Thanks to Kim Wright, at Cutting Edge Law, I learned about a wonderful TED talk that David Hoffman gave: Lawyers as Peacemakers. Really?!? Yes, Really. It describes his personal journey from a hippie seeking social justice to lawyer who sometimes litigated to full-time peacemaker practicing mediation and collaborative law (CL). It is an inspiring talk, … Continue reading Fabulous TED Talk by David Hoffman on Lawyers as Peacemakers
President Obama came to prominence in 2004 with a speech in which he argued that there isn’t a red America and a blue America but rather a single United States of America. Looking back twelve years later, this may seem like a rather odd notion in a country riven by intense political polarization. President Obama … Continue reading Presidential Lecture on Listening and Compromise
This year, like last year, I ended my negotiation course with students discussing their personal recipes for success in negotiation. To give them some ideas, I assigned them to read Andrea’s cute piece (written along with half the rest of the field) with various recipes. I wanted them to think about their own needs and … Continue reading This Year’s Recipe for Success in Negotiation
Good. Now I have your attention . . . for the nanosecond before you check your Facebook page. I just read two articles about the difficulties of “single-tasking,” aka paying attention. A cute piece in the New York Times identifies a number of problems with multi-tasking with electronic devices and quotes psychologist Kelly McGonigal who … Continue reading Please Put Away Your Damn Phone and Pay Attention
For the final stage of a simulation in my negotiation course, one group of students negotiated with a video hookup to a student who had to be out of town. I hadn’t planned on this experiment (which worked well), but it got me thinking – a dangerous activity, I admit. For quite a while, faculty … Continue reading Have You Done a Simulation of a Negotiation by Video?
In a recent post, I described the University of Missouri’s upcoming symposium “Moving Negotiation Theory from the Tower of Babel: Toward a World of Mutual Understanding.” This post is to highlight the student writing competition co-sponsored by the Missouri and Marquette law schools in connection with this symposium. If you are teaching a negotiation or … Continue reading M&M Student Writing Competition on Negotiation
In a recent post, I described the structure of Missouri’s upcoming symposium entitled “Moving Negotiation Theory from the Tower of Babel: Toward a World of Mutual Understanding,” which will take place on October 7, 2016. In this post, I tell why it came about and what I hope it will accomplish. Missouri’s Center for the … Continue reading Why We Are Conducting Missouri’s Tower of Babel Symposium and What I Hope We Accomplish
Probably like many readers of this blog, I have been so busy with many things at work that I rarely have taken the time to study something in depth unless it was necessary for some work project. For many of us, the last time we really did so was when we were in school as … Continue reading A Wonderful Opportunity to Learn More About Negotiation
This seems like an appropriate time to review that best-selling negotiation guide written in the 1980s. I refer, of course, to The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump. (What – you were expecting Getting to Yes?) The leading presidential candidates from both major political parties have a lot of professional negotiation experience and … Continue reading Review of Best-Selling Negotiation Text
In an earlier episode, we established that there is widespread confusion about what the heck is the difference between a BATNA and MLATNA. I created this table for my negotiation class illustrating the relationships between WATNA, MLATNA, BATNA, bottom lines, and ZOPA. It is based on a simulation of a simple personal injury case. Hopefully … Continue reading Clarifying BATNA, MLATNA, WATNA, ZOPA and More
