Your team spent weeks—maybe months—negotiating an important transaction. Someone, possibly not the deal lawyers, chose arbitration over the courts as a last-minute clause before signing. Now a dispute has arisen, arbitration is looming, it may last more than a year at significant cost, and you must select an arbitrator. Outside counsel will present candidates, and your instinct may be to defer to them—but don’t. Selecting an arbitrator isn’t a legal formality. It’s the equivalent of hiring …
Archives for July 2026
The Silicon Arbiter: AI-Generated Arbitration Awards and the Federal Arbitration Act – Part II
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) systems has made urgent a question that would have seemed absurd to the drafters of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA): whether algorithms might generate binding arbitral awards without human involvement. This two-part article concludes that, under the FAA as currently written, such awards cannot be enforced. Yet this article does not end with a negative prognosis for AI’s place in arbitration. Instead, it makes suggestions for legislative reform …
What Arbitrators Actually Think About Your Expert
Republished with permission from JAMS. What is and is not effective expert testimony Unlike a jury, an arbitrator is rarely seeing anything for the first time. That changes everything. Experienced arbitrators have heard hundreds of experts — they recognize the theater, they spot the evasions, and they dislike witnesses who sacrifice credibility for advocacy. The qualities that make an expert effective before an arbitrator are not always the same qualities that resonate with a jury. Over …
