Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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One of the most important tools an arbitrator can have for attracting business is a network of arbitrators and lawyers who will recommend the arbitrator. FINRA can introduce new practitioners to a significant network of experienced arbitrators and lawyers who practice in arbitration in the arbitrators’ geographic community.

FINRA appointments are made regionally, not from a central national office. FINRA maintains 19 regional offices in the major U.S. population centers. Within those areas, FINRA arbitrators meet other arbitrators, and lawyers, with a wide range of backgrounds.

For a map of FINRA’s offices, see www.finra.org/about/locations. The offices are a bit of a geographical hit or miss. For instance, FINRA’s only Texas regional office is in Dallas; it does not list a regional office in Houston, Austin, or San Antonio. It lists no regional office for such major top-10 population states as Ohio, North Carolina, or Michigan, the seventh, ninth, and tenth most populous states. Yet it has not one, but three Maryland offices at different addresses in Rockville, Md. The distribution of FINRA’s 69 hearing locations is wider than its distribution of regional offices. See https://bit.ly/3Jd2xS1 (including a map of the hearing locations).