This article is a part of Poland Unpacked. Weekly intelligence for decision-makers
Instead of queuing at the post office or travelling across Poland for a hearing, disputes could be resolved online – ideally with the help of technology. Lawyers want the justice system to enter the digital age, following the example set by other industries. Artificial intelligence has already made its way into arbitration.
13.1 months. That is how long, on average, first-instance court proceedings lasted in the Warsaw district in 2025, according to data from the Ministry of Justice. Add appeals to higher instances, tactical delays, backlogs caused, among other things, by a shortage of expert witnesses, and other variables affecting the pace of proceedings, and a final judgment often takes years.
One alternative is arbitration – a form of dispute resolution that already saves time by design. Move the process fully online and cases can proceed even faster. Revolutionary? Perhaps. In Poland, online arbitration courts are thriving. What is more, artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly prominent role.
Arbitration, a consensual method of resolving disputes, is gradually moving out of its niche. According to the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the number of cases is steadily rising: 710 new proceedings were filed in 2022, 831 in 2024, and by 2025 the total had already exceeded 30,000. Our interviewees agree: cost and time are the key advantages of arbitration – and both improve further when artificial intelligence enters the equation. We spoke to lawyers who are also entrepreneurs and who have embraced so-called legal tech, combining expert knowledge with technology.
Online arbitration fills a gap in the market
Our interviewee’s experience captures the essence of so-called legal tech. Robert Szczepanek is an arbitrator at ECAM (Electronic Centre for Arbitration and Mediation), operating under the Association of Notaries of the Republic of Poland in Warsaw. It is an electronic arbitration court, run on the Ultima RATIO platform – founded by Mr. Szczepanek – which provides technological infrastructure for legal services. What prompted the fusion of IT and artificial intelligence with legal services?
“There are several reasons. Technology allows a commercial dispute to be moved from the courtroom to the internet without compromising the quality of the decision. After all, we have audio and video recordings, emails, text messages and digital documents. Direct contact between the arbitrator and the parties or witnesses is no longer necessary to determine who is right,” Mr. Szczepanek explains.
Direct contact between the arbitrator and the parties or witnesses is no longer necessary to determine who is right.
He adds that the market is ready for alternative solutions, not least because of the protracted nature of proceedings in common courts.
“The situation is deteriorating. Entrepreneurs often prefer to abandon litigation rather than wait months or years for a ruling. If a defendant chooses to delay the outcome deliberately – through appeals or by submitting evidence purely to stall – the case can drag on for years. Meanwhile, statistically, after two months a company still has a 90% chance of recovering receivables; after a year, that falls to 20%. This creates a gap in the market that online arbitration courts can fill,” he says.
Another factor is globalization. More and more firms have foreign partners, with whom disputes are not uncommon.
“If we sign a contract with a foreign company that fails to meet its obligations, we are in a very difficult position. We must conduct proceedings under a foreign legal regime, in a foreign language. Support from local lawyers is essential, and they often have to contend with various biases in local courts against foreign firms. Online arbitration avoids these problems. We are already active in Czechia and Slovakia. Thanks to the latest technology, instant interpreting and rules based on UNCITRAL, conducting proceedings against a defendant from another country is just as straightforward as in the case of a Polish party. The waiting time for a ruling is the same,” Mr. Szczepanek explains.
AI’s role in legal services
What role does artificial intelligence play in arbitration? In the case of Ultima RATIO, this is not a typical legal-research chatbot that responds to prompts or queries. Nor is it standard desk research. Our interviewee describes a series of stages in which AI provides support – with the emphasis firmly on “support”.
“The first stage is what we call Contract Studio. In essence, it is a tool for creating B2B contracts designed for potential use in arbitration. It allows users to generate an arbitration clause based on their specifications, draft a contract from scratch or build one from an existing template. It also enables contracts to be signed electronically, with identity verification via the login.gov.pl platform. Such agreements carry strong evidentiary weight in any subsequent arbitration,” says the creator of Ultima RATIO.
The next components are the so-called case builder and procedural assistance tools.
“In this area, AI’s role is quite exceptional. It analyses whether, based on the documents uploaded to the system, a case can proceed. The system automatically reviews the materials submitted by the user, linking them into coherent logical sequences. On that basis, it can flag, for example, that a party has submitted the wrong document or failed to provide a document it refers to. It may also indicate that a document is incomplete or that the individuals who signed it were not authorized to represent the company at the time. Other issues include calculation errors in the claim or missing signatures. Based on this analysis, the parties receive clear guidance on what needs to be corrected or supplemented to avoid problems during the arbitration process,” explains Robert Szczepanek.
He adds that his understanding of how AI should support arbitrators comes from hands-on experience. For years, he carried out many of these tasks manually.
“I used to prepare a timeline of events in each case myself – on paper. It helped me grasp the factual intricacies of the proceedings more quickly. I would also sketch out a ‘map of the dispute’ – a summary of the parties’ arguments and counterarguments in the areas where they disagreed. Today, in Ultima RATIO, both tasks are handled by AI. The timeline and the dispute map are generated automatically and updated as the case progresses,” he concludes.
Expert's perspective
We have implemented online arbitration
“We built our own system”
We also discussed the role of artificial intelligence in arbitration with the creators of the ENOIK arbitration court, which operates fully online and uses AI. Tomasz Chrząszcz, CEO of ENOIK, explains that the court specializes in payment disputes. In such cases, evidence plays the central role – creating clear scope for automation.
“Artificial intelligence has gone through an evolution in how it is perceived. First came fascination with technological novelty, then concerns about jobs. Today, we can speak of cooperative AI – systems that take over time-consuming, repetitive tasks while keeping humans at the center. We have adopted a business model without traditional pleadings. We are moving away from that approach. Instead, submissions are ‘clicked through’ in interactive forms that guide parties step by step,” he says.
Everything begins with a form which, according to ENOIK’s creators, is the result of two years of work by lawyers and IT specialists. The effort focused on translating legal provisions into a clear and intuitive set of user choices.
Capturing the entirety of the law in a single form
“The use of forms allows users to integrate their ERP or debt-collection systems with the IT system of the ENOIK Arbitration Court via an API. As a result, fields can be completed automatically, within seconds. In practice, this means preparing and filing a claim takes minutes rather than hours. Interestingly, building the forms proved more complex than developing the algorithm itself,” says Waldemar Kluska, the originator and co-creator of ENOIK.
The form accommodates a wide range of possible legal scenarios and has been designed to minimize the need for descriptive, free-text input. As our interviewees explain, “encoding the entirety of the law into selectable fields was an intellectual challenge”.
“We had no template or benchmark to follow – neither in Poland nor globally. We began our R&D work from a blank Word document. From there, we had to map out every possible scenario for a given issue, taking into account the characteristics of the contract, the industry, the type of transaction and so on,” Mr. Kluska adds.
Entrepreneur's perspective
We have used ENOIK
A ruling in 40 hours
The creators of ENOIK guarantee resolution of a dispute within 40 working hours from the moment they receive the relevant information from the parties. To that, one must add seven days for the statement of defense and a further seven days for the claimant’s reply. In total, the entire proceeding – according to our interviewees – concludes within 21 days.
“We wanted to reduce both the time and the cost of the process. In cases before common courts, after waiting several months for a hearing, each party’s representative has to familiarize themselves with the case file all over again – and that comes at a cost. On top of that are the expenses associated with appearing in court,” says Waldemar Kluska.
He adds that an arbitral award carries the same legal force as a judgment of a common court. To enforce it – by applying to a bailiff and initiating enforcement proceedings – it is first necessary to obtain an enforcement clause. Once granted, enforcement can proceed.
A structured claim: what documents look like in AI-driven courts
For many businesses, the idea of structured documents may bring to mind the recently introduced mandatory e-invoicing under the National e-Invoicing System (KSeF). A similar approach underpins documents in ENOIK, where each file is the product of all the data entered into the system. As our interviewees explain, a structured format makes data analysis significantly easier.
ENOIK’s creators describe their system as a “legal food processor”, in which both the parties and the arbitrator are guided by technology throughout the entire process.
“Imagine a transaction between two parties where one fails to pay. There are dozens, even hundreds, of legal variables that determine the possible outcome of such a dispute. We had to define all these variables – for example, by specifying the industry and the subject of the transaction. We mapped them with reference to the case law of common courts. The tables we used to categorize judgments at the system-building stage contain up to two million columns and rows – though, of course, the user does not see this today,” adds Mariusz Kiljańczyk, co-creator of ENOIK.
What can go wrong?
Our interlocutors are explicit: there is no room here for hallucinations, invented legal sources, or reliance on non-existent case law.
“Artificial intelligence is commonly associated with large language models and popular chatbots. Yet this is only one possible application of AI. LLMs have a known feature called hallucination. For that reason, we decided to build our own predictive model that recommends an outcome to the arbitrator and does not hallucinate at all. It is a statistical model based on our own dataset. In a closed environment, we analysed around 700,000 court judgments. On the basis of this restricted database, we trained our algorithm on how common courts behaved under specific factual scenarios. In law, there is no room for uncertainty or model hallucinations – the final ruling must be certain. That is why the algorithm has no access to the internet and does not learn from open databases,” says Tomasz Chrząszcz.
Training the system is essential. The creators of ENOIK stress that letting the algorithm run unchecked would do more harm than good. Ultimately, responsibility for the entire process rests with the arbitrator.
Does AI diminish the role of the arbitrator?
Our conversation with the creators of these innovative systems naturally raises questions about the role of the arbitrator. Under the law, only a natural person – the arbitrator – issues a ruling and bears responsibility for it.
“The arbitrator controls the process; they are the central figure and the ultimate decision-maker. The system analyses the facts and the evidence, but these must be approved and verified by the arbitrator. It is the arbitrator who follows the algorithm’s reasoning, examines the identified links and verifies the correctness of the dispute resolution proposal generated by artificial intelligence. Our solution clearly shows how AI relieves experts of the most tedious parts of their work and gives them back time for core decision-making tasks,” explains Waldemar Kluska.
Robert Szczepanek adds that AI is not meant to replace the arbitrator, but to support them in repetitive, mechanical tasks.
“Judges know the law; they do not need AI to act on their behalf. The problem is that they spend a huge amount of time on tasks entirely unrelated to adjudication. The system is still analogue – we still see carts filled with paper case files in courthouse corridors. Files are moved around, while cases stand still. Overburdening the courts with unnecessary procedures – issues that other industries resolved long ago – is a structural weakness of the Polish judiciary. Commercial courts understood as physical ‘buildings’ are a relic of the 21st century. Modern commercial justice should be an online public service. In Ultima RATIO, arbitrators focus exclusively on deciding who is right in a given case. Tasks such as service of documents, fee verification, procedural orders, checking formal deficiencies or drafting judgments are fully automated,” he says.
“The system is still analogue – we still see carts filled with paper case files in courthouse corridors. Files are moved around, while cases stand still.”
Mr. Szczepanek adds that drafting a judgment used to take an arbitrator around three to four hours. Today, that time has been reduced to just a few minutes.
Even “traditional” courts now rule online
Around 80% of hearings and sessions conducted by the Arbitration Court at the Polish Confederation Lewiatan take place online. Its director, Agnieszka Siedlecka-Andrychowicz, describes remote work as a new standard in arbitration.
“The Arbitration Court at the Confederation Lewiatan uses the option of conducting proceedings online, and arbitrators, entrepreneurs, and their legal representatives are increasingly willing to choose this mode of procedure. This is primarily due to convenience, time savings and greater organizational flexibility. The ability to participate in hearings without travelling, easier scheduling, and the possibility of involving participants located in different places all make proceedings faster and more efficient,” she notes.
The court, she adds, prioritizes flexibility. Electronic document circulation has become standard practice, as have – where agreed by the parties – online hearings of witnesses and experts. She also points to another benefit: environmental impact.
“Online hearings and sessions, together with electronic document circulation, help reduce the environmental footprint of arbitration proceedings. Fewer business trips, lower paper consumption and more efficient case management align with modern standards of arbitration and significantly reduce its environmental impact. Five years ago, the Arbitration Court at the Confederation Lewiatan joined the Campaign for Greener Arbitrations, signing the so-called Green Pledge, and thereby – like many arbitration institutions worldwide – supports the development of more environmentally friendly practices in arbitration,” she says.
Expert's perspective
“AI is a tool, not a judge”
The fundamental issue is a phenomenon known as hallucination – models often confidently cite non-existent case law, draw incorrect conclusions from real judgments, or distort the meaning of documents. An arbitrator who fails to verify AI-generated findings against primary sources is taking a high-stakes risk, effectively gambling with their professional reputation. Several high-profile cases in the United States and Europe have already shown that uncritical reliance on chatbot outputs can result in reputational damage, professional liability for lawyers, and serious consequences for the parties involved.
There is also the issue of confidentiality. Arbitration is, by definition, a closed process – one of the key reasons companies choose it over public courts. Yet uploading case files into a commercial language model may mean that sensitive business data is transferred to external servers whose handling of that data is not fully transparent.
Arbitration is undeniably gaining in popularity. E-arbitration – proceedings conducted remotely with electronic document workflows – also became widespread after the pandemic and is here to stay. However, we are not witnessing a dramatic shortening of case resolution times. The bottleneck is not paperwork; it is arbitrator availability, the complexity of substantive issues, and litigation tactics employed by counsel. No algorithm can solve that.
AI in arbitration is a tool, not a judge. As long as arbitrators treat it as an assistant requiring oversight, the risks remain manageable. Problems arise when convenience becomes an excuse. When using AI, one should therefore follow a simple rule: control is the highest form of trust.
Key Takeaways
- The development of the legal tech sector is not simply a response to a market gap. The high costs and lengthy duration of proceedings, as well as the complexity of cross-border disputes, remain the main pain points for businesses dealing with the justice system. Online arbitration can fill this gap by offering faster, sometimes cheaper and more predictable procedures.
- The main problem of the traditional justice system is delay. On average, it takes more than a year – and in practice often several years – to obtain a final, enforceable judgment. Online arbitration, supported by technology and automation, can reduce this process to a matter of weeks. The key is not only the use of AI, but a comprehensive change in the operating model: full digitization of documents, the elimination of in-person hearings, automated service of documents, and structured case files.
- Artificial intelligence will never be able to replace the work of a judge. It can, however, redefine it. Its primary function is to organize data, analyze documents and identify procedural or formal deficiencies. By taking over these tasks, legal professionals can focus on substantive reasoning rather than administrative work. The final decision always rests with a human being, who oversees and verifies the algorithm’s line of reasoning.