AI tools can help students and trainees get more out of simulations, which are key parts of many courses and trainings. People generally love doing simulations but often don’t have enough time to get their full benefit. That’s where AI really can add value.
Training the Coach
The RPS Negotiation and Mediation Coach (RPS Coach) can be particularly helpful in simulations because it was trained using Real Practice Systems (RPS) checklists for attorneys and mediators, which practitioners have raved about. Though designed for mediation, they’re also helpful for unmediated negotiation, with practical suggestions for all sides of the table.
These checklists aren’t based on any single negotiation or mediation theory. For example, they can help people respond to a hard bargainer or be an effective one themselves. They include suggestions for interest-based negotiation, with extensive menus of intangible interests and creative options in addition to lump-sum payments. The Coach draws on the Litigation Interest and Risk Assessment book, which helps people value and prioritize intangible interests and consider them in combination with expected court outcomes (aka BATNA values).
This document provides the table of contents for both the attorney and mediator checklists. Each item links to a menu of considerations and techniques. The lists are quite extensive (though not exhaustive), covering a wide range of preparation steps and post-session strategies – not just what happens during the sessions.
Items in the checklists – and RPS Coach responses – are suggestive, not prescriptive. There are no single right answers. They offer menus to spark ideas and help users decide what they want to do and how to do it, not dictate what they must do.
Using the Coach in Simulations
Preparation before mediation and negotiation sessions is critically important – but too often it gets short shrift (if any shrift at all) in practice and training. RPS Coach can provide structured guidance to help prepare for negotiation and mediation sessions.
Of course, simulations generally focus on what happens during sessions, and RPS Coach can suggest lots of procedures during these sessions, not just helping parties resolve disagreements.
Much of the learning happens in the debriefing stage, yet that often gets squeezed for lack of time. The checklists offer detailed guidance for reflecting on specific cases and participating in ongoing educational practice groups. The Coach can help people de-brief in groups, something that we should encourage them to do when they are in practice.
RPS Coach isn’t just for people playing practitioners. Parties can use it too – not only to engage with their counterparts, but also to communicate better with their own attorneys. As everyone knows, Lawyers Are From Mars and Clients Are From Venus. Here’s advice from the Coach to the plaintiff in a medical malpractice case about getting her attorney to take seriously her interest in getting an explanation, acknowledgment, or apology from her doctor.
In my courses, I’ve seen students playing attorneys do a horrible job of working with clients, which royally pissed them off. The Coach could help train law students to better serve their clients. In this chat, the Coach offered helpful strategies for the attorney to respond to the client’s concerns in the malpractice case.
People can use the Coach individually or jointly in attorney-client conversations, private meetings with mediators (aka caucus), or joint sessions.
An intriguing recent study, When AI Joins the Table: How Large Language Models Transform Negotiations, found that when both parties used AI, it produced “84.4% higher joint gains compared to non-assisted negotiations. This improvement came with increased information sharing (+28.7%), creative solution development (+58.5%), and value creation (+45.3%).” When only one party used AI, that party “gained substantial advantages [as] buyers achieved 48.2% better deals and sellers 40.6% better outcomes compared to their counterparts.”
So in your next simulation, consider encouraging or requiring people to use RPS Coach when preparing for, participating in, and/or debriefing negotiation or mediation sessions. Provide this background document explaining how it works. The link to access the Coach is on the last page. If you use this in your simulations, please let me know how it works.
Coaching You to Create Simulations
If you’re finally ready to retire simulations like Sally Soprano – beloved though they may be – you can use RPS Coach to help create customized simulations to achieve your learning objectives. For instance, here’s a simulation it developed where there’s no apparent zone of possible agreement. The chat includes tips on running and debriefing the exercise. It also illustrates that the Coach handles transactional negotiations as well as dispute resolution processes.
The Coach was trained using Suggestions for Using Multi-Stage Simulations in Law School Courses, so you can use it to design multi-stage simulations too, like this probate mediation simulation.
Overcoming Barriers to Using AI
One scholar described the “AI productivity paradox”: people feel they don’t have time to figure out how to save time. In my program on how mediators use technology, about two-thirds of participants said that they used AI, albeit to varying degrees. Even so, some participants were hesitant worried about errors and the constant changes in technology.
It’s understandable why people might put off learning about AI. Yet it’s clearly becoming an essential part of our lives, especially for dispute resolution practitioners. So faculty and trainers should educate ourselves and prepare our students and trainees to make good use of it in their work.
RPS Coach is a Good Way to Start Using AI
RPS Coach is a good way to start using AI if you haven’t done so already.
It’s remarkably easy to use. Just log in and type. And so far, it’s produced really good responses. Not perfect, but pretty darn good.
Using it can help people get a feel for both the capabilities and limitations of tools like RPS Coach. To get the best out of RPS Coach – or any AI tool – you may need to play a bit of conversational ping pong. AI tools may not “understand” what you are asking, and they often provide fairly short answers. So you should ask clarifying follow-up questions and test their assumptions.
Try it. You’ll like it. And your students or trainees probably will too.
Coming Attraction (Still No Popcorn)
Up next: Using the Coach to help with every instructor’s favorite task: grading.
Stay tuned.
