Last fall, the American Arbitration Association (AAA) brought together seasoned Connecticut and New York employment arbitrators to form a working group and review early discovery protocols being piloted by judges throughout the U.S. District Courts. Due to concerns about rising costs and delays in employment arbitration cases, the group wanted to assess if similar protocols tailored to employment arbitration would benefit the process. This article will discuss the background behind the federal protocols and recent efforts to introduce similar protocols to the arbitration process.

The federal protocols were developed in 2011 by a committee led by New York federal Judge John G. Koeltl. By design, the committee had a balance of both plaintiff and defense attorneys from across the nation. As noted in the federal protocols, "[t]he project grew out of a 2010 Conference on Civil Litigation at Duke University, sponsored by the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Civil Rights, for the purpose of re-examining civil procedure and collecting recommendations for their improvement. During the conference, a wide range of attendees expressed support for the idea of case-type-specific 'pattern discovery' as a possible solution to the problems of unnecessary cost and delay in the discovery process." There was consensus at the conference that employment cases would be best suited for any type of experimentation because they are regularly litigated and have recurring issues.

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