The book examines how civil disputes are resolved in England and Wales, where courts, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), and digital technologies increasingly interact within a pluralist justice system. Part I analyses adjudicative processes-particularly litigation and arbitration-as mechanisms for delivering substantive justice. Part II explores consensual and hybrid approaches, including negotiation, mediation, and ombudsman schemes, focusing on their adaptability and emphasis on early settlement. Part III considers technological innovation, including Online Dispute Resolution, digital courts, and artificial intelligence, and how these developments are reshaping access to justice. Tracing the convergence of adjudicative, consensual, and digital processes, the book argues that technology is dissolving traditional boundaries between court-based and ADR methods. It advances a conceptual and practical framework for twenty-first-century civil dispute resolution, integrating doctrinal, comparative, and policy insights, and it positions justice, settlement, and technology as the core pillars of analysis and reform.

‘Pablo Cortes has written a tour d-horizon of dispute resolution, not only for England and Wales, but for all of us who care about civil justice. He has developed and expanded the idea of “process pluralism” as a description of the many ways we engage in dispute prevention, management and resolution in our justice systems, including adjudication, arbitration, mediation, ombuds and newer hybrids, to a prescriptive argument that we must preserve party choice and autonomy, fairness, due process, transparency and justice as we move from centuries of in-court adjudication and common law development to the world of technology and digitized conflict resolution. -He brilliantly poses and answers the questions of whether and how we can achieve efficiency, access and substantive justice in so many different fora. This book is certain to become the classic, go-to work on modern civil justice.'

Carrie Menkel-Meadow - Distinguished and Chancellor's Professor of Law (and Political Science), University of California, Irvine, and A.B. Chettle Professor of Dispute Resolution, Law and Civil Procedure, Emerita, Georgetown University

'This book is a vital contribution to our thinking about the future of dispute resolution – deeply researched, technologically informed, comprehensive, and clearly written, it should be mandatory reading for policy makers, judges, and litigators.'

Richard Susskind CBE KC (Hon) - President, Society for Computers and Law