Originally from Alternatives to the High Cost of Litigation

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Business-to-business dispute arbitration—once the customized, streamlined, speedy and confidential route to solving disputes—has now long lost those charms. Many business customers believe they are poorly served by its present state. 

Arbitration has become unbusinesslike.

In business-to-business matters, executives want efficient, good-enough justice from arbitration. They want a way forward in valued but threatened relationships. Often they don’t receive it. 

Arbitration has become bloated and slowed by U.S. discovery, obstructed by heavily briefed motions practice, and even sometimes coarsened by incivility. Efforts at right-sizing individual proceedings are intimidated by the suppressive fire of overlawyering.