Ryan McKeen | Best Era
Last week, the American Arbitration Association announced something that should have every lawyer cheering: an AI-powered arbitrator for construction disputes that promises to cut costs by 35% and resolution time by 20%. Instead, the legal profession clutched its pearls. Critics warned of depersonalized justice, algorithmic bias, and the death of advocacy as we know it.
They’re missing the point entirely.
The real crisis isn’t AI making decisions. It’s that our current system has priced most Americans out of justice altogether.
For far too long the powers that be have argued the solution to the access to justice crisis is more pro bono work. It’s not. The solution is reforming the way neutrals process cases.
Hearings on the merits are good for justice. Disputes can be resolved on right and wrong and not just might making right.
The System Is Already Broken
Right now, someone with a legitimate $50,000 construction dispute faces an impossible calculation. Traditional arbitration will cost them $15,000 to $30,000 in fees before their lawyer even opens a file. A court case? Add two to three years to the timeline and double the cost. For many claimants, the math is simple: the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. They walk away from valid claims because the system designed to resolve disputes has become too expensive and too slow to access.
This isn’t theoretical. Civil cases wait years for their day in court. Plaintiffs with serious injuries can’t get to a jury. Defendants who could prove their innocence in months instead spend years under the cloud of unresolved accusations. Families navigate divorces in a system so clogged that temporary orders become semi-permanent arrangements.
The promise of justice delayed is justice denied has become our legal system’s operating principle. When resolution takes years and costs six figures, only corporations and the wealthy can afford to see cases through to completion. Everyone else settles for whatever they can get or abandons their claims entirely.
What the AAA Actually Built
The AAA’s AI arbitrator, set to launch in November for construction disputes, promises something the legal profession should celebrate: resolution in months, not years, at a fraction of traditional costs. The system claims 35% cost savings and 20% time savings for document-based construction disputes. Those aren’t incremental improvements. They’re transformative.
More importantly, the AAA designed this system the right way. It keeps humans in the loop. It operates transparently. It builds on 99 years of arbitration expertise rather than trying to replace human judgment entirely. The AI analyzes documents, identifies issues, and suggests resolutions. Human arbitrators validate the outputs and make final decisions.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s practical technology applied to a real problem: too many legitimate disputes never get resolved because the traditional process costs too much and takes too long.
The Hypocrisy of Legal AI Critics
Here’s what makes the criticism especially rich: lawyers already use AI constantly. We use AI-powered research tools to find cases. We use predictive analytics to value settlements. We use document review platforms that deploy machine learning to identify relevant materials. Large firms have used these technologies for years to deliver faster, cheaper services to corporate clients.
But suggest using similar technology to make dispute resolution accessible to regular people, and suddenly we’re destroying the sanctity of the legal profession. The objection isn’t to AI in law. It’s to AI making legal services affordable for those who currently can’t access them.
The legal profession’s resistance to accessible AI isn’t about protecting justice. It’s about protecting billable hours.
Speed Matters More Than Lawyers Admit
The legal profession has convinced itself that slower is more careful, that every case needs years of discovery and motion practice to reach just outcomes. This is self-serving nonsense.
Many disputes don’t need exhaustive litigation. They need resolution. A homeowner fighting with a contractor over $30,000 in defective work doesn’t need three years of document requests and depositions. They need someone neutral to review the contract, inspect the work, and make a decision. The AI arbitrator can facilitate that process in months.
An injured plaintiff watching their medical bills pile up while waiting for a court date three years away doesn’t benefit from our deliberate pace. They need their case heard while the evidence is fresh and before financial desperation forces an unfavorable settlement.
Families in divorce proceedings watching their children grow up amid unresolved custody disputes don’t need more process. They need finality so everyone can move forward.
The legal system’s addiction to process serves lawyers’ economic interests more than clients’ actual needs. We’ve built a professional moat around dispute resolution and convinced ourselves it’s a temple of justice.
The Real Question About Bias
Critics worry about algorithmic bias in AI systems, and those concerns deserve serious attention. But let’s be honest about the bias baked into our current system.
Our traditional process is biased toward those who can afford to wait and pay. It’s biased toward corporate defendants who can outspend individual plaintiffs. It’s biased toward parties with resources to conduct extensive discovery, hire expensive experts, and file endless motions.
The AAA’s approach includes human oversight specifically to catch AI errors and ensure fair outcomes. That’s more transparency and accountability than exists in many human arbitrations, where arbitrators provide minimal reasoning for their decisions and appeals are nearly impossible.
Perfect is the enemy of good. If we wait for flawless AI systems before deploying them, we perpetuate a human system that’s already deeply flawed and fundamentally inaccessible to most people who need it.
What This Means for Access to Justice
The AAA’s AI arbitrator points toward a future where dispute resolution could actually be accessible. Imagine a system where a small business cheated by a vendor could get binding resolution in six months for $5,000. Where a homeowner could enforce warranty rights without mortgaging their house to pay legal fees. Where injured parties could get compensated while they’re still dealing with medical treatment rather than years later.
This isn’t about replacing lawyers or eliminating advocacy. It’s about creating a tier of dispute resolution that currently doesn’t exist. A tier between “figure it out yourself” and “spend $50,000 on lawyers.” A tier that could handle thousands of legitimate disputes that our current system simply abandons.
The technology exists right now. The AAA is deploying it. Courts should be racing to follow, not throwing up roadblocks in the name of protecting professional standards that mostly protect professional incomes.
The Path Forward
The legal profession needs to stop treating efficiency as the enemy of justice. We need to acknowledge that our current system fails most people most of the time. We need to embrace technology that can make legal services accessible rather than defending a status quo that serves lawyers better than clients.
The AAA isn’t proposing AI judges for murder trials or complex commercial litigation. They’re using technology to resolve document-based construction disputes faster and cheaper than traditional methods. This is exactly the kind of measured, supervised deployment that should guide legal AI development across the entire justice system.
If it works as promised, every area of law should be asking what comes next. Small claims. Small personal injury cases. Simple contract cases. Consumer complaints. Family law matters. Employment disputes. There’s a massive universe of legal disputes that could be resolved faster, cheaper, and better with the right technology and appropriate human oversight.
The alternative is continuing to tell millions of Americans with legitimate legal claims that justice is available only if they can afford to wait years and spend tens of thousands of dollars. That’s not a system worth defending. That’s a system begging for disruption.
The wheels of justice grind slowly, we tell ourselves, but they grind exceedingly fine. The truth is they grind so slowly that most people never reach them at all. The AAA’s AI arbitrator is a step in the right direction.
Every lawyer who cares about actual access to justice rather than theoretical access should be asking: what dispute resolution problem can we solve next? The legal profession should be leading this transformation, not standing in its way.
When one of your cases is in need of a construction expert, estimates, insurance appraisal or umpire services in defect or insurance disputes – please call Advise & Consult, Inc. at 888.684.8305, or email experts@adviseandconsult.net.