[nevinera]

If on average 100% of cases involve a company that is paying for an arbitration lawyer and even 80% of cases involve an individual that is paying for an arbitration lawyer (which I _highly doubt_, though I couldn't quickly find numbers), the net result in the long term is not that "20% of individuals get a negative outcome", it's far worse.

This article is talking about the net effect, which is that the fact that there _is_ asymmetry means that arbitrators have an interest in _being_ biased against the individual, which means that even if you are paying for an arbitration lawyer, they are simply ruling out the _most_ biased firms, while the corporate arbitration lawyer is ruling out the _least_ biased firms. Think natural-selection, rather than game theory.

[fallingknife]

Arbitration is an abbreviated legal proceeding designed to be much faster and cheaper than litigation. It is not designed to be a substitute for legal representation.

The idea of going into arbitration against a company without a lawyer seems absolutely insane to me and I would bet that the number of plaintiffs with representation is close to 100%. I also do not have actual data on this, though.