Following upon the research question posed in chapter one, “How do professional, lay, and gendered actors understand and experience litigated case processing leading up to and including mediation in legal disputes?,” three recurrent themes have been important throughout the book: (1) the parallel worlds of understanding and meaning prevalent for legal actors versus lay disputants, (2) the reconceptualization of legal actors consequent to involvement with the extralegal dimensions of mediation processes, and (3) the parallel understandings and meanings of gendered actors in both lay and professional groups. In support of these themes, the data and findings throughout the book inform both the empirical-based discourse and the theoretical debates in various literatures.

First, the research has provided empirical data from disputants themselves on how they perceive and address legal disputes and their resolution – offering insight into the little known, yet critical area of litigants' hidden agendas for both formal litigation and mediation processes (Conley and O'Barr 1988, pp. 182–84, 196–97; Guthrie 2001, p. 165) (chapters two and five). Additionally, the findings on the negative transparency effects of mediation add to the scant knowledge on how litigants actually feel during negotiations and what factors affect their perceptions (chapter six) (Relis 2002, p. 175).