Every time that I start a FINRA arbitration, I find myself having the same internal debate; did we pick the right person to serve as the arbitration chair. Unfortunately, you will not know the answer to that question until after your arbitration begins, or, more likely, after the award is issued. FINRA has proposed a rule change to open up the filed for chair arbitrators.

Under the proposed rule, attorneys can serve as public arbitrator chair with less experience than they were required to have in the past. Pursuant to this proposal, attorneys would only need to have served on at least one arbitration that went to an award and the complete chair training.

FINRA’s stated purpose for the rule is to “protect investors and the public interest” by increasing the pool of eligible chairpersons. This way, chairs would ideally no longer have to travel to serve as a chair.

In theory, this all makes sense. If there are more available chairs, then investors and the industry will be better served. But will this work?

In my view, much still falls on the parties to critically review the CVs of potential chairs and do your due diligence. Call other lawyers who have had arbitrations with that person. Do some research of the professional backgrounds of the potential chair. After all, just because a lawyer passes FINRA’s vetting processing does not mean that you would want that person as your chair.

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