The importance of arbitration as a liability risk mitigation tool has risen precipitously as a result of the sharp uptick in class action litigation pursued for purported violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)—toady's newest class action trend, which has shown no signs of slowing down at any point in the foreseeable future.

However, many potential pitfalls lie lurking in wait that may eviscerate a company's ability to arbitrate disputes if the arbitration-related language contained in a company's online terms of use and similar consumer agreements is poorly drafted.

As such, it is imperative that companies expend the necessary time and effort to craft effective and well-thought-out online arbitration and class action waiver provisions for inclusion in their online consumer agreements in order to fully mitigate their risk of liability exposure stemming from BIPA (and similar types of privacy) class action litigation.