Module 7

Your path and practice: training, accreditation, building a practice, income and wellbeing

Mediation is one of the few legal-adjacent careers that people enter from many directions: lawyers, judges and paralegals, but also counsellors, social workers, teachers, HR managers, engineers, surveyors, police officers and diplomats. The work rewards patience, curiosity and fairness more than any one qualification. It is also a field where the gap between the training and the practice is large. Many people complete a mediation course and then find that cases do not arrive. This module sets out how people become mediators, what training and accreditation involve, how to build the experience that training does not give, how mediators get cases, what income looks like and how to run a practice, and it is honest about the emotional load. It ends with the Mediator Practice Planner, which puts the numbers in front of you, and the Role Explorer. It is not personal career advice, and the details of training, accreditation and fees differ greatly by country.

General education on the work of a mediator across legal systems, using invented people, services and cases. It is not legal, clinical or career advice, and it does not qualify anyone to practise as a mediator. Mediation law, accreditation, confidentiality, enforcement and safeguarding rules differ between countries and change: check the rules that apply to you with your accrediting body, your service and your regulator.