EUGENE, OR, March 27, 2023—Resourceful Internet Solutions, Inc. (RIS) is pleased to announce that Dr. Ron Dolin has joined as our Chief Innovation Officer.
Ron is a pioneer on the intersection between justice, the law, innovation, and technology. He co-founded the Program for Legal Technology and Design at Stanford and worked on legal innovation at Stanford Law’s Center on the Legal Profession. He was selected to be one of the 2014 Fastcase 50, and he received ALM Recorder’s 2014 Innovator Award.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that artificial intelligence (AI) will provide the foundation for the future of both dispute resolution and the law, and that all practitioners need to get smarter about how we can leverage it in our practices. Ron’s expertise will be invaluable in helping Mediate.com understand how AI can help the dispute resolution field improve the quality of the services it offers to parties, and he will help to educate many members of the Mediate.com community as we move forward into this new world.
Ron received his B.A. in math and physics from U.C. Berkeley before heading to Geneva to work at CERN, the high-energy physics lab. Soon after he obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Santa Barbara. His dissertation on scalable search led him to Google, where he was one of the first 100 employees, working on search quality. After Google he got a law degree from UC Hastings (he is a licensed attorney in California.)
Ron has taught at Harvard, Stanford, and Notre Dame, and he co-edited the textbook Legal Informatics, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. (Ron’s five chapters for the book include “Technology Issues in Legal Philosophy,” “Information Intermediation” (e.g. search), “XML in Law: The Role of Standards in Legal Informatics,” “Measuring Legal Quality,” and “Adaptive Innovation: Innovator’s Dilemma in Big Law.”)
“I’ve been friends with Ron for the last decade, and he’s always been on the leading edge in terms of legal innovation,” said Colin Rule, Mediate.com’s CEO and President. “As Mediate.com leads the way in applying technology to dispute resolution, and ODR.com continues to advance the practice of online dispute resolution around the world, Ron’s expertise and connections will be invaluable for us. The rise of AI is poised to rapidly transform dispute resolution, and to have Ron driving our innovation will ensure that we stay ahead of the curve.”
Ron is particularly interested in analyzing the legal market from the perspective of Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma, including the role of bar associations, incentives, business structures, and other factors impacting the adoption of, and barriers to, legal innovation. This research includes comparison of the legal profession with other sectors such as medicine, hi-tech, and consulting, including the use of standardized billing codes, quality metrics, and education.
“I’m very excited to be joining Mediate.com,” said Ron. “Prompt, efficient, and fair resolution of disputes is crucially important to all aspects of society: business, family, justice, politics, etc. It is an honor to work with the top team in the ODR field and a world-renowned expert such as Colin Rule. The application of technology to dispute resolution promises to scale up access while maintaining the highest level of quality. This work is long overdue, and I look forward to being a part of it.”
Ron’s areas of expertise include the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automated bar exam question answering, and the automated classification of legal documents and general legal information. He has conducted research into developing and analyzing legal quality metrics: definition, implementation, and assessment of the metrics; impact of standardized quality benchmarks and testing methodology on the legal system, including in-house selection and management of outside counsel, increasing access to justice, legal technology startups and general competition, latent middle-class market, and UPL regulations.
If you’d like to meet Ron, please join us for our upcoming conference on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Mediation, taking place April 18-19, 2023, where Ron will deliver a keynote address. More information is available at http://mediate.com/ai
About Resourceful Internet Solutions
Resourceful Internet Solutions, Inc. (RIS), home of the flagship site Mediate.com, is the leading online technology provider to the dispute resolution industry. Founded by Jim Melamed and John Helie in 1995, RIS provides proven online technologies for mediation, ombuds and online dispute resolution programs. In addition to Mediate.com, RIS hosts leading websites and professional directories, including Arbitrate.com, OnlineMediators.com, OnlineArbitrators.com, and many other dispute resolution resources. RIS also offers the dispute resolution industry’s leading case management system at CaseloadManager.com, in use by the IMF, ICANN, NASA, the International Red Cross, and several statewide dispute resolution systems. To learn more, visit www.Resourceful.net.
Contact: Angela Letney
Resourceful Internet Solutions
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