Arbitration has been at the center of Jeremy Baker’s career for over two decades. He has represented clients in high-stakes proceedings before the American Arbitration Association (AAA), including complex, multimillion-dollar disputes tried before three-arbitrator panels. He has also first-chaired contested evidentiary hearings to final binding awards, securing significant recoveries for his clients while defeating substantial counterclaims.
Along with this applied arbitration experience, he has also practiced thought leadership to make arbitration more efficient and fair and has written extensively on Illinois arbitration law, including the lead chapter of the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education’s Construction Law Disputes treatise (Chapter 20: Arbitration) and a LexisNexis practice note on Compelling and Staying Arbitration.
Overall, his work reflects a rare combination: hands-on advocacy in high-stakes arbitrations, theoretical contributions to improving the process, and authoritative writing that lawyers across Illinois rely on.
Arbitration Experience
Jeremy has significant experience representing clients in arbitration, both as a member of teams on large, complex cases and as first-chair in contested evidentiary hearings. Early in his career, he trained under some of the nation’s top construction attorneys at major national firms and later served as a partner at one of the largest law firms in the United States. That background gave him deep exposure to the arbitration process in high-stakes disputes, and it continues to shape how he approaches arbitration today.
Much of his early arbitration work involved representing clients in multimillion-dollar proceedings before the American Arbitration Association (AAA) in front of three-arbitrator panels.
He was part of a team that successfully defended a property owner against nearly $25 million in claims for delay, differing site conditions, and fraud. Jeremy was deeply involved in the trial of that matter, which involved around 20 days of AAA evidentiary hearings over a three-month period, extensive post-hearing briefing, and confirmation of the favorable arbitration award in federal court.
In another matter, Jeremy led a team of attorneys through an AAA arbitration involving more than $2.5 million in claims over the acoustical design of a motion picture post-production facility. That case required more than a dozen fact depositions, multiple expert depositions, and two days of mediation, and ultimately settled on favorable terms just before a scheduled two-week arbitration hearing.
Jeremy also co-led the defense of an Engineering News-Record Top-25 contractor against $3 million in claims involving the complex mechanical systems for an ice arena, and helped resolve more than $2.5 million of “total cost” claims for disruption and loss of efficiency related to a hospital project after two years of heavily contested arbitration proceedings, all before AAA-appointed arbitrators.
In each of these cases, Jeremy played a substantive role in developing the strategy, managing discovery, preparing witnesses, drafting key filings, and positioning the matter for a successful outcome.
In addition to these team-based matters, Jeremy has first-chaired many contested evidentiary arbitration hearings solo from start to finish over days of testimony. In those cases, he examined fact witnesses, cross-examined experts, and argued the issues before the arbitrators. The results include an AAA arbitration award of about $375,000 for one client while defeating, with prejudice, a $550,000 counterclaim; another AAA arbitration award of nearly $500,000 inclusive of fees, costs, and interest for his client; and a complete dismissal of another arbitration claim, with prejudice, after Jeremy’s cross examination of architecture and engineering expert witnesses at an AAA arbitration hearing. Across his AAA arbitration first-chair hearings, his clients have recovered well into seven figures total awards while defeating most of the claims asserted against them.
These experiences reflect Jeremy’s dual approach to arbitration: he knows how to take a case all the way through a binding hearing to a final – judicially confirmed – arbitration award, but he also understands when arbitration should be leveraged to reach a negotiated settlement that better serves his clients’ interests. Arbitration is not only a forum for final decisions; it is also a tool that can create leverage, impose discipline on the parties, and open the door to practical resolutions.
In recent years, Jeremy has combined his arbitration skills with insurance coverage strategy to protect clients from outsized risks. In one matter, he successfully enforced an arbitration clause to move a dispute out of court and into AAA arbitration proceedings, while framing the claims in a way that triggered the client’s professional liability coverage. This forced the insurer to appoint defense counsel, making sure the client’s exposure was limited to its deductible rather than its liability exposure and sparing it the attorneys’ fees and costs necessary to defend the dispute.
In another recent AAA arbitration proceeding, our architect client faced significant exposure after its insurer refused to fund the settlement and reserved the right to deny coverage after arbitration. Working closely with coverage counsel, Jeremy challenged the insurer’s position and, on the eve of the arbitration hearing, compelled it to authorize settlement funds. That outcome eliminated the risk of an uncovered award and protected the client from both liability and defense costs. Another example where our client achieved the best possible outcome.
Taken together, Jeremy’s arbitration practice shows both breadth and depth: he has defended clients in claims exceeding $25 million, handled the full range of discovery and evidentiary hearing tasks, secured seven-figure recoveries in final awards, and leveraged arbitration strategically to obtain settlements and insurance-backed outcomes that protected his clients’ bottom line.
Thought Leadership in Arbitration
Jeremy’s arbitration practice is complemented by scholarship focused on improving how arbitration functions in the construction industry. In 2019, together with his longtime mentor, Mark C. Friedlander, he co-authored an article in the Construction Law Newsletter (Vol. 35, No. 5, May 2019) that examined how arbitration was losing its original advantages of speed and cost-efficiency. Too often, they argued, arbitration had come to resemble litigation, with lawyers importing wasteful trial tactics and burdensome discovery. They proposed a framework they called “arbitrator-directed arbitration” to restore arbitration’s promise.
Arbitration is often criticized. Critics point out that it offers less due process than litigation and that, unlike in court, there is generally no appeal from an arbitrator’s award — so if a mistake is made, it may stand. At the same time, when arbitration is abused and allowed to mimic litigation, it loses the very trade-offs that make it worthwhile. Parties then get the worst of both worlds: less due process, but just as much delay and cost. By contrast, litigation itself often drags on for years, draining resources and damaging business relationships in the process. That’s why they believed a better approach was needed.
One of arbitration’s greatest strengths, one that makes it worth saving, is that the decision-makers are usually senior construction attorneys with hands-on experience in architecture, engineering, construction law, and damages analysis. They understand contracts, industry practices, and the measurement of damages in this context. Judges are typically generalists who may not have the same level of subject-matter expertise. That industry-specific knowledge is one reason arbitration, when conducted properly, remains the superior forum for most construction disputes — except for certain statutory claims, like mechanics liens or mortgage foreclosures, that require judicial resolution.
To preserve arbitration’s advantages, Jeremy and Mark drafted a complete set of proposed rules to supplement existing arbitration procedures and give arbitrators greater control over the process. In their model, arbitrators, not lawyers, would lead witness examinations and candidly share preliminary views of the case with counsel in real time. That approach would shorten hearings, streamline the presentation of evidence, reduce gamesmanship, and promote earlier, more informed settlements.
This work reflects Jeremy’s belief that arbitration remains the superior forum for most construction disputes, but only if the process continues to evolve. Empowering arbitrators to take leadership inside the hearing room allows arbitration to reclaim its promise: fairer, faster, and more predictable outcomes than litigation, without sacrificing due process or quality decision-making.
Arbitration Writing and Scholarship
Beyond practice and theory, Jeremy’s arbitration experience is reinforced by scholarly writing. He is a principal author and editor of the Illinois Institute for Continuing Legal Education’s Construction Law Disputes treatise, including Chapter 20: Arbitration — widely regarded as Illinois’s leading reference on the subject at over 60 single-spaced pages.
Jeremy first contributed to the arbitration chapter in 2018 with his longtime mentor, Paul M. Lurie, substantially rewriting and expanding the text with his guidance. He updated Chapter 20 again for publication in 2022, and most recently in the 2025 edition of Construction Law Disputes, published August 12, 2025, this time mentoring his associate, Jonathan Berjikian, as co-author.
In addition to Chapter 20, Jeremy also authored Chapter 1 (Responsibilities and Liabilities of Architects & Engineers) and Chapter 19 (Mediation), which together frame arbitration within the broader dispute-resolution landscape.
Substantive Coverage of Chapter 20
Chapter 20: Arbitration surveys the full landscape of Illinois arbitration law and practice, from arbitrability and motions to compel, to arbitrator selection, evidentiary hearings, awards, and judicial review. It situates Illinois practice within the national framework, analyzing the interplay between the Illinois Uniform Arbitration Act and the Federal Arbitration Act, as well as federal preemption, enforcement against non-signatories, waiver, and confirmation or vacatur of awards. The work is both doctrinal and practical, designed to equip lawyers and judges with a reliable guide through this complex area.
The chapter begins with arbitration clauses themselves — how they are drafted, interpreted, and enforced. It explains how Illinois courts distinguish between broad “any and all disputes” clauses and narrower clauses tied to specific issues, with Illinois Supreme Court decisions such as Salsitz v. Kreiss and Donaldson v. Barr setting the framework for interpretation and enforcement.
It then explores the statutory foundation of arbitration in Illinois. The Illinois Uniform Arbitration Act (710 ILCS 5/1 et seq.) and the Federal Arbitration Act (9 U.S.C. §1 et seq.) overlap in many respects, but the Federal Arbitration Act’s (FAA) preemptive scope ensures that federal law controls whenever state law conflicts. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Preston v. Ferrer confirmed the FAA’s broad reach, while the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling in Carter v. SSC Odin Operating Co. illustrates how preemption affects Illinois practice. Together, these statutes and cases define the constitutional and federalist balance between state and federal authority in arbitration.
Chapter 20 also addresses threshold questions of arbitrability — who decides whether a dispute must be arbitrated: courts or arbitrators? The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in First Options of Chicago v. Kaplan established that courts generally decide gateway issues unless parties clearly delegate the authority to arbitrators. Howsam v. Dean Witter Reynolds clarified the distinction between substantive “gateway” issues and procedural issues reserved for arbitrators. These cases, followed by both Illinois and federal courts, continue to shape how disputes over who decides whether to arbitrate are resolved.
The chapter is a comprehensive manual. It covers how arbitrations are started, how arbitrators are selected, and how joinder and consolidation issues arise in multi-party disputes. It explains discovery limitations in arbitration, the role of dispositive motions, and the conduct of hearings — including witness testimony, using experts, and the arbitrator’s authority to manage the process efficiently. It also analyzes remedies, issuing awards, and the binding effect of those awards in later disputes.
The final section of Chapter 20 focuses on judicial review. Both Illinois and federal law permit only limited grounds to vacate an award, such as fraud, corruption, or evident partiality. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hall Street Associates v. Mattel, Inc. confirmed that the FAA’s vacatur grounds are exclusive, while the Illinois Supreme Court’s decision in Phoenix Insurance Co. v. Rosen reaffirmed the same principle under Illinois law. These cases, read together, highlight arbitration’s defining feature: finality. Once an award is issued, it is extraordinarily difficult to overturn, ensuring that arbitration provides closure where litigation often drags on for years.
By weaving together statutes, Illinois Supreme Court rulings, and U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Chapter 20 situates Illinois arbitration practice within the national legal framework. The result is a resource that not only captures the doctrinal foundations of arbitration but also offers lawyers and judges practical guidance for managing construction disputes efficiently and effectively.
Complementary Scholarship with LexisNexis
Jeremy’s written contributions extend beyond IICLE.
He is also the author of Compelling and Staying Arbitration (IL), a LexisNexis practice note first published in 2022 and updated in 2024. Where Chapter 20 provides a sweeping doctrinal analysis, the Lexis publication serves as a practical guide for day-to-day litigation strategy. It explains when and how to file motions to compel arbitration, how courts decide waiver and arbitrability issues, and how Illinois law interacts with the FAA in both state and federal forums. By integrating Illinois-specific authority with national precedent, the Lexis piece equips practitioners with checklists, motion strategies, and practical tools to handle arbitration disputes efficiently.
Together, these works show Jeremy’s command of arbitration law and his commitment to improving and clarifying it to benefit clients, practitioners, and the courts.
If you are facing a complex dispute or need guidance in arbitration, contact Jeremy Baker today to discuss how his experience and strategic approach can protect your interests and achieve the best possible outcome.
