factors that may affect case value. More importantly, AI can produce inaccurate or “hallucinated” content, as shown in recent cases where AI generated briefs with fictional legal citations and content.^[1],[2] 

Current and Future Uses of AI in ADR

Lawyers already use AI to analyze and summarize large volumes of briefs and documents that would otherwise take an individual days or weeks. The technology is also being used to analyze parties’ arguments, develop areas of further inquiry for the arbitrator/mediator, predict case settlement values based on relevant past trial verdicts and settlements, and generate contract language for settlements aligned with industry standards and best practices.

In some cases, AI is replacing human mediators and arbitrators. Companies like California’s Bot Mediation have created AI mediation platforms that use avatars to provide always available, data-driven, progress-tracking mediation.[3] Outside the U.S., mediator applications have also had some success. For example, British Columbia has successfully used Smartsettle ONE to quickly and efficiently settle legal disputes. In Australia, ODR.com is being used as a self-help platform for mediation in family and divorce cases.[4] Each of these applications replaces a human facilitator with AI.

The Takeaway

If they haven’t already, lawyers will soon encounter AI being used in some capacity during ADR proceedings, and they need to become comfortable with it. However, legal professionals must continue to exercise their duty of competence by actively overseeing AI to ensure their legal work remains complete, accurate, and ethically sound. 

[1] Sara Merken, “New York lawyers sanctioned for using fake ChatGPT cases in legal brief,” Reuters (June 26, 2023).

[2] Sara Merkin, “Lawyers in Walmart lawsuit admit AI 'hallucinated' case citations,” Reuters (Feb. 10, 2025).

[3] “Bot mediation: AI-powered mediation for Efficient Legal Dispute resolution. (Mar. 31, 2025). https://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_practice/resources/law-technology-today/2025/ai-powered-mediation-for-efficient-legal-dispute-resolution/.

[4] Tabor, F. The AI Mediator: Can AI help with dispute resolution and peace keeping?. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-mediator-can-help-dispute-resolution-peace-keeping-francesca-tabor-wpzge (June 3, 2025).