What is the Arbitration Committee on Wikipedia and when does it matter?

The Arbitration Committee is the supreme court of Wikipedia and is essentially never involved in routine reputation work. It exists to resolve entrenched disputes that the normal processes – Talk-page discussion, noticeboards, administrator action, mediation – have failed to address. Its remit is primarily conduct (editor behavior, sockpuppetry, long-running harassment) rather than content. The relevance for reputation work is mostly defensive: an article that becomes the subject of ArbCom proceedings is in serious trouble, usually because of years of contested edits and bad-faith activity from one or more parties. Operating with disclosed-COI discipline, reliable sourcing, and Talk-page engagement keeps a client’s article far from anything that would attract ArbCom attention. Cases where the firm has been involved peripherally tend to involve historical undisclosed-PR activity that predated our engagement.