ADR providers averts employment lawyers' boycott.

The National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) has called off a threatened boycott against a major provider of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) services after the company pledged not to handle cases in which employers force workers to give up legal rights.

The company - JAMS/Endispute of Orange, California - in February issued new guidelines for arbitrating employment disputes. The guidelines address the primary concern of plaintiffs' employment lawyers: that mandatory arbitration clauses, which some employers require workers to sign as a condition of employment, unfairly - and perhaps illegally - force employees to give up certain rights and remedies.

The new JAMS policy sets "minimum standards of procedural fairness" for arbitration. The standards require that "all remedies that would be otherwise available in court - including, as applicable, attorneys' fees and exemplary damages - remain available in the arbitration."

The standards also provide for "a reasonable level" of discovery and require that employees have the right to be represented by an attorney. The company said it will not accept cases from employers that do not comply with the minimum standards.

JAMS also said it would encourage its employer-clients to use only voluntary arbitration. However, the company will continue handling mandatory cases as long as the employer complies with the minimum fairness standards.

The company also pledged to abide by court and regulatory agency rulings on the legality of mandatory arbitration clauses. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which issued an opinion last year opposing these clauses, is expected to release a detailed policy statement on the subject soon.

NELA still plans to boycott the services of the New York-based American Arbitration Association. The boycott will officially begin after the EEOC statement is issued. (Employment Lawyers Plan to Boycott ADR Providers, TRIAL, Feb. 1996, at 17.)

NELA President Mary Anne Sedey, a St. Louis lawyer, praised JAMS for formulating the new guidelines.

"Once again, JAMS has set the ethical standard for the burgeoning ADR industry," she said in a statement. "We call on the American Arbitration Association to similarly adopt minimum standards of due process for employment cases and to cease actively marketing services that the EEOC and [National Labor Relations Board] have deemed to be illegal."