Arbitration agreements have long offered companies and consumers
an efficient alternative to litigation — streamlined
procedures, lower costs, and faster resolution. In consumer
markets, requiring individual arbitration and waiving class actions
became standard for managing risk.
Then technology changed the equation. As attorney advertising
and solicitation on social media proliferated, mass coordination
became effortless. Plaintiffs' firms began filing thousands of
nearly identical consumer claims at once, turning a process built
for efficiency into one straining under its own rules. The
phenomenon, known as mass arbitration, can be more punishing than
the class actions it replaced if companies are unprepared and
haven't built protections into their arbitration terms. Without
safeguards against coordinated filings, companies face millions in
administrative fees before reaching the merits of a case, creating
pressure to settle weak, untested, or often frivolous
