This Note helped to distinguish the factors that an aspiring mediator should consider before setting her sights on a mediation career. While law students who believe that they can simply walk into a mediation career are probably subscribing to a myth, it is still possible for them to succeed as mediators. There is certainly room to innovate within the mediation field, just as creative entrepreneurs are constantly finding new ways to deal with issues that society expected had been long settled. There are always new surprises. At some point a mediator decided to offer services on the Internet to accommodate the needs of distant disputants, and a new industry was born at that very moment. But, certainly, one’s mediation discoveries do not have to be so innovative that no one had recognized them in the past. As Jose Feliciano, a veteran mediator, notes, "I cannot think of a better time to be involved in the ADR field…presenting us with many wonderful and exciting opportunities"¹⁷⁹

Perhaps the greatest opportunity to discover a mediation career involves practice areas that the materialistic multi-door masses avoided in their efforts to earn the largest salaries. In other words, reaching members of communities where lawyers refused to venture may be the key. Somewhere there are a number of people who still do not know how mediation works. These people still have disputes they cannot settle on their own. In other places, there are people who are too old or sick to travel to mediation centers or law offices. But, these people would surely invest in the services of a mediator who would take the time to visit them. And, let us not forget the multiple private schools, small-scale business operations, or non-profit organizations that would gladly hire a mediator to structure a skills-building training seminar, if only they knew enough about the mediation process to find a willing trainer. The novice mediator may actually be at an advantage because she can still gain exposure to a number of practice areas before settling on a specialization. While the first step is always the scariest, note that a mediator’s personal mission will be no different from her professional one: investing her energies to create a "win-win situation."¹⁸⁰

179 Feliciano, supra note 14 at 4.
180 Almost every mediation text in print suggests that the goal of mediation is to help both parties walk away from a mediation session feeling as though they have achieved something.