Mediating under the Shadow of AI
Date: February 3, 2026 (Tuesday)
Time: 6pm – 7pm
Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong
Speaker: Hai Jin Park (Professor & Director, Center for AI and Law, Hanyang University Law School)
This research explores how the use of artificial intelligence affects people’s acceptance and perceptions of fairness and accuracy in court-annexed mediation. Unlike court adjudication, mediation allows the parties to retain decision-making authority, which makes it a distinctive setting to examine the role of AI. Drawing on an experiment on 1,000 participants in South Korea, the study compares two types of AI involvement–procedural (as a chatbot mediator) and substantive (as a drafter of settlement proposals). The findings show that initial skepticism toward AI mediation was pronounced but diminished notably after participants experienced the process and reviewed the settlement proposal. AI-drafted plans were judged significantly fairer and more accurate than human-drafted ones, and these perceptions fully mediated acceptance and satisfaction. Transparency strategies also mattered: global (rule-level) explanations improved accuracy and acceptance only when paired with procedural AI, whereas local (case-specific) explanations backfired when combined with human-authored proposals. Integrating AI into mediation can thus enhance both efficiency and perceived legitimacy–provided that parties retain decision control and explanation types are matched to the AI’s procedural and substantive role.
Hai Jin PARK is a professor at Hanyang University Law School in Seoul, Korea, and the director of the Center for AI and Law. Her academic interests lie in technology and law, torts, class action, and insurance, combining doctrinal and empirical approaches. She earned her master’s and doctorate degrees from Stanford Law School, with Ph.D. minor in Computer Science from Stanford University, and her LL.B. from Seoul National University. Before entering academia, she served as a district court judge and a litigator at the largest law firm in Seoul.
Moderator: Benjamin Chen, Associate Professor & Director of Law and Technology Centre, The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law
To register, please go to https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=103731.
We are applying for a CPD point from the Law Society of Hong Kong for this event. This event is free of charge for students and attendees who do not opt for CPD. For registrants who opt for CPD, a fee of HK$ 300 will be charged per person. Payment link will be provided later and the fee is non-refundable.