Perceptions in Litigation and Mediation

Tamara Relis is an Assistant Professor of Law at Touro Law School, New York and a Research Fellow in the Law Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Between 2005 and 2009, during the writing of this book, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University Law School, New York. Dr Relis is the recipient of various awards for her doctoral and postdoctoral research, including those from the British Academy (postdoctoral research fellowship 2006–2009, and principal investigator on a project research grant), the Economic and Social Research Council (postdoctoral fellowship 2005–2006), and from Columbia University Provost's Office and the LSE (seed fund award). Dr Relis is currently working on her second book, Human Rights and Legal Pluralism: Theory, Global Standards, and Southern Actors' Practice based on empirical fieldwork research from 2005 to 2009 in eight states of India into formal courts and quasi-legal non-state justice regimes.

1. Introduction; 2. Great misconceptions or disparate perceptions of plaintiffs' litigation aims?; 3. Voluntary versus mandatory mediation divide; 4. Consequences of power: legal actors versus disputants on defendants' attendance at mediation; 5. Actors' mediation objectives: how lawyers versus parties plan to resolve their cases short of trial; 6. Actors' divergent perceptions of what goes on during mediation; 7. Parallel views on mediators and styles; 8. Conclusion: the parallel understandings and experiences in case processing and mediation.