“AI and ADR - The New Frontier”

On Thursaday 11th CARO Center President, Sir Dennis Byron, former President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and former President of the Caribbean Court of Justice was invited to give the 2021 Distinguished Lecture at the Eugene Dupuch Law School, Nassau, Bahamas.

Sir Dennis Byron shared his thoughts and knowledge with the new graduates on the following topic: “ADR and AI : the New Frontier”.

Eugene Dupuch Law School is one of one of the leading Law Schools in the Caribbean and a member of Council of Legal Education.

Council of Legal Education aims to be “a world leader in higher education through innovation, creativity and relevance in a system of practical legal education that is rooted in our history as a Caribbean people and is designed to enhance the practice of law and the jurisprudence of the Caribbean” an its mission is “to facilitate the development of competent legal practitioners for the region who, appreciating their responsibility as members of an honourable profession and recognising the needs of their socio-economic environment, are inspired in the pursuit of excellence, the maintenance of high ethical standards, the promotion of social justice and the strengthening of the rule of law”.

Sir Dennis Byron stressed the importance that AI has taken into the legal word and the on growing need to rely on it as we all face the pandemic of Covid 19. AI and technology have been decisive tools to enable the proper conduct of judicial and arbitration proceedings without jeopardising the imperatives of social distancing.

Sir Dennis Byron also proceeded to laid out the current state of ADR in the Caribbean Region. With the number of local centers and the lack of a homogenous vision, AI appears as the perfect instrument to narrow the legal, cultural and technological difficulties faced within the region.

One of the frontiers spotted by Sir Dennis Byron is the failure to harmonize the commercial law and dispute resolution processes, which handicaps the expansion of economic advances in the field of international trade and commerce. He highlighted the partial regional compatibility of our arbitration legislations with international standards, and more specifically the UNCITRAL model laws.

Another frontier appears to be the lack of coherent structure to properly articulate the Caribbean legal effort in ADR.

Sir Dennis Byron talked about the potential of AI in the Caribbean, and highlighted the importance of Caribbean innovation in the field of legal technology with the APEX project. The APEX project created a high-quality technologies employed at the CCJ (with such platform as CURIA or RESOLVE which is a support in mediation and arbitration proceedings or the PRACTIS platform that supports the legal practitioners.). Those regional state of the art innovations concur to the development of the legal practice and the improvement of the quality of justice delivery in the Caribbean.

For the CARO President there is a market and a place for Caribbean legal minds to be producer of innovation instead of consumer of foreign technology. As such he stressed the need to take ADR in the Caribbean one step further.

The lack of international presence on the arbitration scene with the key policy makers was also mentioned. For example, not one Caribbean state was represented at the last United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) on investment arbitration. However Sir Dennis Byron added to the region accomplishments the recent election of the distinguished Jamaican Attorney, John Bassie as the incoming Global President for the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

For Sir Dennis Byron the time to consolidate ADR in the Caribbean is now and the OHADAC project supported by the upcoming CARO center has the unique opportunity to help doing so.