A just society requires a justice system that is accessible to all. In our more than 30 years, RSI has worked relentlessly to advance the field of court alternative dispute resolution (ADR) to improve access to justice. RSI’s efforts have produced an incomparable trove of knowledge on best practices for designing, operating and evaluating ADR to create systems that are cost-effective, timely and fair. And as technology and societal challenges evolve, new questions arise, along with new potential solutions. RSI remains on the leading edge of their exploration.

Here are some recent highlights of our work:   

• In 2026, we released a Power Imbalance Toolkit to support mediators in cases where differences in legal knowledge, resources and confidence can create a stark imbalance between parties in a dispute. Informed by experienced mediators, prior research and RSI's observations of eviction mediations, the toolkit helps mediators recognize power imbalance and address it.
   
• RSI's Research Team worked on the ODR Party Engagement (OPEN) Project from 2023-2025. The team began by conducting focus groups to get feedback on sample communications used by courts to explain online dispute resolution to the public. The project led to the creation of a guide and a document preparation worksheet and checklist to support courts and ADR programs in communicating effectively with the public, as well as model materials including a webpage, a notice document, an informational video and an interactive guide for courts. We also conducted a set of Court Communications that Work webinars in late 2025 to help courts and ADR programs begin to implement our findings.

• We have administered effective mediation programs in eviction, foreclosure and child protection cases in several northern Illinois judicial circuits. For example, in the two years after Illinois ended its COVID-era eviction moratorium in October 2021, our Kane County eviction mediation program helped over 1,500 households avoid a sheriff’s eviction. Several years before that, beginning in 2013, RSI responded to the mortgage crisis with foreclosure mediation programs that ultimately helped prevent 1,100 foreclosures.
   
• We studied the potential for online dispute resolution (ODR) to serve thinly resourced families, courts and communities, including convening dozens of experts from across the United States. We found that family ODR can improve access to justice if it is provided in a manner that is accessible, ethical and effective. Doing so will necessitate comprehensive screening conversations with all parents prior to ODR, standards for family court ODR, and resources to support the provision and evaluation of ODR.
   
• We developed the most comprehensive and respected source of information on court ADR available anywhere — RSI’s Resource Center, including a Guide to Program Success, a library of Mediation Efficacy Studies, Model Surveys, Model Tools for Mediator Peer Review, Court ADR Basics pages, the OPEN Project tools and guides, a Power Imbalance Toolkit for Mediation, and a series of Special Topics.
   
• We explored and reported on how technology might improve screening for intimate partner violence prior to mediation.

Read the success stories behind a few of our most impactful projects:

• Designing, administering and evaluating mediation programs that help children and families, Child Protection Mediation: Charting a Positive Path for Children and Families

• Evaluating the District of Columbia Superior Court’s mandatory Child Protection Mediation Program, including helping the court to zero in on what specifically needed to be evaluated, A Comprehensive Evaluation of a Child Protection Mediation Program
   

• Designing, administering and evaluating eviction mediation programs in northern Illinois as an eviction crisis loomed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Eviction Mediation: On the Front Lines in a Housing Crisis

• Conducting our comprehensive foreclosure mediation programming, including designing, administering and evaluating foreclosure mediation programs in three northern Illinois judicial circuits, Foreclosure Mediation: Practicing What We Preach