Anatomy of a DRS - the good, the bad & the ugly.

[EdPhillips]

Mmm I just had a thought How about this for a suggestion:

Nominet sets up a crack team of ‘in house experts’ who would deal with all DRS cases from beginning to end, removing the need subcontract out the work. Now due to the fact this team works day in day out with dealing with these cases and they know and understand the contract with us domain registrants, they’re pretty slick and don’t make many mistakes. As this is an ‘in house’ team of experts, running costs of the scheme can be minimised and there would be no reason why the cost of any appeal could not be the same as the cost of a complaint (i.e. a level playing field). This would keep everybody very happy on all sides and would help reduce what must be a worrying figure of nearly 50% of DRS decisions that are overturned when appealed.

Remember it’s just an idea, or maybe more like a dream

Its also history. We used to decide cases in-house, with an appeal to an external expert (albeit not under the current policy). It didn't work properly, and we ended up having a number of internal lawyers tied up full time doing it. Nominet has 1 administrator and 2 mediators running a system that deals with 900 cases a year - the staff are pretty expert.

Also, don't forget that we do the mediation in-house (for free - actually we do 13% of the entire commercial mediation in the UK) - and this means that we know a lot of stuff that isn't in the submissions and which could, potentially, skew the result. We say that mediation is confidential, and one of the key ways that we can ensure that is that the staff who mediate do not make the decisions. Of course we could put some sort of "chinese wall" arrangment in, so that the mediators did not talk to the 'internal experts' - but I'm sure it would be challenged?

Finally, you've all noted in this thread that lawyers are expensive. The DRS is designed to be used by people without lawyers - over 70% of users do not use any form of representation and over 80% don't use lawyers. That in itself makes it all much cheaper.

The independent experts, since someone asked, are chosen by open advert, then interview and practical exercises. We expect them to have some proven expertise in their field, and in practice the majority of them are lawyers - many of them very senior and charging a geat deal of money per hour - or would be, if they were not on a fixed fee. Clearly we could find people to do it more cheaply, but the question is whether they would do it well.

 

[Edwin]

Finally, you've all noted in this thread that lawyers are expensive. The DRS is designed to be used by people without lawyers - over 70% of users do not use any form of representation and over 80% don't use lawyers. That in itself makes it all much cheaper.

Please don't take this the wrong way i.e. it's not meant confrontationally, but I'm genuinely interested to know what was the win/loss ratio of the non-represented cases vs the represented cases? Did the folks with lawyers do better defending themselves? Much better? About the same? If you had a chance to throw together some stats, that would be great...

 

[EdPhillips]

No offence taken. In all honesty I don't have those stats to hand. I am trying to get more stats together as time goes on, so I may be able to give you this in the future.

 

[texidriver]

...The DRS is designed to be used by people without lawyers - over 70% of users do not use any form of representation and over 80% don't use lawyers....

You have got to be kidding!

""""70%""""" of these Complainants?

""""'80%""" don't use lawyers?

http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/drs/decisions/

 

[philipp]

You have got to be kidding!

"70%" of these Complainants?

'80%" don't use lawyers?

So < 10% use a different form of representation I guess.

P.