Our understanding of what mediators do —and how, when, and why they do it — rests heavily on anecdote, the individual, personal experiences of mediators and other participants as expressed in their writings, speeches, teaching, or online discourse. Not having a broader vantage point limits our ability to appreciate how our evolving individual experiences compare to many others’ and how regional or national patterns may vary. In an effort to broaden our understanding of experienced mediators’ practices and perspectives and help contribute to a baseline for deeper research and discussion, the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University School of Law (Straus Institute) and the International Academy of Mediators (IAM) recently cosponsored a wide-ranging survey that garnered responses from 130 IAM members.

If there is a “typical” respondent to this survey, he is a man in his early 60s who has mediated for 20 to 25 years, is employed full-time and devotes the vast majority of his working hours to mediating cases, and has mediated more than 1,000 disputes. He handles a diverse caseload of more than 50 cases a year. But to describe the “typical” is to obscure the variety and diversity of those who responded. Ninety-four of the respondents regularly practice somewhere in the United States, but 47, or more than one-third of all those who returned the survey, regularly practice in other parts of the world, in Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia and the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa.

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