Mass Arbitration: Contending With the High Costs, Waivers, Pre-Dispute Resolution, Batching, Sequencing

This CLE webinar will discuss the pitfalls and abuses of mass arbitration (especially in the privacy and consumer areas) and defense responses to high costs, as well as complications resulting from those responses. The panel will address best strategies and practices, including drafting techniques for class waivers, arbitration clauses, mass arbitration waivers and workarounds, the evolution of mass arbitration rules, recent federal regulations and cases, and challenges to batching and bellwether procedures.

Although class action waivers and arbitration clauses remain the best defense to class actions, the rise of mass arbitrations has generated its own set of problems. Courts have ordered defendants to pay filing fees for thousands of individual arbitration claimants and have largely rejected efforts by corporate defendants to obtain relief from onerous fees.

The use of this tactic has led to the emergence of adaptations in arbitration agreements to specifically tackle mass claims and to new arbitration providers introducing mass arbitration protocols and fee structures. This shift has triggered court challenges to batching and bellwether procedures, with notable rulings finding that arbitration agreements containing such batching provisions may be unconscionable.

Since this trend shows no signs of stopping, counsel facing mass arbitration threats in 2026 need to understand what tools may be most effective at defeating them as this area of law continues to develop.

Listen as our renowned panel of class action lawyers discusses how to address the threat of mass arbitrations.