Moving forward chronologically in terms of case processing, the chapters thus far have related to contextual and then pre-mediation issues. Therefore, in some respects, this chapter and chapter seven represent the culmination of all earlier chapters' findings, as they examine legal, lay, and gendered actors' actual mediation experiences. In “setting out to make explicit the truth of primary experiences” through actors' discourses on what transpired during mediations, I discover the properties of … actions ‘from within’ actual settings” (Bourdieu 1977, p. 3; Garfinkel 1984, pp. vii–viii, 1). In this chapter, I examine the disparity of perceptions of “what goes on” during mediations, both in terms of contextual confrontations and representations as well as actors' favored and disfavored mediation elements. Chapter seven covers issues specifically related to mediators during the process.

Participants' “satisfaction” with mediation in numerous jurisdictions has been well documented. Yet, when the premises underlying actors' incongruous discourse on their mediation experiences are examined, mediation emerges as a forum for dual communication – transmitted and received on different planes. Mediation reflects the confluence of conflicting interests, realities, and worlds: the legal world of tactics and strategy versus the human world of extralegal needs and desires. Lawyers provide highly strategic accounts of what went on, perceiving mediation as a key vehicle for direct tactical communication and strategic insight. In sharp contrast, disputants depict the same mediations as very personal encounters, providing emotional and psychological descriptions of what occurred.