The Depp-Heard trial was fascinating in many ways. This article mentions Dr Shannon Curry specifically. Whatever she was paid was money well spent. It wasn't just her testimony but how she handled cross-examination and how she carried herself (eg [1][2]). By comparison, the Heard equivalent expert witness got utterly destroyed on cross [3]. And then you had Dr Spiegel who, depending on who you ask, might be called 60 year old Ninja (the streamer) or budget Jordan Peterson who clearly came across as a grifter [4].

One instructive thing about all this is you start to get a sense of how expensive actual litigation actually is. This should both dissuade you from taking that route (unless you have really pockets) and embolden you when others make threats to sue you.

Yes the pay rates are high but these are also people who generally have a ton of experience so comparing what they earn to say median income from doing their actual day job is misleading.

I mean whether or not this is a good system or not is another matter.

But another lesson to draw from this is that binding arbitrarion is often daemonized but it's not necessarily a bad thing. Generally the arbitrator is a subject matter expert and such things are common in, say, the construction industry.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb2p5xR9xjY

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNpEeIus_tY&t=3889s

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7WdtBFY4J4

[4]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IwUlKPSVQs