February 2018 – SOFT SETTLE

Soft Settle – A Platform for Robot Lawyers ignited by Artificial Intelligence

Soft Settle Support

Artificial intelligence is changing the way lawyers think, the way they do business and the way they interact with clients. Artificial intelligence is more than legal technology. It is the next great hope that will revolutionize the legal profession.

Change can be brought on through pushing existing ideas. What makes artificial intelligence stand out is the potential for a paradigm shift in how legal work is done.

AI, sometimes referred to as cognitive computing, refers to computers learning how to complete tasks traditionally done by humans. The focus is on computers looking for patterns in data, carrying out tests to evaluate the data and finding results.

Soft Settle first time in India, and among in other Asian countries has shown the mettle to disclose how Artificial Intelligence combining with Digital Technology can eliminate lengthy, expensive lawyered-up court litigations; the technology is already adapted to reshape and revamp the justice patterns, by making its presence felt in the issues relating to debt, insurance, consumer matter and other different forms of civil and corporate disagreements.

Indians and other Asians are in the process of embracing digital technology – using it for their shopping, communicating, house hunting, work and leisure activities etc.. Simultaneously, it is to borne in mind, the digital revolution can prevent costly and lengthy court action – so it would benefit our justice system and out society as a whole. Hence the digital sparkling would have to reshape the Indian and Asian societies ultimately would offer the opportunity to address fundamental problems in our present legal system – combating the legal menaces like expensive lawyers and slow, confrontational and painful court proceedings.

The digital platform Soft Settle helps people deal comprehensively with their legal problem and encourages a mediated settlement rather than recourse to lawyers and courts. Agreements reached through collaboration and respective generous interests of the parties tend to more effective and proposes a harmonious bondage paving way for an accurate judicial reasoning and in every ways rather efficient than decision imposed by judges.

Technology must be utilized to better assist Indians and other Asians get fair and proper access to justice.

Soft Settle is on the mission to make the law accessible – with the Artificial Intelligence igniting the fire hence calls for technological legal tools. Soft Settle revolutionizes the legal assistance technology that suits the needs of ordinary people – and that extends to low-income and disadvantaged Indians and Asians.

Realization of of Loan – Routine Alert & Resolutions

SoftSettle Support

Loan collection is usually a process which is highly regulated. As the creditor wants to get back the loan with its interest, they usually offer the loan with either a mortgage or a guarantor to back the debtor. The debtor enters into a legal agreement with the lender to repay the loan by a particular time and date.

This is monitored by both the creditor and the rating agencies to track how prompt a debtor is in repaying the loan. This is used to calculate the credit score of a debtor for future loans.

Generally, the method to collect a loan follows the steps given below:
• Collect the money coinciding with the arrival of the debtor’s income cycle
• Maintain a systematic follow-up on how the customer can handle the repayment
• If the customer shows discrepancies in one or two installments, reach out to the customer to find out the cause.
• If the customer is prompt, preserve goodwill and promote more offers to him.

When it comes to collecting back the loan, banks adopt usually two methods of collection. As loans are paid back in EMIs, the banks do not intervene or disturb a customer if the payment is prompt and on time. They maintain a cordial relation with the debtor and accord them with further credit proposals if the client exhibits discipline in the repayment process.

However, not all debtors can pay back on time. Owing to various reasons, they may default on the payment of their owed capital. Such defaulters are usually provided with several opportunities to pay back their owed sum.

Following methods are usually undertaken to ensure that the debtor is legally requested to fulfill his commitment:
• The bank will send a ‘letter of demand’ to the debtor on its letterhead, demanding that the debt is to be paid within a particular date or legal action may be taken.
• Secondly, they may issue a ‘final’ letter of demand
• Several banks also contact their clients via phone to get them on record to find out the reason for their potential defaulting.

Let a new device helps both creditors and debtors

SS-Equity, a virtual neutral comes to help both creditors and debtors to come in terms rather than fighting with each other or leading their relationship in bickering.

Rather the defaulters would be approached at their time of default and they would be alerted regularly so that they can participate in the resolutions offered by the platform SOFT SETTLE as early, middle and final level intervention. Even the alert would also provided information about their Credit Ratings updates (CIBIL in India).

Even before going for the resolutions in each level of interventions, the debtor would not be denied an opportunity for interacting with the creditor virtually and that itself would pave way for any easy resolution probably results in both parties winning without any hurdles.

An automatic agreement gets generated duly executed, which has legal validity and enforceable in the eyes of law.

This method could leave the parties taking the control of the financial problems and settling the financial issues in a faster, efficient and cost-effective manner.

Automated ODR – Never a nightmare for Lawyers

Adam Sharon, Family Mediation Center, Boston

I happened to meet my friend Jammie Pennings comparatively junior, doing her second year JD in Hamline University School of Law. Whenever she meet me she seems little bit excited and a lot to talk about her legal studies and how she is going to pursue with her profession in the future. I too encourage her and I always appreciated her smartness. She happened to be selected to represent ODR Conference from Hamline last year in California. But after back from the conference, she found to be tranquil and remain less enthusiastic during our meeting. May be due to some family problems, I tried to convince myself. But from her Professor, I learnt that she was too anxious about the advent of potential use of technology in the area of providing legal services replacing lawyers altogether for certain basic legal activities and can go to a level of meeting most complicated civil conflicts reaching a settlement. As such she was under the impression that many functions traditionally performed by lawyers will soon be routinely undertaken by software systems, whether such situation likely to present challenges for the legal community – I mean lawyers as a whole.

But as a legal professional I feel her fear is quite unwanted and unwarranted. The situation confronting her is presenting both challenges and opportunities for the legal community. The rationale in support of automating legal activities is simple. The automated systems can help to make the legal functions more readily accessible to the public at lower cost. Automation can also help to make legal activities more transparent to participants and faster to process.

At present, software-based systems are focusing their efforts on the resolution of some of the more common legal disputes. I am associated with Settlement Support, a dispute resolution based in India operating from Bangalore and Kochi. They have promoted a project “Gateway to Equity & Justice” where they are having two segments functioning under a portals www.mediatoraffair.com and www.softsettle.com . The later one is a prospective one and supposed to accommodate Automated Dispute Resolution software. They are bent on resolving civil disputes such as settlement of monetary disputes including debt resolution apart from insurance claim settlements, resolution of ecommerce disputes, consumer dispute resolution, settlement of the issues arising out of the M & A in the corporate sector etc. along with the social issues like patching up of conjugal life on the eve of divorce, divorce settlements and post divorce settlements are also being considered to facilitate whole proceedings.

Automated systems are not nearly as effective, however, for legal functions that are less standardized. Activities that require the exercise of judgment applied to the specific circumstances of each situation are less suitable for automated systems. These legal functions continue to be the domain of human legal practitioners.

Software-based systems designed to facilitate public access to legal functions are important and very valuable. We will likely see in the near future a rapidly growing number of legal activities and disputes handled by automated systems. This will benefit clients, who will have faster and less expensive access to legal support, and it will also benefit lawyers, who will be able to focus on the judgment-based and more nuanced services that clients can not obtain from automated platforms. Software-based systems provide critically important supplements to traditional legal services, but there will always be legal functions that can only be effectively performed by humans.