Arbitration is routinely described as the affordable alternative to litigation. The description is out of date. For a mid-sized commercial dispute, the institution-side cost — arbitrator compensation plus administrative fees, before either party pays its own lawyers — commonly exceeds $20,000.
Where the money goes
Arbitrator compensation. Commercial arbitrators bill hourly, at rates of $375–$1,125/hr, before a 13% administrative surcharge. 1 Every motion read, every conference call, every hour of deliberation is on the meter, and a three-arbitrator panel triples it.
Administrative fees. Institutions charge filing fees, case-management fees, and hearing fees, often scaled to the amount in controversy.
Time. The typical commercial arbitration runs 12–18 months from filing to award. 2 Time is not just delay; it is carrying cost, distraction, and legal fees accruing the entire way.
Scale makes it worse. In one well-known case, a company was ordered to pay $9.5 million in fees just to begin 5,010 arbitrations it had agreed to. 3 Per-case fees that look tolerable one at a time become prohibitive at volume.
What a flat fee changes
A flat fee, known on the day you file, removes the meter entirely. The Turing Tribunal charges one filing fee and one closing fee, set by claim size — from $495 + $500 for claims to $100,000. There is no hourly arbitrator billing, no compensation deposit, and no per-hearing charge, because the proceedings are documents-only. The full schedule is on the Fees page.
The structural difference is simple: when the decision-maker does not bill by the hour, nobody profits from the dispute taking longer.
1. JAMS published fee schedule; ADR Times arbitrator-rate survey. 2. AAA published time-to-award data. 3. Abernathy v. DoorDash, N.D. Cal. 2020.