You Really Need to Consider Baseball Arbitration

In a recent issue of the American Bar Association’s Litigation magazine is a great article on Baseball Arbitration. While framed in the salary arbitration context, the article steps through several facts of this type of dispute resolution which help to highlight the wroth of this great procedure.

By definition (and I’ve written about Baseball Mediation before), Baseball Arbitration involves the two sides each proposing an outcome and an arbitrator (or arbitrators) picking the best one. In baseball, the team owner would propose that a player’s salary for the next season should be X and the player (usually through his agent) would suggest his salary should be Y. The arbitrators are limited to picking X or Y — no splitting of the baby allowed.

For obvious reasons, Baseball Arbitration can be useful in salary arbitrations. Though, as often happens, there can be hard feelings afterwards, after the player (or employee) has listened to a long list of negatives about him and why he’s not worth more money… and then has to return to work for the employer that just spoke badly about him. But in non-salary arbitration matters, that element does not really exist. In many cases, the relief being sought (the value of the case) ties to something else — a business deal gone wrong, a personal injury or whatever. Because of that, the chances of bruised egos are far smaller.

Does an attorney not do his/her best for the client by suggesting that the value of the case might be something less than the maximum? Absolutely not. What this requires an attorney to do is to properly value case and to be able to substantiate that valuation. Which is exactly what an attorney is supposed to do for the client — the attorney is not supposed to pump the client full of fantasy numbers about a case in the hopes that they will win the lottery. And, let’s not forget, that this process is more streamlined and simpler than going to trial, so there are less expenses. A lot less expenses.

Baseball Arbitration. You should be doing it.

To read the article, click here.