What arbitration clauses do you put in your leases?

That alone never works out well. Instead you add a second clause, that the loosing party is only obligated to pay a maximum legal fee's of $500. This way your tenant will not find an attorney willing to work for only $500 maximum. That only covers 2 hours of their time.

Can be tricky area and you should check if there is any difference in laws concerning arbitration at state level as well as current situation at federal level.

However,the obstacle in some case law can be whether tenant voluntarily agreed to arbitration. It might not be enforceable otherwise so you might need to somehow document that the arbitration provision was negotiated to be included in exchange for some amount of monthly rent reduction at time of lease signing. You would definitely want to also include a separate indication in lease of their agreement to arbitration such as section where they specifically agree with signature or initials just for the arbitration section. As I mentioned, this seems to be gray area as to whether it is enforceable for landlord tenant agreements so you really need to consult with attorney that knows this stuff and is familiar with most recent case law and legislation that might affect this issue.

If it can be enforceable, you might discourage attorney from representing tenant since there is less chance of big jury award of damages.

Robert is right that limiting attorney fees will discourage some lawyers from taking tenant case but some cases that lawyers will take on contingency where they get a percentage of damages might still be a problem. Arbitration might discourage those contingency lawyer types from taking case.

The advantage of arbitration clause, assuming that it is done in a way that it is enforceable in landlord tenant agreement (which could be problem), is that if there is some type of lawsuit where the landlord might have liability, arbitration is much less likely to award huge damages to poor, little, helpless tenant whereas jury will be shedding tears and want to punish landlord big time.

Tenant attorney that takes case on contingency will not be filing small claims for these type of cases. They will be going for the big payoff.

If tenant is required to go to arbitration, right from the start, many contingency personal injury lawyers and others will think twice and maybe even three or four times before they will invest their time and money on contingency case if there is no sympathetic jury to hear the case.

CF, you refer to arbitration but then talk about a mediator.

Mediation and arbitration are two completely different animals. A mediator tries to get both parties to agree to a proposed resolution. It is a compromise. The mediator has no authority to order anything that the parties have not AGREED to.

An arbitrator is like a judge, with the authority to make and impose a decision.

CJ,

I too set a $500 limit on atty fees granted to either party. Stops tje opposing atty from jacking up his bill if I were to lose.

An opposing atty claimed a $2000 bill to review the case he had already tried.