‘I Sometimes Catch Myself Looking Angry or Tired …’ : The Impact of Mediating by Zoom

At the outset of the COVID pandemic, many mediators and lawyers were dubious at best about mediating over the internet using platforms such as Zoom. Working through virtual windows with emotional people to solve difficult conflicts seemed impractical, they thought, making it at best only a temporary substitute for the in-person process. The author interviewed twenty professional legal mediators who had conducted in total more than 1,100 Zoom mediations, to learn about their actual experiences with the process. The mediators were, to their surprise, uniformly enthusiastic. They found the process easier to use in most instances, both for users and themselves, and just as effective. Their most interesting observations were about the impact on disputants and on the mediator of seeing oneself in real time. Doing so has had positive impacts for both, they reported. This article summarizes observations and lessons learned from more than a thousand Zoom mediations