Most people only experience serious disputes and litigation occasionally in a lifetime. For a large organisation, they may regularly be involved in disputes. The repeat player advantage suggests that the party who has experience of using a process will have benefits over a first time user. For example, the repeat player will know how the system / rules / procedure works. This will enable them to prepare and anticipate outcomes better than the novice.
For certain processes such as mediation and arbitration, this may even include a familiarity with the mediator or arbitrator. Some academics suggest that this familiarity may lead mediators / arbitrators to give advantages to the repeat player during the process. For example, an arbitrator who knows a party well may readily agree to an extension of time for them to file a document based on his experience of their previous reliability, whereas a first time party may not receive this type of concession.
There is concern that this advantage goes beyond making the process easier to also lead to greater success for repeat players. Significant amounts of research and theoretical conjecture have been devoted to this issue.