Innovation Where Law Meets Technology
On June 11, 2025—just a day after the Future Dispute Resolution (FDR) Conference—Wolters Kluwer and AAA-ICDR® teamed up to host the Open Innovation Hackathon at the Amare Centre for Music and Dance in The Hague. It was an energizing, hands-on experience that brought together a unique mix of legal minds, engineers, product managers, and designers. The challenge? Explore how AI workflows can tackle some of the biggest hurdles in alternative dispute resolution (ADR).
The day was all about collaboration and experimentation, with two core goals in mind: expanding access to justice and boosting efficiency in dispute resolution. And judging by what we saw, this community is ready to push boundaries.
The hackathon brought together AAA-ICDR and Wolters Kluwer in a collaboration that blended legal and institutional knowledge with technology and user-centered design. Each of the 10 teams represented a mix of expertise: legal professionals worked alongside UX designers and engineers, many of whom were applying their technical skills to legal challenges for the first time.
From Ideas to Prototypes in One Day
In just a few hours, teams moved from brainstorming to working prototypes, focused on building AI-powered tools that could make a real impact. Some tackled dispute prevention, while others zeroed in on making processes more user-friendly. But everyone shared the same goal: create something useful, testable, and grounded in real-world challenges.
Linda L. Beyea, Vice President of Innovation at AAA-ICDR, summed it up perfectly:
“The hackathon exceeded my expectations. I was impressed by the innovative concepts and prototypes that cross-functional teams created in a single day to address the critical need for access to justice. The event demonstrated the value of engineers, designers, and subject matter experts working together when building AI-driven solutions.”
Steve Errick, Chief Development Officer at AAA-ICDR, added:
“While an AI & ADR event in The Hague at the Peace Palace is quite a bar to reach, the Day 2 Hackathon was just as remarkable. Wolters Kluwer’s engineering leadership orchestrated 10 teams, each pairing product and engineering experts with arbitrators, ADR professionals, and special guests from HiiL. In one day, teams moved from ideation to functional AI tools designed to disrupt and improve dispute resolution. It’s the kind of innovation we intend to repeat. Mark your calendar for the next Future DR event in New York City, October 9–10.”
Real-World AI, Real Impact
What stood out most was how deeply rooted the ideas were in solving actual problems. Every team worked on AI workflows built for real-world use, with a shared aim of making ADR faster, smarter, and more affordable.
Some standout prototypes included:
- An AI legal assistant chatbot to help micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises in Tunisia—especially those in the informal sector—overcome persistent justice challenges. These businesses often face unclear registration procedures, hard-to-follow compliance rules, a lack of contracting tools (leading to verbal, unenforceable agreements), and frequent disputes with clients, employees, or suppliers. Traditional dispute resolution mechanisms are slow and costly, placing an unfair burden on the very businesses that most need support. The AI chatbot aims to close that gap by offering plain-language legal guidance, step-by-step workflows, and access to early-stage dispute resolution options.
- A pilot solution to support pro se litigants, steering self-represented individuals toward trusted ADR providers, allowing them to get matched with the right services early and avoid unnecessary litigation.
- A tool for upstream dispute monitoring, helping corporations identify and address potential conflicts before they escalate—turning legal risk management into a more proactive, data-informed practice.
Each of these solutions demonstrated how generative AI can be harnessed to make legal systems not only more efficient, but also more equitable and accessible.
What’s Next?
The takeaways from this event are already shaping how we think about future FDR gatherings and innovation initiatives. And as AAA-ICDR continues to champion responsible tech adoption in our field, events like this will remain essential to surfacing bold ideas and turning them into action.
The next Future Dispute Resolution Conference and Hackathon is headed to New York City this fall!
Stay tuned for more details in the coming months—we look forward to continuing the conversation and hope to see you there!