Provider Rules

AAA and JAMS, side by side

Two regimes, two philosophies. One applies at the provider's discretion; the other only if you wrote it into the contract. The difference decides who has leverage the day the demands land.

Two rulebooks facing each other, each with a stepped fee ladder crossed by a single amber threshold line

At a glance

Comparison of AAA and JAMS mass arbitration regimes
	AAAAmerican Arbitration Association	JAMSJAMS (Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services)
Regime	Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules	Mass Arbitration Procedures and Guidelines
Effective	Adopted 2023; fee schedule and rule amendments effective January 2024	Effective May 2024
Trigger	25+ similar demands (consumer and employment)	75+ claimants, same or coordinated counsel
How it applies	Applied at the AAA's discretion — no separate contractual adoption required	Requires express contractual adoption / party consent
Gatekeeper	Process Arbitrator	Process Administrator
Mediation	Global mediation required within 120 days of filing confirmation	No mandatory mediation stage

Fee schedules

AAA

Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules

Initiation fee (flat, total)Replaces per-case initiation fees: $11,250
— claimant share: $3,125
— business share: $8,125
Per-case fee after initiationScales with filing volume: $125 – $325
Final fee, per case: $600 – $750
Arbitrator compensationConsumer cases: $300 / hour
Case management feeWas the dominant cost pre-2024: Eliminated

JAMS

Mass Arbitration Procedures and Guidelines

Filing fee (single, total): $7,500
— claimant share: up to $2,500
— business share: $5,000
Appointment feePer appointment, not per case: $2,000 – $3,500
Case management fee: 13% of arbitrator compensation
Process Administrator: Hourly rate

What to know about AAA

The AAA's multiple-case regime traces back to the Supplementary Rules for Multiple Case Filings introduced in August 2021. The current rules reach twenty-five or more similar demands filed by or against the same party where representation is by the same or coordinated counsel; a higher threshold of one hundred applies outside the consumer and employment context.

Counsel must affirm that the information supplied for each claimant is accurate to the best of their knowledge — a direct response to fictitious and unverifiable claimants in earlier campaigns.
A Process Arbitrator resolves administrative disputes — filing compliance, fee allocation, batching mechanics — before any merits arbitrator is appointed.
Merits arbitrators may review Process Arbitrator determinations under an abuse-of-discretion standard.
The AAA retains discretion over whether the mass rules apply at all, which means a respondent cannot fully engineer the outcome through drafting alone.

What to know about JAMS

JAMS applies a single seventy-five-claimant threshold regardless of whether the dispute is consumer, employment, or commercial. Unlike the AAA regime, the procedures apply only where the parties have expressly adopted them.

The consent requirement is the defining difference: a respondent that did not write JAMS mass procedures into its clause cannot invoke them once demands land.
That same requirement makes JAMS a weaker defensive tool than the AAA regime — and explains why clause drafters who want JAMS procedures must name them expressly.
A Process Administrator performs a gatekeeping function comparable to the AAA's Process Arbitrator, screening threshold and administrative questions before merits appointments.
Appointment-based rather than per-case pricing changes the cost curve materially at high claim counts.

Reported cost scenarios

Reported up-front costs by filing volume and fee regime
Scenario	Regime	Up-front	Composition
1,000 consumer demands	AAA, pre-2024 Consumer Rules	$1.775M – $2.275M	Filing fees of $375,000–$500,000 plus case management fees of $1.4M–$1.775M — all payable before a single arbitrator was seated.
10,000 consumer demands	AAA, pre-2024 Consumer Rules	$15M+	Administrative fees alone, before any procedural challenge could be heard.
10,000 consumer demands	AAA, post-January 2024	~$6M	The flat initiation fee and elimination of case management fees cut exposure roughly sixty percent — a reduction, not a solution.
500 consumer demands	AAA, per-case schedule	$162,500	At $325 per case for the first five hundred claims, in initiation-stage fees before arbitrator assignment.
35,651 demands (Wallrich)	AAA, as invoiced	$4,125,000	The respondent's share of initial administrative filing fees. Non-payment led the AAA to terminate the proceedings — and the Seventh Circuit held the district court could not order payment.

Fee figures reflect published schedules as reported in the sources cited on each page. Provider schedules change; confirm the operative rules and fee tables directly with the AAA or JAMS before relying on any number here.