Fascinating concept that potentially can work: private arbitration is a matter of contract, there is nothing in law limiting the ability of parties to agree to be legally bound by a determination reached by a private party (i.e., arbitrator) with whom they contract to make such a decision, and the law provides well-established enforcement mechanisms by which arbitration awards can, if necessary, be taken to court and converted into judgments without too much fuss.

Judge.me also seems like it has taken a credible first cut at a form of execution that is at least workable. It has avoided the very thorny choice of law issues that can arise where the contracting parties are in different locations by essentially having the parties agree up front to be legally bound by what amounts to a free-floating form of law to be applied by the arbitrator regardless of what technical choice of law issues would normally prescribe. It has avoided the problems that can arise with discovery procedures in arbitration by limiting the whole arbitral process to a 1-day to 3-day exchange of evidence by email exclusively. It has also kept processing costs low by reserving for itself the right to choose and assign the arbitrator, by drawing its arbitrators from an established pool as contractors, and by dispensing with the need for witnesses, transcripts, rules of evidence, and all other technical aspects of judicial hearings (again, the parties agree up front to these limitations and that is why they can be legally bound by them even though they are highly unusual by court standards).

What all this means is that this is an innovative way to extend technology to dispute resolution but it will, of course, only appeal to those who can abide by the limitations. To me, this means that the system may lend itself well to small-dollar disputes but not to anything involving complex facts or larger claims. The absence of live testimony and the absence of discovery are particularly limiting in this context - if you can't find out too much about what the adverse party is going to claim and if you can't get your hands on evidence he holds to rebut it, you may be severely prejudiced. At some point not too far up the dollar scale, this likely becomes too risky (this would depend on the individual facts of a case). Beyond this, arbitration generally does not fit too well into non-monetary claims and judge.me would not be an exception to this. Still, for small-dollar cases, it would seem to be an interesting alternative to the small claims court systems in place throughout the U.S. and elsewhere.

The big challenge here will be to see how technology can be used to allow the service to overcome some of the limitations noted above while still keeping it streamlined and cost-effective. I am not sure this can be done but this is an interesting first step and there clearly would be a huge demand for cost-effective handling of claims at a higher level. It will be fascinating to see how this develops.