The American Arbitration Association just launched its AI Arbitrator system for construction disputes, and it's already processing its first case. Bridget McCormack, former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice and now AAA president, told The Verge the system uses around 20 AI agents to parse claims, organize evidence, and draft awards—all with a human arbitrator signing off at the end. It's a limited rollout focused on documents-only construction cases, but McCormack predicts we'll look back in 10 to 30 years and wonder why we ever trusted humans to decide so many legal disputes. That's a bold claim for a system that's handled exactly one case.
The century-old nonprofit arbitration giant just rolled out what might be the legal profession's most consequential automation experiment yet. But with just one case in the system and trust in both courts and corporations at historic lows, the AI Arbitrator faces a credibility test before it can prove whether machines really can deliver fairer, faster justice.
McCormack came to the AAA in February 2023, right after ChatGPT's November 2022 launch sent shockwaves through every industry. She spent her six-week break before starting the job diving into large language models, convinced they'd reshape dispute resolution. Her first move at AAA? Give everyone—engineers, caseworkers, legal staff, marketers—enterprise ChatGPT licenses. "With any general-purpose technology, you need the domain experts to figure out where it's going to impact them," she explained.
The AI Arbitrator works like this: parties submit complaints, pleadings, and evidence through a web-based case management system. A series of agents then parses the claims, identifies the elements of each claim, maps evidence to those claims, and contextualizes everything within the relevant legal framework. Then it circles back to both parties: "Here's my understanding. Did I get that right?" If they say no, the agents go back to work. This loop continues until both sides confirm they've been heard and understood.
