Introducing lawyers into arbitration made customary decisions track state law.

Evidence

Although the DDC bylaws have always given the litigants the right to be represented by a lawyer, prior to the Rapaport case it was uncommon. Today, legal representation is the norm. The arbitrators feel that the presence of lawyers has, in some measure, altered the rules of decision they apply. The lawyers alert them to relevant parts of New York law, and, while this law still does not supply the rule of decision, the arbitrators are more conscious of the law and are increasingly reluctant to drastically depart from it, except in instances where the decisions are deeply rooted in custom or do not involve creating a new rule. — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 281

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A precise, nuanced account of how legal form leaks into private justice: lawyers don’t supply the rule of decision, they merely alert arbitrators to state law, yet this shifts outcomes. Density worth sitting with for the reader’s network-closure argument about the third-party mechanism inverting.
• ADDENDUM: Directly parallels the ‘On Sacrifice’ dynamic where norms are maintained but slowly eroded; also a concrete mechanism for the reader’s claim that piazza witnesses’ non-cooperation keeps state PROOF out—here, the reverse (lawyers let state law in).
• XREF: connects to: Lawyer involvement may substitute for judicial supervision in approving employee settlements — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 4623