ArbitralWomen (AW) and the Equal Representation in Arbitration Pledge (ERA Pledge) efforts have been having important effects on promoting women practitioners in dispute resolution. Arbitral institutions are publishing both general statistics about gender and other diversity criteria and, in some instances, the names of arbitrators appointed to the cases they administer. However, institutional appointments account for only 25% of all arbitrator appointments. When asked by a client to select an arbitrator, the desirability of promoting diversity is the last feature on anyone’s mind; lawyers are not being asked to make a statement but to pick the best person for the job.
How can gender and diversity be promoted if no feedback exists about the expertise and the efficiency of arbitrators? Can a person-to-person research suffice and is it not subjective? What if the parties have no contacts to call on for information?
Arbitrator Intelligence seeks to promote diversity both by breaking the information bottleneck, and by providing an alternative to the highly subjective, ad hoc nature of arbitrator assessments. The means to these ends is the Arbitrator Intelligence Questionnaire (AIQ). If parties and counsel complete an AIQ at the end of each arbitration, Arbitrator intelligence will compile the collected about arbitrators, analyze it, and compile it into AI Reports on individual arbitrators. These reports will then be made available (for a fee) through our partner, Wolters Kluwer.
To generate this data, Arbitrator Intelligence and ArbitralWomen are calling on parties, counsel, and third-party funders to complete AIQs on recently completed arbitrations.
Do your part! Take a few minutes any day from now until 14 December 2018 to help generate information about women arbitrators by completing an Arbitrator Intelligence Questionnaire (AIQ).