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Comment by thathndude | Hacker News Reader

I absolutely love this attitude. And, candidly, as a lawyer, this is part of why I love arbitration. It's a lot less formal. It's more about just getting to the right result without all the unnecessary pomp and circumstance. It lets me do my job--advocate for my clients--without worrying about whether I made sure to include some magic words or hit a specific, inflexible deadline.

If there's a health issue with a kid, I send the arbitrator an email and ask for 7 more days. No formal "motion for continuance pursuant to local rule 8.9(c)(3)(f)."

Lastly, I agree that this a tool. I like to think of arbitration, in this context, as the best customer service tool out there. Remember back when the hack was that you send a letter to the office of the president and that got you a competent response? Arbitration is like that on steroids.

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The reason for the fear is the possibility of bias against the consumer. If companies pay for the cost of arbitration and everything is behind closed doors, how do we know we can trust the process to be fair?

I’m not a lawyer or a legal expert or even believe the judicial system is always fair. But at least it’s open and rules are well laid. So as a layman, why should I believe arbitration? (Genuine question; not a judgment)

The main reason for the fear is the loss of class action potential, which means almost all small disputes are impossible to obtain redress for. If you're in a situation where the case is worth 5-50k, it's generally a better option to go for an arbitration barring concerns associated with bias (which very much do exist - many specialty boards like various copyright boards consistently make pro-industry mistakes in procedure), but the primary overarching anti-consumer element of mandated arbitration clauses is the removal of class actions as a vehicle for making mass-litigation viable.

Blocking class action for arbitration is a double-edged sword for companies.

I can't remember what article I read ages ago, not this one, but this one seems to say the same thing from skimming the top https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/jpmorgan-fa...

Instead of companies defending one class action suit, they (potentially) defend 1000s of individual disputes in arbitration and it ends up costing them more.

I'm just guessing here, I have no idea, if OP didn't settle and lost, it would have cost the company more than what they paid to settle.

These days I'd image you could do the arbitration over a video call. Easily worth my time for $2000.

> And, candidly, as a lawyer, this is part of why I love arbitration. It's a lot less formal. It's more about just getting to the right result without all the unnecessary pomp and circumstance.

Sure, arbitration is fine -- give two parties more options to come to an agreement. But mandatory binding arbitration that explicitly contractually removes any way to resort to a full court? That's what I think is wrong.

If two parties don't come to an agreement in arbitration then they should always have the option to go to full court and incur the costs and headaches of doing so. Having that option would, I think, make arbitration far more desirable than it currently is.

Would you comment on arbitration services? AAA seems to be legit, while National Arbitration Forum was a front for a collection agency.[1] What about JAMS?

[1] https://www.wallacefrancis.com/the-great-arbitration-scam

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