The New Handshake: Online Dispute Resolution and the Future of Consumer Protection

Colin Rule is CEO of Mediate.com. From 2017 to 2020 Colin was Vice President for Online Dispute Resolution at Tyler Technologies. Tyler acquired Modria.com, an ODR provider Colin co-founded, in 2017. From 2003 to 2011 Colin was Director of Online Dispute Resolution for eBay and PayPal. Colin co-founded Online Resolution, one of the first online dispute resolution (ODR) providers, in 1999 and served as its CEO and President. Colin worked for several years with the National Institute for Dispute Resolution (now ACR) in Washington, D.C. and the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA.

Colin is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business, published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002, and co-author of The New Handshake: Online Dispute Resolution and the Future of Consumer Protection, published by the ABA in 2017. He received the first Frank Sander Award for Innovation in ADR from the American Bar Association in 2020, and the Mary Parker Follett Award from the Association for Conflict Resolution in 2013. He holds a Master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a graduate certificate in dispute resolution from UMass-Boston, a B.A. from Haverford College, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997.

Professor Amy J. Schmitz joined the University of Missouri School of Law faculty as the Elwood L. Thomas Missouri Endowed Professor of Law in 2016. Previously she was a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law.

Prior to teaching, Professor Schmitz was in private practice with large law firms in Seattle and Minneapolis. She also served as a law clerk for the Honorable James B. Loken with the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Professor Schmitz teaches courses in Contracts, Lawyering, Dispute Resolution in the Digital Age, Major Research Projects, Secured Transactions, Arbitration, International Arbitration, and Consumers and the Law (service learning). Her current research explores online dispute resolution in varied exchange contexts, with special focus on consumer claims and means for consumers to obtain remedies. She also has been active in recent debates regarding consumer protection more generally, consumer arbitration and contracting behavior, and is often an invited speaker on these topics.

Recent speaking engagements include events at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Washington, D.C.; University of Leicester in England; University of Ghent in Belgium; Stanford Law School; University of Arizona Law School; Pepperdine Law School; University of California Hastings; Loyola in Chicago; Wake Forest University; Fordham University; Penn State; and American Bar Association Meetings. She also serves on the Association of American Law Schools Executive Committee on Commercial and Related Consumer Law, and has been an Amici in several United Supreme Court cases. She also has taught in Paris and in England, and has been an expert and liaison for the United Nations working group seeking to create a global online dispute resolution mechanism.

Professor Schmitz’s outreach work involves various projects, including production of a consumer film (“Fine Print Foils”), a non-profit consumer outreach website and companion app, and various service-learning courses. Her most recent service-learning projects have led to a consumer empowerment blog and free public seminars on pressing consumer issues. This work aimed to provide the public with valuable information while inspiring the student presenters to gain deeper understandings of consumer and contract law “in action.”