put an end to costly and acrimonious courtroom and arbitration battles. Cathy Stovell reports.

Imagine that you are a businesss executive who is on vacation when a legal dispute arises.

Instead of breaking off your holiday and racing back to the office -- and then to court or to an arbitration hearing -- you simply tell your computer the maximum or minimum amount you are prepared to settle for, wait a few hours for it to come back, acceopt the settlement and continue with your vacation.

That is the concept behind Cybersettle, an e-commerce company which became an affiliate of XL Capital Ltd. when it acquired NAC Re last year.

The advantages of Cybersettle are that it can take place anywhere there is Internet access and it allows each party to engage in "blind bidding'', thus ensuring that all parties leave the bargaining table with their dignity intact.

The "blind bidding'' process may be Cybersettle's greatest strength. Unlike face to face negotiations, the opposing parties using Cybersettle have no idea how much money the other is prepared to accept as reasonable.

The system operates with one person, perhaps a plaintiff's lawyer or an aggrieved person acting on their own behalf, entering the amount of money they are willing to settle for, after logging into the Cybersettle site.

When the amount is plugged into the system, a notice pops up stating the range in which a settlement would be accepted. The formula used is 30 percent, but the person entering the bid is clear on exactly how much money their bid could render them as exact figures appear on their computer screen.

Once satisfied with the bids (each logon allows three bids), the lawyer or plaintiff indicates who they are negotiating with and pushes a send button which sends a notice to that person that a bid has been posted.

If the recipient of that notice wishes to attempt a settlement they simply click on the notice and enter the amount they want to settle for. Again the Cybersettle program will show that person a range in which their offer would be settled.

If they are content with the range, they simply click an enter button and the computer calculates if the range of the two figures intercept at any point.

If the two figures do not intercept, a notice saying the claim did not settle appears on the computer screen. But if the two ranges do intercept, then the claim is settled for the amount at that interception point.

According to creator and head of the company Charles Brofman, the new method can result in a win-win situation that could not occur otherwise.

He pointed out that plaintiffs can end up with a better settlement than they bid for while defendants can at the same time part with less than they were willing to.

"It is important to create a system where everyone feels they win,'' he said.

The Cybersettle process can greatly cut down on the amount of time it takes to settle a claim. Typically in the US it takes almost three years for a claim to reach settlement. That becomes very expensive as the average cost to keep an active file in a lawyers office is in the region of $75 a month.

Those who go the Cybersettle route can settle claims in much less time as the participants can do their bidding at their individual convenience.

Mr. Brofman was in Bermuda attending the CyberInsurance seminar held at the Fairmont Southampton Princess last week.

Still very enthusiastic about the company he started two years ago, he said the business is growing fast.

Currently there are 16,000 lawyers signed onto the CyberSettle site. Anyone is free to enter the site and new lawyers only need log into the system to take part.

But Mr. Brofman revealed that by the end of the month over 40,000 trial lawyers would be plugged into the system as the Trial Lawyers of America have embraced the new methodology.

Cybersettle is not restricted to lawyers and use in the US. Mr. Brofman said that it is already used in Canada and he anticipates introducing the service in the UK before the end of the year.

Computer settlements for Cybersettle was borne out of his frustration with the traditional system.

"If you sit down and try to think of a good idea, you never will,'' he said, "but if you have a problem and think there has to be an easier way, there's where you will get the good idea.''