Recently I had the privilege of speaking with Judge Stacy Guillon of Colorado’s 23rd Judicial District for Episode 16 of the Court ODR Podcast. She came to the civil bench a little over a year ago, after years as a litigator and then as co-founder of an arbitration and mediation boutique in Denver. Few people have sat in all three of those chairs, and I wanted to know how technology looks from each one.

Her account was clarifying. Arbitration and mediation, she pointed out, are “creatures of contract.” In her private practice, she and her partners piloted AI software — she could bring what she wanted to try to the parties, be transparent about it, and proceed. The bench works differently. She carries hundreds of civil cases, filings arrive through an e-filing system shared by every judge in Colorado, and courts face no market competition to force the pace of adoption. What she finds in its place is a judiciary she describes as extremely public-service minded, working under real pressure to do more with less. Civil filings keep climbing, and, as she put it, “we are not getting new judges by the day.”

She was equally clear about where the line falls: enormous opportunity in automating case management and legal research, and no delegation of the decision itself. “That’s not what people sign up for when they come to court.”

That limit is the premise we build on. ODR.com does not sell software for its own sake; we move high-volume triage off the docket so the people in the courthouse can spend their hours where human judgment is genuinely required — an approach our team has been refining since the first large-scale resolution systems at eBay and PayPal.

Fairness, she reminded me, is something parties have to be able to see. They may not like the outcome — judges declare winners and losers — but the process has to be visibly fair, and she named quality, privacy, and public trust as the guardrails to hold onto while the judiciary is, in her words, “just starting out on the AI journey.”

Listen to the full conversation in Episode 16 of the Court ODR Podcast. And if your court is absorbing rising filings with static resources, learn how ODR.com can help you expand capacity — with enterprise-ready specifications like SOC 2 Type II certification and seamless REST API integration.

Judge Guillon spoke in her personal capacity about the judiciary generally. Her participation is not an endorsement of ODR.com or any product.