Negotiation Law Blog

No, I’m not going to suggest that you blog.

In 2006, I started blogging on negotiation for lawyers with the LexBlog Network which has grown and prospered during the six years I’ve had my lawyer-blog home there. Yesterday, the son of LexBlog founder Kevin O’Keefe, Colin O’Keefe, conducted an interview on my view of the state of women in the law.

If someone had given me this advice when I graduated from law school in 1980, I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have followed it. But that’s because I was always ambivalent about my legal practice. It was great, don’t get me wrong. But it wasn’t my bliss. My bliss lay elsewhere and I didn’t want to spend my entire living breath doing nothing but legal work, legal networking, legal writing, legal thinking, legal talking.

Today. It’s impossible to go back and make major life decisions all over again. But if you want the law to be your career and if you want to practice the most sophisticated and complex law with the brightest people in the world, here’s some good advice for you – the young female lawyer.

Here is Colin's introduction, then the video.

I’m hosting an anti-cat-fight, support your sisters, sponsorship and mentorship campaign this week so I was pleased to see an announcement for the first annual (so optimistic!) National Girlfriends’ Networking Day.

Here’s what I’ve learned in 30+ years in the legal market, 25 of them in litigation firms of all sizes and reputations and eight of them facilitating the resolution of litigated disputes.

The women in your firm may mentor you (teach you the ropes) but not sponsor you (put their skin in your game).

Or the women in your firm may do nothing for you.

Or, worse, the women in your firm may sabotage you.

Men will too so don’t think this is about women hating other women.

This is about the accumulation of wealth and power and no gender owns avarice.

It may seem at first as if the men are more friendly and helpful to you than the women.

That’s often true.

The men like you because you tend to work 22% longer and 10% faster than your male colleagues do before you feel that you’ve earned your yearly salary. That means you’re diligently doing your male mentor’s work for him and don’t expect enough compensation for it.

You’re not a threat.

Yet.

You don’t ask for raises or negotiate bonuses.

Sure, you get a raise every year, but you don’t ask for more even though you’re making somewhere between 20 and 30% less than your male colleagues of the same year or the same book of business or the same talent, skill, dedication and hard work (billable hours).

When I was at the annual gala for the 100+ year old Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles (WLALA) recently, the Mayor said from the podium that he loved his women lawyers because “they never asked for a raise!”

The nearly 300 attendees dropped their jaws pretty much at once.

Really?

Really!

Those helpful, loyal men?

Don’t count on them when you ask for compensation that’s the same as theirs.

When you begin to be a threat, they’re not nearly as loyal as they’ve been while you were turning out dynamite work for them at 2 in the morning.

Continue at Forbes Woman

I used to help attorneys, insurance adjusters, physicians and patients resolve medical malpractice cases. Most attorneys and mediators call these cases “pure money” disputes because they don’t believe the personal relationship between the doctor and his former patient has anything to do with the resolution of the lawsuit.

It only took a few months mediating all types of litigated disputes – fights over intellectual property rights, unfair competition, collection, personal injury, professional malpractice and breaches of contract – to conclude that no dispute is “only about money.”

Money is a Subjective Measure of Value

As I wrote in an academic article on the many subjective meanings of money

Although contemporary money seems to have shed all of its qualities except its quantity, ‘its oneness or fiveness or fiftyness,’ we do not in fact use money as if it were fungible. We experience the value of a dollar earned differently from the way we experience one that is stolen or given to us as a gift and we spent it differently as well.

Even money’s form exerts some control over the way in which we are willing to deploy it. Credit card companies have recently seen the benefit in selling ‘debit’ cards as a means of making the gift of money (rather than carefully chosen things) appropriate in settings where cash would seem gauche or even insulting.

Gifts of money are generally meant to be expended on a single item or experience and are typically delivered with injunctions that the recipient buy something ‘frivolous’ or do something ‘luxurious.’The recipients of ‘cash’ gifts are expected to report back on the special use to which the gift was put.

If the beneficiary of the largesse were to spend the money on rent or groceries, it would surely be taken as an insult to the donor and embarrassment to the donee, or else cause for general alarm at the donee’s unacknowledged impoverished state.

When we respond to our friend’s needs rather than their desires, we tend not to give monetary gifts but to (often reluctantly) make loans. And where we might happily and without serious thought spend $50 on a gift, we might well wring our hands at the prospect of lending such a sum for necessities.

A dollar is not simply a dollar.

In helping attorneys negotiate the resolution of litigation, mediators aid them in resolving the non-monetary justice issues – issues capable of resolution primarily through a process that begins with accountability and ends with apology.

Continue at Forbes Woman

Nature gives you the face you have at 20; it is up to you to merit the face you have at 50. — Coco Chanel

Today we’re talking mostly about beauty and whether those blessed with it get a better deal than their less attractive peers.

At least some of the answers to that question can be found in Coco Chanel’s famous comment about beauty quoted above.

But first the research.

Beauty is a Powerful Tool of Persuasion

Assuming that the “hits” a quality-describing word elicits from a search engine indicate the relative importance the quality described, I recently googled “beauty” and “intelligence.”

Beauty edged out intelligence by only a slight margin — garnering 697 million to the 652 million hits generated by intelligence. For what it’s worth, people apparently aren’t so interested in coupling these two qualities.

Searching both beauty and intelligence offered up only 26 million hits.

Many beautiful young women (and that’s pretty much all young women, ladies) assume that men fascinated by their beauty will not respect their intelligence. And that makes them angry. The research should help defuse that knee-jerk response.

Physically Attractive People Presumed to Be More Intelligent

In the early 1980′s, social science researchers found that physically attractive people are not only considered more intelligent and competent than their less fetching peers, but are presumed to be more competent in fields completely unrelated to physical attractiveness — such as piloting an airplane.

Other research studies followed, showing that we also expect physically attractive men and women to be more trustworthy, reliable and charitable than their less attractive peers, as well as better educated, stronger, and wiser.

Studies on electoral habits have shown that attractive candidates receive as many as two and a half times the number of votes as unattractive candidates and that voters do not realize their bias. Whether this confirms or disproves the adage that politics is show business for ugly people is up to you.

Beauty and Justice

The influence of beauty does not stop at the political choices we make. Our judicial process is also susceptible to the influences of body dimension and bone structure.

Researchers have found that attractive male criminal defendants are twice as likely to avoid jail time as unattractive miscreants. That’s why trial lawyers dress their clients up.

The relative good looks of civil litigants also influences juries, which award twice the damages when plaintiff is better looking than the defendant and half the compensation when the defendant is more physically attractive than the plaintiff.

As Robert Cialdini wrote:

Good looking people enjoy an enormous social advantage in our culture. They are better liked, more persuasive, more frequently assisted, and seen as possessing more desirable personality traits and greater intellectual capacities.

It appears that the social benefits of good looks begin to accumulate quite early. Research on elementary school children show that adults view aggressive acts as less naughty when performed by an attractive child and that teachers presume good-looking children to be more intelligent that their less attractive classmates.

Continue at Forbes Woman

This is a guest post by estate planning attorney Sona Tatiyants.

 I started law school a decade ago. At the time, the post 9-11 economy was on a major decline and law schools across the country were seeing a huge surge in the number of applicants.

Hundreds of thousands  of college grads were applying seeking a J.D. and I was one of them.

Like many people before me, I hated law school. I remember reading Scott Turow’s One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School. I could relate. But I was not at Harvard, and my law school’s name alone was not going to open up doors for me.

Still, it all turned out well.

Do I regret going down my chosen path? Not at all.

But would I change things if I had the opportunity? Absolutely! 

If I could go back in time, I’d give the following advice to myself and to all law students, at Harvard or elsewhere.

Play Nice With Your Classmates – One Day They Will Be Your Opposing Counsel

The cut-throat atmosphere of many law schools brings out the worst in people. This is unfortunate but understandable. You’re constantly stressed. You’re worried about the attrition rate. You’re worried about passing the bar. You’re worried about getting a job.

It’s very easy to start seeing your classmates as enemies and treat them accordingly. But this is a big mistake. Be nice to your classmates because one day they will become your colleagues, referral sources, and even opposing counsel. Being nice in law school will help guard your reputation and will pay off in spades long after you graduate.

Discover Your Lawyering Personality

Take all the classes that pique your interest. Take advantage of internships and summer association positions to discover what type of law practice fits your personality best.

You may think that I’m crazy to say this. You may be thinking that law grads should consider themselves lucky to get any legal job in this economy.

But realize that most lawyers who hate their job feel that way because it does not suit their personality.  Trust me, I am speaking from experience.

My first job out of law school involved many administrative hearings and depositions. I was in an adversarial position day in and out, and I hated stepping into a court room knowing that someone would win and someone would lose.

Continue at Forbes Woman