It is perhaps best at the outset to remark that I write this book with no axe to grind. I am neither a practicing mediator nor practicing lawyer (although as a university educator of would-be lawyers as well as current and potential mediators I have a vested interest in both). This book is no practice guide or ‘how to’ manual for lawyers interested in mediation (of which there are many excellent examples). Nor, it should be said, is the book a mediation purist’s diatribe warning against the perils of lawyer entanglement with the process. Rather, I hope through this work to tread a cautious and balanced path through the thorny terrain of the lawyer’s relationship with, and role within and on the fringes of mediation. This project was inspired by my own research begun some 16 years or so ago into mediation in Scotland, my field work and observations since and discussions with lawyers, mediators, mediation users and academics on the complex and controversial nature of the lawyer’s interaction with the process. This book owes a heavy debt to the wealth of empirical studies and theoretical analyses into mediation and lawyers undertaken by scholars internationally. The breadth of scholarship is breathtaking. Mirroring this international academic interest, the modern mediation movement is itself a global one, albeit that progress across different jurisdictions and in relation to distinct dispute areas within and across countries has occurred at widely diverging paces. As I shall illustrate in the chapters to come, to some extent at least, it may be said that the pace has been set by lawyers. They can be considered both accelerator and brake.