Upwork trusts Brief to resolve disputes for millions of freelancers and clients worldwide.
Marketplace disputes are inevitable at scale. What separates trusted platforms from chaotic ones is having a fair, fast, enforceable resolution process that doesn't require your team to adjudicate every claim manually.
Powers Upwork's global dispute resolution. No upfront fees. Claims up to $500K.
No attorneys. No courtrooms. Platform-enforced.
If it works for Upwork, it works for your marketplace.
Upwork is one of the largest freelance marketplaces in the world, with millions of active contracts between freelancers and clients across 180+ countries. When a fixed-price contract dispute arises, there's no human support agent who can reliably adjudicate the claim at that scale.
Brief powers Upwork's dispute resolution for fixed-price contracts globally. When a client and freelancer dispute a project outcome, Brief provides the process: online filing, document review, and a binding award from a bar-recognized E-Judge.
Upwork didn't choose Brief because it was cheaper than doing nothing. They chose Brief because marketplace trust depends on having a real, enforceable dispute resolution process, not a policy document.
Three dispute patterns that break marketplace trust.
The Platform-in-the-Middle Problem
A buyer disputes a freelancer's work. Or a client claims a vendor didn't deliver. Now your trust and safety team is the judge, jury, and appeals court. Manual adjudication at scale is impossible, inconsistent, and legally risky. When your team makes the wrong call, you're exposed. When you make no call, both parties lose trust in your platform.
The "He Said, She Said" Documentation Gap
Both parties claim they're right. Both have some documentation. Without a structured process to submit evidence and have a neutral party decide, your team is making judgment calls on incomplete information. This scales horribly as your marketplace grows.
Disputes That Outlast Users
Long dispute processes lose both parties. A freelancer who has to wait 6 months for a dispute resolution gives up on your platform. A client who feels unprotected won't come back. Speed is not just a service feature, it's a retention mechanism.
Brief isn't dispute support. It's dispute infrastructure.
There's a difference between handling disputes and having infrastructure for them.
Dispute support is what most platforms do: a team of agents reviewing screenshots and chat logs, making judgment calls, writing policies for edge cases, trying to keep both parties happy while protecting the platform legally. It's expensive, doesn't scale, and is inconsistently applied.
Dispute infrastructure is what Brief provides: a defined process embedded in your platform terms, a neutral third-party forum, standardized evidence submission, a bar-recognized E-Judge, and a legally binding outcome. It runs the same way every time, at any scale, without your team making the call.
Your trust and safety team handles abuse, fraud, and policy violations. Brief handles contractual disputes. They're different functions.
How Brief Works for Marketplaces
Dispute resolution is a trust loop, not a cost center.
Better Dispute Resolution
Fast, fair, enforceable outcomes for every claim
Higher Platform Trust
Better buyers and sellers choose and stay on your platform
More Transactions
Confidence drives volume, volume drives growth
Platforms that resolve disputes well don't just reduce complaints. They increase the confidence that brings better buyers and sellers onto the platform. Every dispute resolved fairly is a retention event for both parties, and a marketing story for anyone who sees it.
Know what Brief handles, and what it doesn't.
Brief Covers
- Contract performance disputes (work delivered vs. agreed scope)
- Payment disputes (client refuses to pay for completed work)
- Partial delivery disputes (some deliverables accepted, others disputed)
- Milestone disputes (did the milestone meet the agreed criteria?)
- Cancellation and refund disputes based on contractual terms
- Vendor/seller disputes on fixed-price arrangements
Brief Does Not Cover
- ✕Employment or worker classification disputes
- ✕Personal injury or harassment claims
- ✕Fraud allegations as primary claims
- ✕Claims above $500,000
- ✕Disputes with no contractual basis (pure goodwill requests)
- ✕Policy violation matters (handled by your trust and safety team)
"Brief is the legal infrastructure for your contractual dispute layer. Your trust and safety team handles everything else. The separation of functions makes both work better."
The clause your platform terms need.
Brief provides marketplace-specific arbitration language that covers platform-mediated disputes between buyers and sellers, while protecting the platform as a neutral facilitator.
This is a simplified example. Brief's full marketplace clause language is available free. Your legal team reviews and approves before you add it to your terms of service.
Building your own dispute process sounds good until you actually do it.
Build It Yourself
- ✕Hire trust and safety team to adjudicate disputes
- ✕Write internal policies for hundreds of dispute scenarios
- ✕Train team on consistent application
- ✕Legal review of every major decision
- ✕Build and manage an appeals process
- ✕Growing inconsistency as team scales
- ✕Cost: $200K+ annually at minimal scale
Use Brief
- Embed clause in platform terms (one-time, legal review)
- Direct parties to Brief when disputes arise
- Brief's E-Judges handle all adjudication
- Binding outcome requires no platform decision
- Platform enforces the award
- Scales to any volume with the same process
- Cost: Based on claim volume (pay per dispute)
Questions from marketplace operators.
Your marketplace runs on trust. Disputes are where trust is proven.
Every dispute is a moment where your platform either earns or loses a user's confidence. Brief gives you a process that's fast enough to retain both parties, fair enough to protect your reputation, and enforceable enough to actually mean something.
Upwork built Brief into their global platform. Your marketplace doesn't have to figure this out from scratch.
Powers Upwork's global dispute resolution. No upfront fees. Claims up to $500K.