FINRA Securities Arbitration
Pattern intelligence from the full public award corpus.
What the corpus reveals about cases shaped like yours.
The corpus
What the corpus reveals
The public FINRA award corpus spans decades and tens of thousands of decided cases. Each case is encoded as a structural fingerprint: the claims asserted, the conditions that appeared, the panel's findings, the outcome.
This is not keyword search. What you get back is pattern context: the structural shape of cases like yours, what conditions have been present when panels found for claimant, what conditions have shifted outcomes the other way. You see frequency, co-occurrence, and the direction of influence. Not a summary or opinion.
Coverage
Claim types in the corpus
| Claim type | Cases in corpus |
|---|---|
| Suitability: unsuitable investment strategy | 847 |
| Failure to supervise | 741 |
| Misrepresentation / omission | 688 |
| Churning: excessive trading | 612 |
| Breach of fiduciary duty | 503 |
| Breach of contract | 445 |
| Unauthorized trading | 389 |
| Negligence | 372 |
| Fraudulent transactions | 284 |
| Unjust enrichment | 198 |
| Forgery | 156 |
| Conversion | 134 |
| Additional claim types indexed | N/A |
Sample dataIllustrative counts; not live corpus statistics. Accurate figures will be published at general availability.
Sample output
What a pattern brief contains
Sample dataIllustrative example: numbers are representative, not live corpus statistics.
Co-occurrence
| Appears alongside | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Churning / excessive trading | 62% of suitability cases |
| Misrepresentation / omission | 44% |
| Failure to supervise | 38% |
| Breach of fiduciary duty | 31% |
When suitability and churning appear together, the combined claim succeeds at a higher rate than either claim alone. The pattern is consistent across case vintages.
Outcome conditions
Panel finds for claimant in 41% of suitability cases overall.
Conditions associated with higher claimant success
- ↑Account concentration above 40% in one security or sector: 67% claimant success rate (n=214)
- ↑No written acknowledgment of client risk tolerance on file: 59% claimant success rate (n=187)
- ↑Multiple unsuitable recommendations documented across account history: 63% claimant success rate (n=156)
Conditions associated with lower claimant success
- ↓Suitability letter signed by client and on file: 19% claimant success rate (n=143)
- ↓Client requested the specific securities in writing: 24% claimant success rate (n=98)
- ↓Client classified as sophisticated or accredited investor: 22% claimant success rate (n=76)
What the pattern does not tell you. This is structural frequency from the public corpus. It is not a prediction and does not account for case-specific evidence, arbitrator composition, or facts not captured in the award text. The panel weighs the evidence you present. The corpus tells you what evidence has mattered in cases with this shape.
How it works
Bring a case.
Get pattern context back.
Describe the case: claim types, the facts that matter, what you are trying to establish.
Sediment returns pattern context for your claim shape. What the corpus knows about cases structured like yours. What conditions have shifted outcomes in those cases. The closest prior decisions by structural fingerprint.
You use that context to sharpen theory, identify what conditions the panel is likely to weigh, and see what the opposing pattern looks like.
Pattern context is delivered as a structured brief in the same format as the sample above, for each claim type in your case.
Describe your case
Claim types, key facts, what you need to establish
Corpus match
Structural fingerprints matched across decided cases
Pattern brief delivered
Co-occurrence, outcome conditions, direction of influence
Early access
Advisory Partner Program: FINRA
Four seats. Claimant-side practitioners only.
Terms: One-month trial at no cost. Three months at $100/month. Month-to-month after that. Cancel any time.
No commitment until the trial delivers value.
We collect only your name, firm, and email. We do not sell or share it.