Victories often come only after significant cost and delay. This is hardly likely to generate repeat business. Mediation is as different from this as different can be. As a lawyer in the mediation room, you live, you survive, you succeed, by your wits and your wits alone. The Marquis is gone.
Mediation can be the equivalent of guerilla warfare.
Generally, after brief opening statements during which the mediator asks the sides to take notes and not to interrupt each other, the gloves are off. The shackles of civil procedure and evidence law no longer limit the bounds of effective advocacy. With all parties present, the interplay is instantaneous, not protracted over weeks or months. A client comes to a litigator with a story about what has happened to him in his businesses or his life. The litigator wedges that story into a template of legally cognizable claims and defenses.