Artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday legal practice, including mediation and arbitration. Used thoughtfully, AI can help lawyers organize information, identify weaknesses earlier, improve written advocacy, and prepare more effectively for negotiation. What it cannot do is replace the judgment of experienced counsel or a skilled neutral.
The most useful role for AI in alternative dispute resolution is helping lawyers arrive at mediation or arbitration better prepared to evaluate the evidence, understand risk, and consider realistic paths toward resolution.
Five practical ways lawyers can use AI in ADR preparation.
1. Organize the Case Before Mediation
Complex cases typically involve large volumes of pleadings, deposition testimony, medical records, contracts, correspondence, damages information, and other documents.
AI tools can assist in organizing that material by creating summaries, timelines, issue lists, and comparisons of competing factual positions.
Using AI to organize materials can give counsel more time to focus on the questions that ultimately matter in mediation and require their evaluation skills and experience: What are the strongest facts? Where are the weaknesses? What issues are likely to drive value? And what does the other side see differently?
AI can help organize the information, but counsel must still determine what it means based on experience and human reasoning.
2. Pressure-Test Your Position
One of the most valuable exercises before mediation is looking at every relevant aspect of the case from the other side of the table.
AI can be used to generate questions such as:
- What are the opposing party’s strongest arguments?
- Where are the weaknesses in our evidence?
- What facts could undermine our damages the opposing party’s case?
- What questions might a skeptical mediator or arbitrator ask?
- Which assumptions in our case have not been adequately tested?
The objective is not to ask a computer to predict the outcome, but rather to enter the ADR better prepared by exposing blind spots before opposing counsel or the neutral does.
3. Improve the Mediation Statement
A mediation statement is most effective when it helps the mediator quickly understand the dispute, the important evidence, and the issues preventing resolution.
Again, AI is helpful in organizing information. Counsel can use AI to shorten an overly long submission, organize complicated facts, identify repetition, or turn technical material into a clearer narrative. After the organization is complete, counsel needs to apply their knowledge to ensure the finished statement fully reflects the lawyer’s strategy, knowledge of the case, and understanding of the client.
4. Prepare More Effectively for Negotiation
Negotiations can involve multiple settlement scenarios, brackets, payment structures, future costs, present-value calculations, or risk comparisons.
AI can assist with calculations and scenario analysis and can help counsel organize alternatives in a way that is easier to discuss with a client, which can be particularly useful before mediation, when counsel should already understand the implications of different settlement structures rather than trying to evaluate them for the first time during negotiations.
The decisions, however, remain human intelligence driven; the lawyer advises and the client ultimately decides. The mediator’s role is to help the parties work through the process as efficiently as possible.
5. Draft Settlement Terms More Efficiently
Once a case is resolved, AI may also be useful in preparing an initial term sheet or settlement draft. That can save time, but it is an area where careful lawyer review is especially important.
Because a fast draft is only useful if it is accurate, counsel should independently verify provisions involving releases, confidentiality, indemnification, payment obligations, tax issues, enforcement, and any other terms that could materially affect the parties after the mediation concludes.
The Guardrails Matter
Lawyers using generative AI remain responsible for their work. AI-generated citations, quotations, calculations, factual assertions, and legal analysis should be independently verified against reliable original sources. Legal practitioners must be particularly vigilant against “ghost” statements, citations, or case law – hallucinations where the AI fabricates authoritative-sounding text or nonexistent precedents. Incorporating a routine cross-reference with primary legal databases ensures our work consistently meets the high standards of accuracy required for our filings.
Confidentiality requires particular attention. Before entering client, case, mediation, or arbitration information into an AI platform, lawyers should understand how the platform stores and uses information, whether the system is appropriate for confidential material, and whether identifying information should be removed.
Texas Professional Ethics Opinion 705 addresses several of these issues, including technological competence, protection of confidential information, verification of AI-generated work, and billing practices. ABA Formal Opinion 512 similarly addresses lawyers’ ethical obligations when using generative AI. Ultimately, the efficiency gained from these tools allows practitioners to dedicate more focused time to the vital task of safeguarding client information.
AI Is a Tool, Not the Neutral
The most promising use of AI in ADR is not replacing lawyers, mediators, or arbitrators. It is helping them work with information more effectively.
Technology can summarize documents, compare scenarios, test arguments, and improve organization. It cannot replicate experience, credibility, judgment, empathy, or the ability to understand what is actually preventing people from resolving a dispute. Used well, AI can help lawyers come to the table better prepared and better preparation usually makes for a more productive mediation.
For questions regarding the integration of AI tools in dispute resolution, or to discuss how these privacy standards are maintained in practice, please contact David Hodges. David is available to address your inquiries and to assist with scheduling your next mediation or arbitration.
David W. Hodges Mediator | Arbitrator | Attorney