FINRA Files to Limit Non-Lawyers' Work on Arb Cases

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority wants to revise its Code of Arbitration Procedure for Customer Disputes to revise and restate lawyer qualifications.

FINRA has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to restate the qualifications for representatives in arbitrations and mediations in the forum administered by FINRA Dispute Resolution Services, or DRS.

The changes would:

disallow compensated representatives who are not attorneys from representing parties in the DRS forum;
codify that a student enrolled in a law school participating in a law school clinical program or its equivalent and practicing under the supervision of an attorney may represent investors in the DRS forum; and
clarify the circumstances in which any person, including attorneys, would be prohibited from representing parties in the DRS forum.

According to FINRA’s filing, the broker-dealer self-regulator currently permits parties to arbitrations and mediations in the DRS forum to represent themselves, to be represented by an attorney at law in good standing or to be represented by a non-attorney representative, or NAR.

Some NARs receive compensation in connection with their representation of parties.

“Compensated NARs receive monetary or non-monetary compensation in connection with the representation of parties — including, for example, advance fees, consulting fees, payments in kind, referral fees or fees pursuant to a contingent fee arrangement. Other NARs, often friends or relatives of a party, may assist parties with their cases without compensation,” FINRA states.

FINRA said that it has observed that “compensated NARs represent customers in a small percentage of the customer cases in the DRS forum — one percent — and that only a few compensated NARs regularly operate in the DRS forum today.”