Need CLE Credits? Mark your calendars!

The American Bar Association Section of Litigation will hold a live teleconference and webcast on July 14, 2009 titled “Deal or No Deal: Improving the Odds of Successful Mediation.” Reinsurance and Insurance expert Katherine Billingham from KB ReSolutions, Inc. and Randall Kiser from DecisionSet will present at the event. Randall’s article Lets Not Make a Deal: An Empirical Study of Decision Making in Unsuccessful Settlement Negotiations was featured recently in the New York Times.

Donald R. Philbin, Jr., friend of this blog and adjunct professor at Pepperdine’s Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution will also speak at the event. Here are two excellent  papers written by Don:  The One Minute Manager Prepares for Mediation: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Negotiation Preparation published in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review and  Deal or No Deal? or Perhaps a Better Deal? The Impact of Improved Information published by CPR.

Find out more about the event here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

When last we left Ari and Terrence negotiating Ari's compensation Terrence had ceremoniously offered Ari "NOTHING!!!"

But we're not talking only money here.  We're talking power and agency in the psychological sense, i.e., agency as the capacity to control one's own future.  Before the "nothing!!!" offer, Ari had told his wife he was still "afraid" of Terrence even as she attempted to prop him up by reminding him that he was Terrence's partner now.  Although Ari wants control of the agency,  his strength falters when Terrence comes back from a seven-year sabbatical. 

Ari's discomfort in the scene below is palpable.  Terrence asserts his authority ("I hope you're not planning to expense the Bat Mitzvah to the agency"); implies that Terrence's daughter had better instincts for talent at eight years old than Ari has now; and, previews his plan to take over Ari's five-year relationship with the talent of the hour -- Vincent Chase. 

Ari is dealing from a position of psychological if not actual weakness.  Having Terrence back on the scene is a little like going back home for the holidays after a few years at college.  You feel independent but it takes only a few minutes with your parents to revert to your powerless teenage self.  The final blow to Ari's self-esteem below is delivered in the form of a "gift."  $50,000 for Ari's daughter's Bat Mitzvah.  Ari is fifteen years old again.

Sensing Ari's weakness, Terrence moves to consolidate his power by taking over a staff meeting from which he excludes Ari.  But Terrence has over-played his hand.  Using Terrence's violation of the agency's folkways ("you embarrassed me in front of my troops") Ari pries an apology out of him and wins his first battle over who can summon the other's attendence by fiat.   

When Ari returns to the negotiations, he has re-set the bargaining table in a way Lax and Sebenius in 3-D Negotiation would applaud.  The subject of the negotiation is no longer Ari's share of the profits, but the value of the company itself and Ari's share in it.  Note how Ari takes credit for the lion's share of the company's present value and emphasizes the company's vulnerability if Ari leaves.

The deal is sealed but the check unwritten and Terrence has no intention of fulfilling his promise when he learns that Ari intends to open his own agency, (tortiously) raiding Terrence's shop of its agents and clients. In a remarkable power play, Terrence brings together the "five families" Hollywood, to threaten Ari with ruin if he so much as offers CAA's mail room boy a paid position. Quick on his feet, Ari accuses Terrence of anti-Semitism (making Terrence the member of an "out group") and then promises not to touch any agency's clients other than Terrence's.

With no money to open his new agency, Terrence's agents are not inclined to follow Ari until an unlikely partner offers to fund his venture, below.

As Lax and Sebenius instruct:

3-D Negotiation involves not one, but three dimensions, all of which are in play more or less concurrently throughout an[y] effective negotiation[:]  1. Tactics  2. Deal design 3. Setup.

Deal designs, say the authors, create lasting value.

Smart people working at the drawing board can . . . discover hidden sources of economic and noneconomic value, then craft agreements -- design deals -- that unlock that value of the parties involved.

In the Entourage negotiation, Ari unlocks his own value when he finds the courage to leave the safety of Terrence's agency and open his own.  By episode's end, Ari has changed the players, the subject matter of the negotiation and the balance of power in town.  This is 3-D negotiation at its finest (even though it also rolls out at its most shameless).

All of that said, don't miss the opportunity to appreciate Ari's "at the table tactics" in negotiating the sale of his interest to Terrence.  He enters the room confidently, refuses to permit Terrence to use his old power plays ("save a tree; say it out loud"); re-anchors Terrence's $4 million open with "my counter is $#@$ you"; explains his own value; diminishes any claim Terrence might have to the present value of the agency; signals his firm willingness to walk away; and, demonstrates his commitment to stay away in the absence of a realistic offer ("I have a rich wife who loves to spoil me").  The power shifts and the deal is done in two minutes flat.

Yes, it's Hollywood.  But all good fiction, which Entourage certainly is, rests on hard facts, all of which are brought vividly to life here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Does it ever serve a purpose?

One extremely good answer to the question whether an insulting first offer ever has a purpose can be found at Steve Mehta's Mediation Matters Blog Taking Escalates More than Giving.

In this example from Entourage, Terrence's insult is reciprocated by Ari in conflict escalation (as Steve predicts) and Ari's eventual victory as demonstrated by my longer post about this episode, Negotiation from a Position of Weakness, Hollywood-Style.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

I was reading a great article in the New York Times this morning about "blue sky" transparent diplomacy in light of Obama's Cairo speech and was intrigued by the phrase "constructive ambiguity" in international diplomacy.

The full Obama-Cairo Speech below:

Check out Experts Say Full Disclosure May Not Always Be Best Tactic in Diplomacy.  While citing the importance of back channel communications, the author quotes "one of the nation's most experienced career diplomats and former under secretary of state"  as identifying the two "home truths" in international diplomacy:

One is, don’t tell lies. The other is, you can say more in private than you can in public, but they have to be consistent.

This brought to mind not simply the one or two memorable instances in which I caught mediators in deception during my litigation practice, but a recent experience communicated to me by a friend about one of those $15/K a day mediators.  I ask for the full 411 on these mediations because I'm intrigued by the value $15K/day buys.  Here's the story.

My friend called me during a recent mediation to tell me that his mediator had just left the room after leaving this message with his "team."

Your opponents just asked me to make a mediator's proposal of $X.Y million.

Assuming that this disclosure was not a breach of confidence, I had to ask myself whether it was simply a (manipulative) hypothetical "offer" approved by the other side in form and content that the other side could safely disown.  In either case, I felt it was (a) unethical - i.e., a breach of confidence; or, (b) partial (not neutral, which is also unethical).

Someone could likely talk me down off the ledge on this one but I'm having trouble seeing it as permissible mediator behavior.   Assuming it wasn't a breach of confidence, it raises the question whose ox is being gored here?  How much manipulation by the mediator is acceptable - is ANY manipulation acceptable and if the mediator is manipulating, is it POSSIBLE for him/her to do so without also being PARTIAL?

I have "caught" mediators in deception during my practice (and have not been quiet about my experience).  In case mediators do not recall legal practice, let me remind them that counsel talk to one another and despite our differences usually trust one another more than we trust our mediator.  If you lie to one of us or disclose something you shouldn't be disclosing, don't let the separate caucuses in which the mediation is taking place mislead you about the state of "play" in the litigation.  If the mediator is dishonest, will be found out.

If we do not hold ourselves to the absolute HIGHEST POSSIBLE ethical standards, our credibility, and our careers, are seriously at risk.

Would any of my fellow mediate.com bloggers like to weigh in on this?  Geoff Sharp, Jeff Thompson, Phyllis Pollack, Stephanie West Allen, Nancy Hudgins, Colin Rule, Tammy Lenski, Josh Weiss, Jan Frankel Schau, Jeff Krivis, Mariam Zadeh, John DeGroote, Steve Mehta, Arnold Zeman?

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (5)
• Trackbacks

How smart is Chris Hill at Construction Law Musings to have a guest blogger every Friday?  That's just the kind of collaborative problem-solving you need in your litigation counsel, particularly when you're facing multi-party construction litigation.  This week, Chris was kind enough to ask me to add to the construction law conversation taking place every day at his tremendously useful, entertaining and enlightening blog.  Excerpt from Six Ways to Insure Your Construction Mediation Will Fail below.

1. Leave the Decision-Makers at Home

A mediation – particularly a multi-party construction mediation – is more drama than law; more character than rights; and more emotion than reason. Mediation, like trial, requires the lawyers to restore the texture, dimensionality, morality and personality back into the dispute that we lawyers flatten for the purpose of satisfying the law’s requirement that we litigate only the “relevant” facts necessary to satisfy legal “forms of action.”

On game day, it’s not the mediator, but the parties themselves who must decide who is bluffing and who is not; what allocation of responsibility among the parties feels fair; whose claims of poverty or freedom from liability have the ring of truth; and, which parties have deeper pockets or greater negotiation flexibility than their attorneys have claimed.

Just as you wouldn’t want your jury to “call in” their verdict, you don’t want the mediation decision-makers miles away from the mediation table when the cards are being played. Remember that people seek out lawyers only when they feel they have suffered an injustice. Righting that wrong requires more than money or dismissal. It requires the belief that you, the attorney, have gotten your client the very best deal possible in light of the facts finally revealed, the personalities involved and the hard realities faced.

2. Leave Early Because the Other Parties are Acting in Bad Faith

Continue reading here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

Check out franchise law blogger Michael Webster's post at Blue Mau Mau on the Harvard Program here.  Excerpt below. 

How do we know that people are bad negotiators? For more than 30 years, theorists have been devising little bargaining puzzles. In these very simple problems, people routinely leave money on the table. Routinely fail to make the best possible deal.

Why? There are many types of answers, and my expertise is looking at how people failed to manage the process of both expanding the pie, creating value, and demanding their fair share of the pie, claiming value because they failed to comprehend their strategic position.

The process of managing or mismanaging the creating/claiming value process has been extensively studied, starting in the 60's with Walton and McKersie's A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations.

One explanation of why people are bad negotiators, something Bob Mnookin stresses, is that people often look past their interests in common and go directly to undue focus on adverse interests.

We have all heard the term "win win", but what does it really mean? Bob Mnookin talks about the Program on Negotiation, an executive training program at Harvard.

 

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

This article (Relationships are Key in Job Searches) flogging this book (Whacked Again! Secrets to Getting Back in the Executive Saddle) landed in my email box from law.com this morning.

I have to say that I agree with magazine mogul Tina Brown that we're in a "gig economy" not a job economy.  What does that mean?  It means doing an inventory of your dreams right next to a realistic assessment of your skills, along with a time line for getting your own business up and running, with or without investors, remembering that in a "gig economy" barter is a perfectly acceptable alternative to cash and in the age of the internet (Networking Wisdom in Mentoring Circles) hundreds of marketing tools that can reach millions of people globally and thousands of people locally, are right beneath your fingers on the keyboard connected to the computer that brings you the most exciting set of opportunities since we decided to send men to the moon -- social networking (now there's a proper run-on sentence, the reward for which is buying myself a new copy of Elements of Style which every job-seeker and new entrepreneur should do post-haste since written communication is the key to successful online business development). 

That said, for those who NEED A JOB RIGHT NOW to pay off their law school loans (remembering that dischargable or not, we no longer have debtors' prisons), here's today's Law.com advice:

The book gives a 12-step plan for landing a new job: 1. finding passion and creating vision; 2. creating a brand; 3. creating a value proposition; 4. creating stories; 5. developing a marketing plan; 6. getting a message out; 7. creating a marketing document; 8. meeting the friend's friend; 9. power résumé; 10. preparing for an interview; 11. negotiating terms; 12. landing the job; and the next step.

The book emphasizes the importance of keeping up contacts after landing in a new job -- knowing that another may search may be ahead. But it suggests maintaining contacts by looking for ways to help other people with a "pay-it-forward" approach. "We all need help at some point," the book says. "The concept is that you are thankful for those who helped you in the past."

Villwock told the group that in his experience, the most successful CEOs and other professionals are those who are most passionate about their work. "When they stop having fun, that's when they stop and go on to the next job," he said.

He also advised the group that attitude and personal skills are as important as professional credentials. From observing executives, he said, "half their success has nothing to do with performance on the job. It has everything to do with ability to sell themselves and build trusted relationships."

If you substitute business plan for power résumé and starting the business for landing the job, you've got a perfectly great recipe for engaging the gig economy eagerly awaiting your contribution.  Listen up!  You didn't get the highest PSAT and SAT scores, graduate cum, magna or summa, ace the LSAT, study your $#@% off, learn lawyering skills, conquer your fear and pass the bar exam to be hat in hand looking to be someone's apprentice galley slave. 

Think about it and join the rest of the gig economy. 

We're looking forward to your unique and valuable contributions to the new economy right now!

The writing on the inside of the secret entrepreneurial decoder ring?  MONETIZE EVERYTHING!

AND WOMEN!!  JOIN THE PROFESSIONAL WOMEN'S NETWORK OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.  WE'RE ONLINE NATIONALLY AND "ON THE GROUND" LOCALLY.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Worth reading from last week's Mediator blah blah blog (the Lord Chief Justice arms himself with a hammer); just in case you missed it or didn't download the .pdf as I just did this morning.  Thanks Geoff!

Let us take a blank sheet of paper and imagine that we are trying to create a system which would provide a satisfactory means of resolving civil disputes, bearing in mind, without being over dramatic, that in the end, it becomes almost inevitable that some civil disputes will end up in criminal activity. I do not think I am exaggerating.

A few years ago I was taught a lesson by a very intelligent young woman in one of our County Courts. We were talking of the cost – the exorbitant cost as it was then - of taking proceedings for very small sums of money. She explained to me that the cost of just starting the proceedings would represent her children’s shoes – she thought this a disproportionate cost. She knew areas of the City where her husband could go and find someone who would throw a few bricks through a window for £50 – no doubt she was right. And, perhaps, that would be more effective, she suggested than a judgment and getting back the compensation. A little self-help could end up with a brick being used against an individual and a few bricks being thrown back in return.

In short, a civilised community has to provide a system which means that those in dispute can refer to an independent tribunal for a decision. It is a further requirement that the system should actually exist and be capable of being used. If court fees are disproportionate or if legal fees are disproportionate the system is not open to those who cannot afford its processes.

My experience in practice at the bar was that some of my clients wanted their disputes sorted out. They had tried to sort them out before they got to the stage of seeing a solicitor and going to counsel. Others of my clients, or should I say, it was always my opponent’s clients who were unreasonable, didn’t want to sort the dispute out at all. There were all sorts of reasons. One is that very human characteristic sometimes but not always an attribute, the indomitable bloody mindedness of the bull dog.

So that on your sheet of paper the system which we are creating has to cater for both those who wish to settle and those who do not. If both sides want to sort out their dispute, and they have tried and failed, being sensible people, their next step would not be to come to lawyers, but to go and ask someone they trust to try and sort out their dispute, to see where there are points of disagreement and points of agreement. Let’s give it a name. Why not call it “mediation”? A successful mediation is a wonderful outcome. But with the best will in the world, it may not always happen. So you have to have a formal system.

You also have to have a formal system when one side or other to the dispute simply has no intention of sorting it out save in court and at the end of a protracted and expensive court proceeding. That is more troublesome. That may be the party with pots of money trying to squeeze the party with modest means away from the court process. That may mean that the party with real merit in his or her case is deprived of the proceeds of litigation for many years to the advantage of the intransigent party. It may be that the intransigent party is entirely justified and believes that there is no form of mediation which would be acceptable either to it or indeed in the end to the other side.

Now time and time again, in practice as a barrister and now as a judge, I have been perfectly well aware that if only the parties had come together at an early stage, long before they saw their counsel, long before they got to the door of the court, they could have resolved their dispute at a fraction of the cost and without the emotional expenditure and commitment of time and energy required by the litigation. One of the ways I used to try to persuade clients to settle was to remind them of a Chinese curse – “may you be involved in a litigation in which you are in the right.”

One vivid memory is a boundary dispute, or rather a dispute over a garden. My opponent and I turned up at the County Court armed with an abundance of authorities because we had to address limitation periods, laches, injunctive relief, indeed just about every facet of civil justice. In the end we negotiated a settlement in which he and I, not the judge, went to the land and armed not with books but with hammers and stakes literally pegged out the property into equal halves. The case was settled. In truth my opponent and I had acted as mediators. How much better for everyone if the mediation had happened much earlier.

Can we just take a long term view? Every few years, or about every ten years, there is a great hullabaloo about the cost of civil litigation. Arbitration, after all, is a system of avoiding the court process. Do you remember when employment tribunals began? These were to be informal meetings at which the opposing parties would put their cases to a tribunal, almost a form of palm tree justice.

Consider now how much more complicated and expensive the processes have become.
I do urge the Council to recognise this danger. The mediation process, could, unless danger is recognised and addressed, particularly if it is part of the court process, may eventually, and quite unintentionally, and by unforeseen accretion become increasingly formalised and procedural. It really must not eventually become just one more part of the expensive process that all of us are trying to avoid.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

I would not ordinarily post a power point presentation that is someone else's marketing vehicle.  Nor would I generally post a power point that is meant solely for the benefit of one side of any dispute (here, plaintiffs' personal injury attorneys).  I read though the entire lengthy presentation, however, and thought it contained some good tips over a broad range of issues that could well be useful to attorneys, clients and mediators in settling personal injury litigation involving the use of structured financial products.  So with all disclaimers considered given (not my opinions; don't vouch for accuracy, etc.) I uploaded the below presentation for anyone who might find it a useful jumping off point in this complex arena (i.e., it invovles arithmetic if not actually mathematics!)

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Check out Steve Mehta's recent post at Mediation Matters -- Negotiations Today Could Haunt You Tomorrow, once again confirming that the human interaction during the negotiation is more important to long term satisfaction with the deal than the raw economic benefit achieved.  As Mehta explains, a recent study reported Curhan, J., Elfenbein, H., Kilduff, G. Getting Off on the Right Foot: Subjective Value Versus Economic Value in Predicting Longitudial Job Outcomes From Job Offer Negotiations in the Journal of Applied Pyschology, 2009, V. 94, No. 2, 524-534 (.pdf)

found that the satisfaction with the experience the employees had during their job offer negotiations significantly predicted compensation satisfaction, job satisfaction, and turnover intention one year later.  By contrast, the actual economic value – meaning the value of the compensation package — achieved in the negotiation had no association with job attitudes or intentions to leave.

Interests In Employment Litigation

Just as the quality of the pre-employment relationship colors the entire workplace experience, so will a negative termination color the employee's retrospective view of the employment experience, thereby increasing the incidence of litigation.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Check out Balkinization's Why is Empathy Controversial?  or Liberal, an excellent analysis of empathic wisdom (and blind spots) on the Bench in the wake of a noted Republican's vow  to filibuster any Supreme Court nominee who might commit the (liberal?) sin of empathizing from the Bench.

Emotion terms are notoriously slippery. But if we understand empathy as the ability to take the perspective of another, it ought to be uncontroversial that empathy is an important component of judicial judgment. Empathy, so understood, is a basic and necessary tool for making sense of the intentions and actions of others.

So, as Mark Graber asks, who could be against empathy? And more particularly, why is empathy liberal, if we all use it? Perhaps because empathy goes by another name when it comes easily—for example, when Supreme Court justices take the perspective of those from similar backgrounds or with similar worldviews. This sort of empathy looks neutral and natural, not ideological or partial. It tends to be portrayed as garden-variety judicial reasoning.

We all use empathy, and despite our best intentions, it is always selective and riddled with blind spots. We can try to correct for this partiality if we are self-aware. But those who study cognitive psychology and decision-making find that we aren’t all that good at identifying and critiquing our own background assumptions. A better way to encourage this sort of correction is through debate with others who hold differing viewpoints. Judges, like the rest of us, make better decisions when forced to examine and articulate their premises.

Read on here.

According to a recent article in the New Yorker (voice of the effete empathizing liberal east-coast establishment) we owe our conscious mind -- that which makes us human -- to the mirror neurons that give rise to to empathy (because we could "feel" the mind of another, at some point we turned that thought back against ourselves and consciousness was born).

And let's not forget that some brain researchers believe it is impossible to make any choices whatsoever in the absence of emotion (the "pure" logical mind will make endless pro and con lists absent the "gut" response that finally permits us to decide).

What does this have to do with negotiation?  Anyone who continues to believe that decisions are (or could potentially be) the product of a solely rational process are losing the benefit of the emotional sway every great negotiator exercises over his or her bargaining partner.

Geesh, even George Bush professed compassion (so long as the government wasn't providing it).  Does the Republican Party really wish to become the home of Darth Vadar? /1

________________

1/  Perhaps Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's The Daily Show described coverage of the pairing best. The show aired a clip of The Weekly Standard's William Kristol saying of the back-to-back speeches, "Just going to be fun, don't you think? Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, you know? And I want to say that I was always on Darth Vader's side." Stewart retorted, "Now you tell us. You know, as one of the main intellectual forces behind the Iraq war, that's kind of a weird thing to admit. You might have wanted to mention, 'Oh, quick caveat to my plan on a new American century: I'm on the Darth Vader side.' "

From "Fear of Closing Gitmo" at the Daily Kos

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

(image from and link to last week's This American Life episode, No Map)

What do these two stories -- the first hilarious; the second infuriating -- have to do with negotiation?

First, listen to the introduction and first story in last week's brilliant episode of This American Life, No Map (podcast here).

The full chimp story (chimpanzee in red sweat-shirt, jeans and shoes causes the police to "un-arrest" his owner) is an hilarious example of a lose-lose negotiation impasse.  Lesson:  as the 12-step people caution:  "you can't save your face and your ass at the same time."  

The other, more sober tale, reveals the competing interests keeping American banks from pursuing the win-win solution that would permit "upside down" homeowners to remain in their houses and continue paying at least part of their debt.  Why?  Among other reasons, renegotiating loans secured by deeds of trust would require banks to carry a toxic assets on their balance sheets today rather than next year. 

Other impediments include the more practical road-blocks that impede efficient management of all organizations -- a lack of preparedness -- in this case, an inability to get mortgage renegotiation service centers up and running fast enough to keep up with the crisis.  We're hoping that the President's economic advisors already know this, or are still finding the time to download This American Life to their iPods or Blackberries.

Well worth a listen!

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Excerpt from the Loree Reinsurance and Arbitration Law Forum blog:

In our case, two of the three retroceded claims made up most of the $5MM. In the original joint cession, the Retrocessionaire had alleged improper, accommodation underwriting of serious medical issues. Since the parties’ prior achievements had built a spirit of cooperation and trust, Retrocedent C agreed to immediately retrieve from both its and Reinsurer B’s files additional underwriting and claims records which were shared with both the mediator and Retrocessionaire D. Through additional caucuses, the mediator helped the parties and counsel translate the substantive assessment of such records into rational, realistic and reasonable adjustments to the $5MM claim, narrowing the once “$5MM vs. rescission” gap to within $500,000.

For the full post documenting how the parties reached this stage and how the delta between the two parties was closed, read Mediating Reinsurance Disputes here, based on an article that appeared in issue 108 of JTW News - September 2006.  If you have any questions or comments concerning this post, please use the comments feature provided or email the author at peter@conflictresolved.com.  Copyright 2009, Peter A. Scarpato, Conflict Resolved (www.conflictresolved.com)

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

If you're worried about your law job becoming -- as they say in Britain - "redundant" or if you've already been laid off due to the recession, join Lawyer Connection which was born today as the result of a twitter conversation I had with Gwynne Monahan (who you can follow @econwriter).

Here's an exploration of what a mutual aid group is from the viewpoint of a social worker -- which speaks to me because I lived through my first husband's MSW in Social Work studies before he lived through my Law School experience (an eventual relationship-killer). 

Visit Lawyer Connection

From Andrew Cicchetti's Mutual Aid Based Group Work blog:

Mutual aid as group work technology can be understood as an exchange of help wherein the group member is both the provider as well as the recipient of help in service of achieving common group and individual goals (Borkman, 1999; Gitterman, 2006; Lieberman, 1983; Northen & Kurland, 2001; Schwartz, 1961; Shulman, 2006, Steinberg, 2004; Toseland & Siporin, 1986). The rationale for cultivating mutual aid in the group encounter is premised on mutual aid's resonance with humanistic values (Glassman, 2002) and the following propositions: 1) members have strengths, opinions, perspectives, information, and experiences that can be drawn upon to help others in the group; 2) helping others helps the helper, a concept known as the helper-therapy principle (Reissman, 1965) which has been empirically validated (Roberts et al, 1999); and 3) some types of help, such as confrontation, are better received when emanating from a peer rather than the worker (Shulman, 2006). Mutual aid transactions that occur amongst and between members stimulate cognitive and behavioral processes and yield therapeutic, supportive and empowering benefits for the members (Breton, 1990;Northen & Kurland, 2001; Shulman, 1986, 2006).

Obviously, we're not pursuing the therapeutic benefits of a mutual aid society as social worker Cicchetti is.  Having been a member of such a group (a community-based women's credit union in the early 1970's for instance) I can say that the experience is not only economically, but also personally, enriching.

Let's not wait for the economy to improve.  Let's start improving it TODAY.  We are the change we want to see in the world. 

JOIN US!!

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

British mediator and blogger Justin Patten (Human Law) has a terrific piece in his ezine today entitled Conflict is inevitable, combat is optional – how to negotiate without falling out.  Justin responds with sympathy to a recent survey calling his fellow Brits "the angriest nation in Europe," noting that the

wave of redundancies sweeping across the nation is forcing a number of employers, employees and their advisors such as lawyers and trade unions into conflict situation. As customers become slower and slower at paying added pressure is created for their suppliers and relationships become strained.

Because the "approach taken by those involved and their attitude in dealing with the conflict will have a significant impact on the outcome and the costs involved in finding a solution," Justin provides the following easy to implement solutions:

1 Avoid macho posturing – In an attempt to hide the weakness of their position some people are all bluff and bluster in conflict situations. . . . . (more)

2 De-personalise problems – My experience of disputes is that often things can happen due to personal issues between the individuals. It can be difficult to take the personalities out of a matter but believe me there are clear benefits. . . . (more) 

3 Focus on your own emotions – In many work environments there are unwritten rules that emotions are not to be expressed. Is this really wise?  . . . (more)

4 Listen – Effective communication starts with the speaker taking responsibility for understanding the language, perspective and experiences of the listener. . . . (more)

5 Analyse the Conflict – Research on problem solving indicates that the effectiveness of solutions increases significantly once the real problem is identified. . . . (more)

Justin Patten handles conflict for a living and whilst as a litigation solicitor he is familiar with the combat zone of the court room he much prefers to work with clients to achieve mediated solutions through negotiation and agreement. Contact Justin on 0844 800 3249 or email Justin here.

Further reading:

Negotiating for Excellent Results

Human Law Mediation has just published a new White Paper – Negotiating for Excellent Results – which contains advice and tips on how to negotiate with power and persuasion in conflict situations. You can download a PDF version of the White Paper here.

Keeping Away from Court Room Battles and Employment Tribunals

A White Paper with advice on How to save money, maintain business relationships and avoid negative publicity by embracing the power of mediation to resolve business and employee disputes. Download the PDF here.

You can subscribe to Justin's invaluable eZine here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

I'm re-posting below an article published in both the Los Angeles and the San Francisco Daily Journals (the local legal rags) about the dangers inherent in email communication.  I do so because I had several complaints about the use of abusive email by in-house counsel last week at my negotiation training as well as in my twitter network from attorneys exasperated with combative emailers who refuse to take telephone calls (see post about conflict avoidance here)

My advice?  Use the tried and true tit-for-tat strategy:  retaliate for uncooperative conduct and be quick to forgive as soon as your bargaining partners bring themselves back into line.  The advice I gave on twitter (@vpynchon) this morning was simple and pointed:  tell opposing counsel that you will program your email system to automatically delete all of their emails until they pick up the telephone and give you the courtesy of a return call.

Below, my Daily Journal article on the Dangers of Using Email During Litigation.

 

This story occurs in the spring of 2001, in a hotel room in Toronto, at 3 a.m., the morning of a deposition I've been preparing to take of an aging petrochemical engineer.

2001 is a  year I'd dreamed of since elementary school.  But the technological changes predicted in the science fiction of my childhood and adolescence are nothing like the "hi-tech" I'm living with now.  

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (4)
• Trackbacks

Among the most frequently asked questions at my negotiation trainings are these:

1. how do you negotiate with a sociopath?
2. how do you negotiate with people who are:
   
   1. evil
   2. dishonest; or
   3. 100% irremediable jerks
3. how do you negotiate when you are powerless (or simply weak)

Whenever someone asks me about negotiating evil, I think of Ken Cloke's brilliant book Conflict Revolution: Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism – How Mediators Can Help Save the Planet (my review of that book here).  Some time ago, when I had the bright but failed idea of launching an online conflict resolution journal, Ken kindly let me publish his article Mediating Evil, War and Terrorism the Politics of Conflict, some of which I quote below.  I like the way Ken framed the problem in his earlier book, Mediating Dangerously, as follows:

For those who live under fascism, oppression, or tyranny, or face a fierce, unprincipled adversary, or are afraid even to exercise their own freedom, it may become necessary to engage in conflict, resist oppression, reject settlement, and raise their voices against the silence of acquiescence . . . . [T]here are limits to the desirability of ending [certain conflicts] prematurely, without a fair and honest examination of the underlying issues, and without the full participation of people whose lives will be irrevocably damaged by them . . . Collaboration implies mutuality and partnership, and even compromise involves give and take, but fascism merely [takes] giving nothing in return.

Those who recall the free speech movement on college campuses in the mid-sixties (most notably at U.C. Berkeley) will remember at least some of the words spoken by FSM leader Mario Savio:

There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all.

One might criticize this rhetoric as being a bit overblown for the context in which the students were operating but they were young; had been taught in public schools to believe in and cherish freedom; and, were stunned to find that their on-campus speech was regulated, controlled, and, punished.  Savio's voice is the voice of all peoples who find their freedom suppressed or denied altogether.

So what do we, mediators and interest-based negotiators, do when confronted with tyranny?  Cloke's partial response (see full article here) is as follows:

Genuine, lasting peace is impossible in the absence of justice. Where injustice prevails, peace becomes merely a way of masking and compounding prior crimes, impeding necessary changes, and rationalizing injustices. As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton presciently observed:

  To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and leisure.... [T]heir idea of peace was only another form of war.

When millions lack the essentials of life, peace becomes a sanction for continued suffering, and compromise a front for capitulation, passivity, and acceptance of injustice. This led anthropologist Laura Nader to criticize mediation for its willingness to “trade justice for harmony.”

True peace requires justice and a dedication to satisfying basic human needs, otherwise it is merely the self-interest of the satisfied, the ruling clique, the oppressors, the victors in search of further spoils.

For peace to be achieved in the Middle East or elsewhere, it is essential that we neither trivialize conflict nor become stuck in the language of good and evil, but work collaboratively and compassionately to redress the underlying injustices and pain each side caused the other. Ultimately, this means sharing power and resources, advantages and disadvantages, successes and failures, and satisfying everyone’s legitimate interests. It means collaborating and making decisions together. It means giving up being right and assuming others are wrong. It means taking the time to work through our differences, and making our opponents' interests our own.

In helping to make these shifts and move from Apartheid to integration, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that for people to reach forgiveness, they needed to exchange personal stories of anger, fear, pain, jealousy, guilt, grief, and shame; to empathize, recognize, and acknowledge each other’s interests; to engage in open, honest dialogue; to reorient themselves to the future; to participate in rituals of collective grief that released their pain and loss; and to mourn those who died because neither side had the wisdom or courage to apologize for their assumptions of evil, or the evil they caused their opponents and themselves.

At the same time, they also needed to improve the daily lives of those who suffered and were treated unjustly under apartheid. Where shanty towns coexist with country clubs, peace cannot be lasting or secure. Where some go hungry while others are well-fed, terror and violence are nourished. In the end, it comes down to a question of sharing wealth and power, realizing that we are all one family, and that an injury to one is genuinely an injury to all.

Making justice an integral part of conflict resolution and the search for peaceful solutions means not merely settling conflicts, but resolving, transforming, and transcending them by turning them into levers of social dialogue and learning, catalysts of community and collaboration, and commitments to political, economic, and social change. By failing to take these additional remedial steps, we make justice secondary to peace, undermine both, guarantee the continuation of our conflicts, and prepare the way for more to come.

By the way, tomorrow is Ken's birthday.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEN!!!

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

Because I've been talking to a lot of people with services or products to sell in what they perceive to be a buyer's market, I've been giving a fair amount of advice about negotiating from a position of weakness.  That being the case, I'm just jotting down a few random thoughts on the matter.  None of the items below are meant to be exhaustive. 

Here's a previous post on the same topic.  And here's a great Malcolm Gladwell article on how weak nation-states and basketball teams can become the victors by playing the game on their own terms:  Annals of Innovation:  How David Beats Goliath.

PREPARATION

• assess everything you have of value to exchange with your negotiation partner
• assess everything your negotiation partner has of value to exchange with you
• assess everything you need or desire (minimum requirements to maximum benefit)
• assess everything your bargaining partner likely needs or desires

ASK DIAGNOSTIC QUESTIONS OF YOUR BARGAINING PARTNER

• what are their objectives
• how does your deal fit into those objectives
• what are their priorities
• when do they need to have the deal done
• are there any third parties who might add value to the deal
• what predictions about the future are they relying upon in setting their goals and priorities (business will go up/down; economy will improve/worsen)
• what metrics are they using to place a value on what you both have to trade
  

CREATE AND CLAIM AS MUCH VALUE AS POSSIBLE

• if the value you give to the deal is worth more in the hands of your bargaining partner than in your own hands, use the deal value rather than the trade value as the metric to measure the benefit you are providing
• when trading items of low value to you but higher value to your negotiation partner, use the higher value to anchor your offer
• when you are more optimistic about the post-deal future than your bargaining partner, consider building contingencies into the contract, i.e., if sales increase (as you expect them to) the value of the deal for you increases; if sales decrease (as your bargaining partner expects them to) offer to build contingency into the contract that will increase the value of the deal to your bargaining partner

NAME CONCESSIONS AND DEMAND RECIPROCITY

• when you make a concession, your bargaining partner should naturally feel the pull to reciprocate
• don't rely on your bargaining partner's natural tendencies
• when you make a concession, explain how valuable it is to your bargaining partner and how difficult it is to give up for you
• tell your bargaining partner that you expect proportional concessions from them

CONSIDER WHETHER YOUR WEAKNESSES MIGHT BE CHARACTERIZED AS STRENGTHS

If you're the smaller player, you may be in a better position to make novel offers; and you may also be more nimble, less burdened by bureaucratic red tape, and, better able to take risks.  You may also:

• pose a threat to a larger player, something your "deal" could lessen or eliminate
• present an opportunity to a larger player that it may wish to take advantage of while you are still small

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Here's part I of the Resource Materials for the full-day training which included this Power Point Presentation.

Part I includes articles (see the Table of Contents) on The Social Psychology of Conflict; Negotiation and Gender; Distributive Bargaining; and, Integrative and Interest-Based Negotiation.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

O.K., times are tough.  And it takes no small amount of courage to face the financial disaster that credit cards can cause to even those who feel themselves to be the most sober of financial citizens.  Then it takes real courage to pick up a telephone and make a request to a disembodied and not-likely-friendly voice to ask for help bailing you out of a mess you can barely believe you find yourself in.

I have three things to say about this.  First. The country's supposed financial geniuses are unable to pay their debts and are facing bankruptcy.  You are not alone.  Second.  There's nothing to be ashamed of, though there is something to be learned from this painful experience.  I know.  I was there during the recession of the early '90s.  Third.  You are not without remedy.  Take a look at "How to Negotiate with Your Creditors" at Entrepreneur Magazine this week.

Tips to help you negotiate with a creditor or collection agency:

 

• If you make a request that is denied for whatever reason, ask to speak with a supervisor.

• Don’t agree to pay more than you can afford when negotiating. Know in advance what your financial situation really is, then work within those confines. The last thing you want to do is negotiate a settlement or payment plan that you can’t adhere to.

• During your negotiating process, figure out what the creditor is willing to accept as a settlement. What’s their absolute bottom line? If you’re looking for a settlement, offering between 50 and 70 percent of what’s owed, either as a lump sum payment or through a payment plan, isn’t unreasonable. Achieving this settlement might take several rounds of negotiation, however.

• Avoid becoming intimidated by the person you’re negotiating with, even if they make threats about lawsuits.

• Most successful negotiations require several rounds going back and forth with offers and counter offers. The process could take days or weeks.

• If you can afford to settle an account by paying one lump sum (as opposed to using a payment plan), you’ll have more negotiating leverage.

• The person you’re negotiating with does this for a living and is a trained professional when it comes to debt collections. For them to use legal terminology during a conversation or in writing is a common tactic to confuse or intimidate you. Listen carefully to what’s being said and make sure you understand exactly what you’re committing to. Consult with a lawyer or credit counselor if you have questions.

• Make sure everything you ultimately agree to is put in writing, signed, and dated by both parties.

What to Negotiate for When Dealing with Creditors, Lenders, or Collection Agencies

• a lower interest rate

• the interest accrued to be waived

• the late fees, penalties, and/or legal fees to be waived

• the loan to be extended or restructured, allowing you to skip one or more payments with no penalty

• a payment plan that would allow you to pay off the amount currently owed, but with no added interest or fees added in the future

• a settlement that would include a significantly lower balance due (such as 50 to 75 percent of the total)

• favorable reporting to the credit reporting agencies or the removal of negative information from your credit report pertaining that to that account

Jason R. Rich is the bestselling author of more than 37 books including The Complete Book of Dirty Little Secrets: Money-Saving Strategies the Credit Bureaus Won’t Tell You, available from Entrepreneur Press. His books cover a wide range of topics, including computers, e-commerce, personal finance, career-related topics, and travel and entertainment. He also contributes regularly to major daily newspapers, including the New York Daily News, as well as national magazines and popular websites.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Yesterday, we talked about the different negotiation styles of men and women.  Today, we're going to explore how men can benefit from learning women-speak and women can benefit from learning man-talk. 

All of the data relied upon and excerpted below is from Gender Benders by Dianna Booher at the Negotiation Expert's blog.

I'm going to emphasize this fact as often as possible.  NEGOTIATION IS A SKILL THAT CAN BE LEARNED.  The first step on the way to being a great negotiator is to be conscious.  Be aware of what your own strengths and weaknesses, preferences and goals are. 

• Keep a journal of your negotiations.  You'd be amazed by how much you learn about the negotiation dynamic between you and your bargaining partner, as well as about your own strengths and weaknesses when you are willing to sit down and "tell the story" of the mediation to yourself. 
• Learn from those with whom you are negotiating.  Is there anything in their style or technique or process (preparation, investigation, bargaining moves, style, strategy, tactics, or demonstrated problem solving techniques) that you could incorporate into your own negotiation tool chest. 
• Practice, practice, practice.  Negotiate retail.  This requires courage, gets you used to the idea that you can get what you want at a price you want, inures you to the inevitable disappointments that prevent most people from even asking for a better deal than the one offered; and, gives you the opportunity to
• Question your bargaining partner about the interests (needs, desires, fears, preferences and priorities) that they must satisfy as a sales person in a retail environment, as well as to
• Learn about the contraints under which your bargaining partner is operating.  
•  Feel free to move up the ladder of authority while negotiating if you find that your negotiating partner does not have the authority, say, to give you ten percent off the price on the sticker.
• Exercise your ability to help your negotiation partner begin to care about satisfying your interests so long as his can also be satisfied (to, perhaps, a lesser degree than he might wish but is nevertheless willing to work for).

Here are some of the strengths and weaknesses of "male" and "female" negotiation styles which we can all incorporate, to some degree, into our own gender-transcending negotiation style.

Women's strengths and weaknesses -- remembering that nearly every "weakness" can be deployed strategically as a "strength" (from Dianna Booher).

1. Women ask questions meant as indirect objections,
2. Women ask questions meant only to solicit information to which men react defensively.
3. Women's language tends to be indirect, indiscreet, tactful, and even manipulative.
4. Women tend to give fewer directives and use more courtesy words with those directives. Example: "The approach is not precisely foreign to our designers"; meaning "They are familiar with it."; Or "Mary may not be available to handle the project" meaning "Mary doesn't want to handle the project."
5. Small talk: women talk to build rapport with others, and to explore their own feelings and opinions. Consequently, they consider many subjects worthy of conversation. They often talk about personal topics such as relationships, people, and experiences.
6. To women, an important component of conversation is simply "connecting" emotionally with another person.

Men's strengths and weaknesses (with the same caution that all weaknesses can be strategically deployed as strenths)

1. Men's language tends to be more direct, powerful, blunt, and at times offensive.
2. Men generally give more directives, with fewer courtesy words. Example: "Tom blew the deal with that client because of his stubborn refusal to negotiate on the delivery." Or "That's a half-baked idea if I ever heard one. You're dead wrong."
3. Men tend to regard conversation as a means of exchanging information or solving problems.
4. Men discuss events, facts, happenings in the news, sports, or generally those topics not directly related to themselves. 
5. Men do not always recognize indirect messages or pick up on nuances in words or body language. In short, they don't always accurately "read between the lines"; to understand a woman's meaning or question

This is necessarily a partial list; for a fuller list of men's and women's negotiating strengths and weaknesses, read yesterday's post (for a second time if you already have) with the view of turning every perceived weakness into a strength.

My own analysis of the "weakness can be strength" issue tomorrow.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Although I am indisputably a "woman lawyer," I have never thought of myself in those terms.  I'm a lawyer.  And I'm a woman.  I'm also a writer, a step-mother, a wife, a daughter, a river rafter, and an aficionado of squash (the game, not the vegetable), photography, literature, and theater.  Oh yes.  I'm also Caucasian. I rarely have to think of myself in those terms, however, because the society in which I live doesn't require it of me.  I'm aware of my skin color only when I'm with my African-American friends or in a racially mixed workplace (shamefully rare in modern American private legal and ADR practice).

I was forced to become more conscious of my gender when I became a commercial mediator and arbitrator five years ago because I am once again a "minority" -- something I hadn't been in legal practice since the early 1980's.  Naturally, I began to research differences in negotiation styles between men and women. What I learned wasn't surprising, but it is empowering.  Although we do negotiate differently, if we learn to move more easily back and forth across gender lines, we can all become better negotiators.

First, the "old news" about women's ability to negotiate as well as men from a 2008 article entitled The Different Negotiation Styles Between Men and Women from which all of the quotes below have been taken.

Although negotiation has always been an important workplace skill, it has long been thought to be the province of men: a competitive realm in which men excelled and women felt less capable.

I have lived the change in gender roles since I graduated from high school in 1970.  1970 was a year in which the newspaper's classified ads (yesterday's "Craig's List")  were "Help Wanted:  Women" and "Help Wanted:  Men"; and a year in which I took my high school's career preference test on the literally pink form which limited my choices to occupations like nurse (if I was good at math and science); teacher or social worker (if I was good at the liberal arts); and secretary (if I knew the QWRTY keyboard).  The cultural expectations of women, however, persist.

 "...our society still perpetuates rigid gender based standards for behavior-standards that require women to behave modestly and unselfishly and to avoid promoting their own self-interest" (Babcock, 2003). As women learn quite early in life "that competing and winning against a man can threaten his socially defined masculinity" and is socially seen as taboo. From the beginning of a woman's life, they are taught by society "that women are thought to be warm, expressive, nurturing, emotional, and friendly" (Babcock, 2003). When growing up girls are cuddled; baby girls are also 'thrown around' less and thought of as fragile. If everyone goes through their life with this mentality in mind, it is hard for women to break away from this stereotype and still be taken seriously and not as overbearing or overly competitive which can harm women in negotiation.

Here's the good negotiation news for women's acculturation.

•  "Women are more likely to use methods" (Babcock, 2003) in their negotiation, to follow a set of rules or steps to get to a final outcome."
• "They take a broad or 'collective' perspective, and they view elements in a task as interconnected and interdependent" (Conner, 1999).
• Women have the ability to see the big picture and come up with a systematic plan on how to solve it.
• They feel more comfortable through communication and work through each step by sharing experiences while figuring out what both sides can gain to achieve an integrated outcome.
• "Woman are usually more concerned about how problems are solved than merely solving the problem itself" (Conner, 1999) which is good in negotiation because of all of the small details to keep in mind when making negotiations.
• Instead of concentrating on what they want or need to get out of the negotiation women focus on what both sides need and how both parties can get what they want.

While these general tendencies of women (understanding that we all operate on a sliding scale of "femaleness" and "maleness") were previously believed to be negotiation deficits, they are now perceived as negotiation assets. 

The focus of negotiation recently has shifted to be a more win-win rather than a win-lose (Babcock, 2003), which is why women are tending to exceed more in today's negotiations. "Women take a more cooperative approach to negotiating" (Babcock, 2003) they are willing to work with the other person and are able to see both sides so both can get what they want. In a negotiation, women tend to ask more questions and do more talking one on one, however, "women discuss what is directly related to what each side wants introducing information into negotiations helps expand the understanding of the goals on both sides" (Babcock, 2003). This is good to build a relationship before the big negotiation start.

But let's not get all gender wars about this.   Let's instead focus on male negotiation advantages that can be adopted by women and female negotiation advantages that can be adopted by men.  The male advantages? (once again remembering that we are dealing with social and cultural stereotypes)

• men . . . believ[e] that they have a bargaining advantage [which naturally gives it to them]"
•  they also believe that they are entitled to more rewards and compensation [which makes them seek better results for themselves than women might]
• [men] have this greater sense of pride and self-importance so they don't believe that they should be the ones who have to back down from something that they want.
• Men . . . ha[ve] the ability to speak up more and use more distributive tactics
  
• They want to have their questions answered and find out the  information that they believe they are entitled to know.
  
• Men also want to make sure that people know what their ideas are and try and get as many people as possible to agree with them.
  
• [M]en make more remarks as . . . suggest[ions] that they are entitled to more than others and asserti[ons] [of]  their own worth; . . . thinking that people should hear them out
  
• Men are also seen as stronger more aggressive speakers than women.
  
• Some people become intimidated when a male speaker starts "pushing their weight around" during a negotiation. 
  
• men are seeking more power and in turn believe that they deserve more power.
  
• In some cases, men can seem to know more than women just because they can make whatever they say seem like the ultimate truth with everyone else being wrong.

How men and women can collaborate to maximize the value of these differing negotiation styles tomorrow.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks

With so much emphasis placed on Getting to Yes, we often forget the power - indeed the necessity -- of saying "no."

Think of yourself in that iconic bargaining environment, the foreign bazaar.  No matter how much of a buyers' market you're in, at some point, the seller must say no -- otherwise you'd just bargain him down to zero, or perhaps negotiate a deal in which he pays you to take the merchandise off his hands.  Fortunately for negotiators everyone, the Getting to Yes guy -- William Ury -- has also written an entire book on The Power of a Positive No.  As Time Magazine wrote at the time of "No's" release,

In The Power of a Positive No, Ury offers guidance on the flip side of reaching an agreement: how to deal with a situation in which you simply want to put your foot down. No is so often hard to say, Ury writes, because it highlights the "tension between exercising your power and tending to your relationship"--in other words, between getting what you want in the short term and keeping everyone happy for interactions down the road. People often err in one direction or the other, prioritizing either the relationship by saying yes when they long to say no or their own power by brusquely saying no and alienating the person they're dealing with. Then there is the ever popular route of avoidance--saying nothing at all and gaining neither what you want nor goodwill.

See Why Almost Everyone Has Trouble Saying No.

Ury's answer to "no" avoidance?

[S]erve your no sandwiched between two yeses. It will go down more easily and preserve your relationship yet still allow you to take a stand.

How does the famous "getting to yes" guy say "no"?  By "focusing on underlying interests instead of positions (discussing what you want instead of the way you've decided to get there) [and] developing another option ( . . . Plan B)."  To accomplish this goal, the negotiator must ask diagnostic questions about his bargaining partner's needs, fears, preferences and priorities.(.pdf of Northwestern Professor Leigh Thompson's enduringly great article Why Negotiation is the Most Popular Business School Course; see also chapter one of her must-read The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator here).

Assume, for instance, that you're selling software and your customer wants a broad indemnity agreement that amounts to a virtual insurance policy.  You know the type.  "I want to be indemnified for all litigation arising from my company's use of your software.  It's non-negotiable.  We'll pull out of the deal if you don't provide it to us."

Before saying "no, no, no" or feeling the need to temporize or mumble something unintelligible, determine whether your customer's demand is primarily being driven by need, desire, or fear.  Here, the underlying interest is perceived need based upon fear of potential liability.  Rest assured that your customer is not worried about everything.  There's some particular danger lurking in the back of his mine or in the contemplation of the manager to whom he's reporting. 

The diagnostic question is simple:  "what type of potential liabilities are you worried about?" When your customer answers your question, the "yeses" your "no" can be sandwiched between are legion.   

"We're always happy to craft an indemnity agreement that covers potential liabilities arising from, i.e., defects in the software that cause the type of harm you're worried about.  In fact, because infallible software has yet to be developed, we like to offer our customers a suite of services to quickly remedy any "defects" to prevent the liabilities you're concerned with.  And now that we're talking about it, let's define "defects" so that it fully expresses both of our understandings going forward.

The key is to slow yourself down during the negotiation so that you have time to reframe your "no" as an opportunity for both parties to get more of what they really want than they fear they need. 

As a former pastor of mine once told me, "God never says 'no' to a prayer.  S/he says 'yes,' 'later' or 'I have something better in store for you.'  Approach the material world in the same manner as he does and not only your opportunities, but your heart, will grow in the practice.  

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

My statistics page tells me that lawyers are not the only people searching for information about likely outcomes at trial.  The clients land here too.  For their benefit, here's a report from the Accident and Injury Lawyer Blog, penned last Spring but likely to reflect current trends as well. 

California Personal Injury Verdicts

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

I spent the day at an advanced mediation training session at the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles where I serve as a settlement officer. I came away troubled by the wide array of responses to questions concerning the mediator's "right" or "desire" or "need" to use deception in separate caucus mediation - the primary form mediation takes in Southern California litigated cases.

At the end of our session, I suggested to a fellow mediator that all separate caucus mediation is inherently deceptive. He is a sophisticated practitioner and knew exactly what I meant. My husband - a litigator of 35 years who is also (newly) on the District Court's Settlement Officer panel - recoiled at the idea.

Here, for your consideration, is an excerpt from a lengthy discussion of the issue from the Journal of the DuPage County Bar Association -- Defining the Ethical Limits of Acceptable Deception in Mediation by JAMS mediator the Hon. John W. Cooley (Ret.) 

[C]onsensual deception is the essence of caucused mediation. This statement should not come as a shock to the reader when it is considered in the context of the nature and purpose of caucusing. Actually, it is quite rare that caucused mediation, a type of informational game, occurs without the use of deception by the parties, by their lawyers, and/or by the mediator in some form. This is so for several reasons.

First, a basic groundrule of the information system operating in any mediated case in which there is caucusing is that confidential information conveyed to the mediator by any party cannot be disclosed by the mediator to anyone (with narrowly limited exceptions). This means that: (1) each party in mediation rarely, if ever, knows whether another party has disclosed confidential information to the mediator; and (2) if confidential information has been disclosed, the nondisclosing party never knows the specific content of that confidential information and whether and/or to what extent that confidential information has colored or otherwise affected communications coming to the nondisclosing party from the mediator. In this respect, each party in a mediation is an actual or potential victim of constant deception regarding confidential information — granted, agreed deception — but nonetheless deception. This is the central paradox of the caucused mediation process. The parties, and indeed even the mediator, agree to be deceived as a condition of participating in it in order to find a solution that the parties will find "valid" for their purposes.

Second, mediation rarely occurs absent deception because the parties (and their counsel) are normally engaged in the strategies and tactics of competitive bargaining during all or part of the mediation conference, and the goal of each party is to get the best deal for himself or herself.

These competitive bargaining strategies and tactics are layered and interlaced with the mediator’s own strategies and tactics to get the best resolution possible for the parties — or at least a resolution that they can accept. The confluence of these, initially anyway, unaligned strategies, tactics, and goals creates an environment rich in gamesmanship and intrigue, naturally conducive to the use of deceptive behaviors by the parties and their counsel, and yes, even by mediators. Actually, even more so by mediators because they are the conductors — the orchestrators — of an information system specially designed for each dispute, a system with ambiguously defined or, in some situations, undefined disclosure rules in which the mediator is the Chief Information Officer who has near-absolute control over what nonconfidential information, critical or otherwise, is developed, what is withheld, what is disclosed, and when it is disclosed. As mediation pioneer Christopher Moore has noted: "The ability to control, manipulate, suppress, or enhance data, or to initiate entirely new information, gives the mediator an inordinate level of influence over the parties."

Third, the information system manipulated by the mediator in any dispute context is itself imperfect. Parties, rarely, if ever, share with the mediator all the information relevant, or even necessary, to the achievement of the mediator’s goal — an agreed resolution of conflict. The parties’ deceptive behavior in this regard — jointly understood by the parties and the mediator in any mediation to fall within the agreed "rules of the game" — sometimes causes mediations to fail or prevents optimal solutions from being achieved.

Thus, if agreed deception is a central ingredient in caucused mediation, the question then becomes what types of deception should be considered constructive, within the rules of the mediation game, and ethically acceptable and what types should be considered destructive, beyond the bounds of fair play, and ethically unacceptable. Or, perhaps more simply, in the words of mediator Robert Benjamin, in mediation what are the characteristics of the "noble lie" — deception "designed to shift and reconfigure the thinking of disputing parties, especially in the conflict and confusion, and to foster and further their cooperation, tolerance, and survival"? Because formal mediation is generally viewed as "nothing more than a three-party or multiple-party negotiation," we can begin to formulate an answer to this question by examining the current limits of acceptable deception as employed by lawyer-negotiators.

New Zealand mediator Geoff Sharp blogged on this topic under the rubric "noisy disclosure" recently, noting that

Mediators can assist parties in reaching a zone of possible agreement by making limited and heavily filtered disclosures of the parties’ private concessions that the parties disclose in caucus sessions (Brown and Ayres call this “noisy” communication).

See my own short post on mediator predictions and false signals here. 

 I urge all my readers to comment, but particularly litigators like my husband who may not know what many mediators have apparently known for quite some time -- that they are making "filtered disclosures of the parties' private concessions" after promising to keep all separate caucus communications strictly confidential.

My husband assured me on the way home tonight that he will henceforth require all of the mediators he retains to guarantee him that they will not "signal" his negotiating positions, tactics or strategies to his bargaining partners.

Your thoughts?

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (4)
• Trackbacks

Although a California Court may properly sanction a non-party insurance carrier who possesses the authority to settle litigation for its failure to participate in a mandatory settlement conference, there is no statutory (nor inherent) authority given the Court to sanction the carrier or a party for its purported failure to negotiate in "good faith."  As the Court in Vidrio v. Hernandez (2d DCA) explained today:

In sum, even were we to agree with the trial court's assessment of the conduct of counsel and the [insurance] adjuster, the failure to increase a settlement offer or to otherwise participate meaningfully in settlement negotiations violates no rule of court and is not a proper basis for an award of sanctions.11 (See, e.g., Triplett v. Farmers Ins. Exchange (1994) 24 Cal.App.4th 1415, 1424 [“[w]e eschew any notion that a court may effectively force an unwilling party to settle by raising the specter of a post hoc determination that failure to do so will be evidence of failure to participate in good faith”]; Sigala v. Anaheim City School Dist., supra, 15 Cal.App.4th at p. 669 [“„[a] court may not compel a litigant to settle a case, but it may direct him to engage personally in settlement negotiations, provided the conditions for such negotiations are otherwise reasonable‟”].) [Defendant] filed an appropriate settlement conference statement; her lawyer and Mercury [the insurance carrier] attended the conference and participated in it. While the trial court‟s frustration at the parties‟ lack of movement is understandable, no more was required.
 

In particular, the Court of Appeal, held that the Court was not at liberty to "judge" whether the defendant and its carrier "should have" offered more than had previously been offered at a mediation either because the case was "worth" more or because the offer was so low in light of the attorneys fees and costs that would likely be incurred at trial.

I believe most mediators would approve of this ruling, even though it applies only to settlement conferences and not to mediations, the latter of which is protected from the Court's inquiry by Evidence Code section 1119.  Whether or not a mediator, a settlement judge, a party or a trial judge believes a defendant "should" offer more or a plaintiff "should" accept less by way of settlement, should not form the basis of an award of sanctions.  Not only would such a rule decrease citizens' trust and respect for the Courts, whose job it presumably is to provide a forum in which litigated disputes may be tried, such a rule would impermissibly chill the parties' Constitutional right to a jury trial.  

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

(and, yes, I am not only old enough to remember the "Second Wave" Women's Movement, I took a quite serious role in it, first as an unpaid volunteer and later through the federal government's "Program for Local Service" at the Center for Women's Studies and Services in San Diego)

If you're celebrating Easter tomorrow and bored with the relatives, tune into New Day Talk Radio for a live call-in program on negotiation for women.

I've quoted Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever before on women and negotiation.  I've also trained executive women to use their natural talents, skill and affiliative natures to overcome the statistics I'm about to give you, straight from Babcock and Laschever's site Women Don't Ask:  Negotiation and the Gender Divide.

Tomorrow, I'll be talking live on internet radio with PWNSC member and force of nature Lynette Jones who has only recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq.  Lynette and I had so much fun planning this internet radio-cast that I'm certain you'll enjoy our talk.

And if you need more reason to tune in, here are the dreary statistics on women and negotiation from Babcock and Laschever's book Women Don't Ask.

It's Necessary for Women to Negotiate Now More Than Ever Before

• Between May 2001 and May 2002, 39 percent of the American workforce changed jobs.

• In 2000, 76.8 percent of women aged 25 to 54 worked outside the home.

• The divorce rate hovers at 50 percent.

• Union membership is down 33 percent since 1983.

• Women's earnings relative to men's have stagnated at 73.2 percent.

• The percentage of births to single mothers (out of all mothers) has risen from 10 percent in 1970 to 33 percent today.

Women Don't Like to Negotiate

• In surveys, 2.5 times more women than men said they feel "a great deal of apprehension" about negotiating.

• Men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women.

• When asked to pick metaphors for the process of negotiating, men picked "winning a ballgame" and a "wrestling match," while women picked "going to the dentist."

• Women will pay as much as $1,353 to avoid negotiating the price of a car, which may help explain why 63 percent of Saturn car buyers are women.

• Women are more pessimistic about the how much is available when they do negotiate and so they typically ask for and get less when they do negotiate—on average, 30 percent less than men.

• 20 percent of adult women (22 million people) say they never negotiate at all, even though they often recognize negotiation as appropriate and even necessary.

Women Suffer When They Don't Negotiate

• By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.

• In one study, eight times as many men as women graduating with master's degrees from Carnegie Mellon negotiated their salaries. The men who negotiated were able to increase their starting salaries by an average of 7.4 percent, or about $4,000. In the same study, men's starting salaries were about $4,000 higher than the women's on average, suggesting that the gender gap between men and women might have been closed if more of the women had negotiated their starting salaries.

• Another study calculated that women who consistently negotiate their salary increases earn at least $1 million more during their careers than women who don't.

• In 2001 in the U.S. women held only 2.5 percent of the top jobs at American companies and only 10.9 percent of the board of directors' seats at Fortune 1000 companies.

• Women own about 40 percent of all businesses in the U.S. but receive only 2.3 percent of the available equity capital needed for growth. Male-owned companies receive the other 97.7. percent.

Women Have Lower Expectations and Lack Knowledge of their Worth

• Many women are so grateful to be offered a job that they accept what they are offered and don't negotiate their salaries.

• Women often don't know the market value of their work: Women report salary expectations between 3 and 32 percent lower than those of men for the same jobs; men expect to earn 13 percent more than women during their first year of full-time work and 32 percent more at their career peaks.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

In anticipation of working out Affiliated Organization agreements with SCMA and CDRC, current members of those two organizations (and others in the very near future) will receive special Enrollment Discounts as a benefit of your membership in either of those groups.  Group Discounts are also available for groups of two or more registering together.
 
Please visit AIM's site for more details and additional course listings.
 
The American Institute of Mediation cordially invites you to elevate your mediation practice
by joining us for one of our upcoming workshops.  Advance registration is required.

 

Be sure to read about available discounts, including Bring A Friend, Group Discount and membership in one of AIM's Affiliated Organizations.
 
 
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS:
 
 
Harnessing the Power of the Master Mediator
with Lee Jay Berman & Doug Noll
Wednesday afternoon - Sunday afternoon, May 6-10, 2009
 
Mediating Divorce Agreement
with Jim Melamed
Wednesday - Sunday, May 13-17, 2009
 
 
Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution
with Ken Cloke
Thursday - Saturday, June 4-6, 2009
 
 
Beyond Yes:  Deeper Wisdom and the Art of Negotiation
with Erica Ariel Fox
Thursday - Saturday, June 4-6, 2009
 
 
Settle More Cases by Mastering the Essence of Mediation
with Lee Jay Berman and Richard Millen
Thursday - Saturday, June 18-20, 2009
 
 
Building a Profitable Mediation / Collaborative Practice
with Forrest (Woody) Mosten
Thursday - Saturday, June 25-27, 2009
 
 
Post-Disaster Mediation Training
with Mel Rubin
Thursday - Friday afternoon, July 9-10, 2009
 
 
Mediating Mortgage Foreclosures
with Mel Rubin
Friday afternoon - Saturday, July 10-11, 2009
 
 
Mediating and Negotiating Commercial Cases
with Lee Jay Berman
Wednesday afternoon - Sunday afternoon, July 15-19, 2009
 
 
The AIM Institute is where leading mediators turn to continue their learning and career development.
 
 
WHERE:
 
Skirball Cultural Center
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, USA 90049
 
 
The American Institute of Mediation delivers “World Class Training for the Complete Mediator”.  Offering a unique and diverse curriculum whose sole purpose is to elevate a mediator's practice, the AIM Institute is where leading mediators turn to continue their learning and career development.  Being free of academic constraints and embracing other disciplines allows the AIM Institute to expand the frontier of this developing profession by offering practical courses designed to make an immediate impact on a mediator’s practice.  Our core faculty includes Lee Jay Berman, Ken Cloke, Erica Ariel Fox, Jim Melamed, Forrest (Woody) Mosten, Doug Noll and Mel Rubin.
 
Join our mailing list to stay apprised of new course offerings.
Join us on Linked In and Facebook.
 
www.AmericanInstituteofMediation.com

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

As every lawyer knows and most students of high school geometry must learn in mastering "proofs," the answer often comes first, the rationale later.  I used to say, "I'm a litigator, I can rationalize anything."  As a mediator, my rationalizations have turned from the way in which facts can be shoe-horned into causes of action or affirmative defenses to the way in which harm arising from a dispute (including, most assuredly, the moral harm of injustice) can be monetized.

Now David Brooks in the New York Times (which appears to have disabled the "copy" function/1) tells us that philosophy has been sacrificed on the alter of emotion in his column The End of Philosophy. 

As Brooks explains, reasoning comes after moral judgment and "is often guided by the emotions that preceded it."  The good news is that those emotions are not merely competitive.  Brooks again:

Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other, and stand together in the face of common threats.  Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history.  We don't just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals.   We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions.  We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

My mediation experience teaches me that the "soft" arts of influence, empathy, community-building, and prejudice reduction, are as important (and often more important) to the successful (i.e., satisfying) resolution of a lawsuit than our prized ability to parse the evidence,  rationalize away the bad and privilege the good to sell our "proof" to judge or jury.

Most importantly, I find that when attorneys' clients leave a mediation with the belief that a certain rough justice has been obtained, they are more satisfied with the outcome, and with their attorneys' representation of their interests, than they might have been had they left with 10% more change jingling in their pockets.

The experts who study mediation tell us that "neutrals" don't make the difference between settling or not settling.  The cases will settle with or without us.  The difference mediators make is not settlement, but  client satisfaction.  Satisfied clients are  an absolute necessity for a successful legal practice at any time.  In these hard times, legal practices may fail in the absence of resolutions addressing the justice issues your client sought out a lawyer to resolve in the first place.

Money is the instrument.  But justice is the issue.

 

 

 

 

_____________

1/  More about this at IP ADR later today.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

(image by the great Charles Fincher at LawComix)

Thanks first to LexBlog for giving yesterday's post here a shout-out but more importantly, thanks to LexBlog for giving Arnie Herz' post at Legal Sanity Why lawyers should get emotional with clients coverage in the same daily compilation of LexBlog client posts, a tremendous resource I highly recommend you include on your news reader.

You'll see from my lengthy comment there that Arnie is singing my song about the law and emotion and in particular, the fact that we cannot make decisions without emotion something every trial lawyer, negotiator, mediator and sales person knows down to the knuckles of their spine.  Excerpt from Legal Sanity below.

Here are two facts:

• There’s a client service deficit in the law.

• Lawyers tend to regard emotions – their own and other people’s – as irrelevant to their work.

At first glance, these two facts seem unrelated. But they’re actually closely (even intimately) connected. 

Some time back, I posted on the interplay of emotions and client service in this new era of customer control. I linked to a ClickZ article citing a (then) new book by Dan Hill called Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds. Launching from the premise that humans are primarily emotional decision-makers, the book discusses how emotions factor into our business opportunities in the marketplace and workplace. 

Picking up on this point from a slightly different angle, in a recent post, designer and marketing mentor Peleg Top says, Go ahead, get emotional. Top notes that, in marketing (and, I’d add, in providing) our services, “an effective way to generate action is to tell a compelling story, one that hits your customer’s emotions.” Suggesting that most service providers miss this mark, he observes . . .

For the remainder of Arnie's great post, click here.  And here's another great link on the same topic from Cutting Edge Law - the illicit relationship of lawyers and emotion.

More on the effective use of emotion in the negotiation of settlements soon.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Discouraged by the adversarial process?  Looking for lawyers who will handle your commercial dispute without going to "war" with all the expense and collateral damage that involves?

This excellent talk by Webb has been viewed 202 times, while "Drunk Lawyer" below has been viewed by nearly 300,000 people.  It's not surprising that drunken trial lawyers are far more entertaining than some old guy talking about attorneys bringing potluck to negotiate the resolution of a lawsuit. 

The question is this:  Do you want to pay for the entertainment of conflict or resolve it and move on with your plans to create a profitable future for your company and its employees.

"Drunk Lawyer" is, after all, free on YouTube!

Thanks to Cutting Edge Law for gathering together the Stu Webb and other videos on the revolution in legal practice that's being fomented right around the corner -- just about the time the BigLaw model fails along with dinosaurs like General Motors.

You didn't hear it here first.  But you will hear it here often.

This is the fourth video of this painful encounter on YouTube but it's the one in which the attorney is asked to "blow" a breathalyzer for the Court.

 

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Interviews with ADR giants: Mediate.com opens video archive for month of April

Posted by: Diane Levin in Cool Things on the Web, Mediation, Mediation in Practice

Mediate.com, the world’s premier source for news, information, and articles about mediation, has opened its video archive to the public during the month of April.

For description of the type of videos available, run right over to Diane Levin's blog by clicking on the title up top.

Thanks Diane for getting the word out about this.

For a taste of some of the offerings, watch this short video of Ken Cloke talking to Robert Benjamin about the evolution of conflict  over the lifetime of an individual as well as over the lifetime of a civilization.

Cloke is my mentor and his insights are just as useful to the settlement of commercial litigation than are some of the competitive negotiation skills I've learned along the way.  Check out all of Ken's videos.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Transparency Will Eliminate Unnecessary Wariness Between Parties (.pdf) from the April 1, 2009 Daily Journal

FORUM COLUMN By Victoria Pynchon As a mediator, the question I hear most frequently from lawyers is "How do I convince my opponent to sit down and negotiate without losing my competitive advantage?" Believe it or not, the answer is transparency. If you can remember way back to last July, when firms like Microsoft and Yahoo were still engaging in business as usual, you might recall that a merger fell apart because Yahoo was acting "weird." At least that's what Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, told the Wall Street Journal. "We had an offer out that was a 100 percent premium on the operating business of the company and there wasn't a serious price negotiation ... until three months later. It was a little ... weird." Lawyers know that three months rushes by in the blink of an eye. The board of directors meets. It seeks an analysis from the mergers and acquisitions people, who consult with outside counsel's antitrust department, which renders a decision but whose members first have to chat with the tax guys. Then there are the IP people with whom to discuss license agreements and, of course, the managers in the human resources department, who may or may not have advice about executive parachutes - platinum, golden or brass. And yet the Yahoo-Microsoft merger fell apart because Microsoft felt that Yahoo's delay was "weird." Let's go back to what every trial lawyer knows. In the absence of information, people make stuff up. Weird stuff. And the stories we tell ourselves about our uncommunicative commercial partners do not include one where the other guy is laboring day and night to fulfill our fondest desires. No. In the absence of information, we weave elaborate conspiracy theories in which our opponents are scheming to fleece us of our rights, obstruct our prospective economic advantage and turn our world upside down. Your dentist can tell you what your opponent wants to be told. A fully illustrated pre-game outline of the upcoming procedure that goes something like this "First I'll put a little numbing cream on your gum. That way the shot of Novocain won't hurt too much. Then I'll drill," she'd say, holding the fearful appliance up and switching it on. "It may sound louder in your mouth than it does here in my hand, but I'll only have it on for about five minutes, after which ... etc., etc." So how do you get your opponent to the bargaining table without sounding weak? You say "Listen, Ted, I know both our clients believe their cases are as good as gold but after an initial round of discovery, it's my practice to call a timeout to discuss settlement." Pause. "How does that sound to you?" Ted says it sounds all right. Which it does. Because Ted's got three incredibly acrimonious cases in his practice right now. Last year, one of his adversaries served an ex parte application with three bankers boxes of exhibits the day before Christmas. At 4:59 p.m.  And she scheduled the hearing for hearing on the day after Christmas. Sure, the judge would deny it, but Ted couldn't assume anything. He worked 15 hours on Christmas Day. So it sounds good to Ted. More important to your own litigation plan, your opponent has just agreed to come to the bargaining table, even though the actual meeting won't be held for several months. When the appointed hour arrives, you will not have to ask for a settlement conference at a time when it might show weakness on your part. It's part of the plan. For the remainder of the article, click here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks (1)

Challenges to good faith settlements that cut off the rights of non-settling defendants to seek indemnification and contribution from settling defendants are nearly always doomed to failure.  Trial courts are understandably eager to clear their dockets and there's no docket-clean-up pitcher like the first defendant to settle.  Deny the motion and bring a settled defendant and his trial-ready resources back in to the litigation when the first defendant-domino has just successfully toppled over?   Not likely, my friend. Not in the trial court at any rate.

These motions are so difficult to oppose that I've seen a target defendant threaten a marginal player (my client) with sanctions just for challenging the target's very low six-figure settlement in an eight-figure antitrust action.

It looks like low value settlements got just a little bit harder to defend yesterday when the Second District Court of Appeal reversed a trial court's good faith settlement finding in  Long Beach Memorial Medical Center v. Superior Court (Conners).

Best quotation:  "The hospital contends that the physicians‟ $200,000 settlement -- representing 2 percent of plaintiffs‟ $10 million damages estimate -- was so far out of the “ballpark” it was not even in the parking lot."  With a first runner-up to "If section 877.6 is to serve the ends of justice, it must prevent a party from purchasing protection from its indemnification obligation at bargain-basement prices."

The Court of Appeal relied upon the following "facts" in finding that the trial court abused its considerable discretion in granting a good faith motion to defendant physicians in light of defendant hospital's opposition.

• payment of $200,000 in settlement for a $10 million claim, which the appellate court found to be "wholly disproportionate."  As the Court opined "[e]ven a slight probability of liability on [the settling doctor's] part would warrant a contribution more significant than 2 percent."
•  the "evidence" supporting the court's finding that the settling physician's probable fault was "not de minimis,"  which appears to have been based upon Plaintiff's attorney's fault analysis (not generally known for its unbiased nature) and the physicians' counsel's candid (?) suggestion that his clients' contribution to a global settlement might be in the range of $1.5 million;
• the availability of $2 million in coverage, which "militated against a good faith determination" because the settlement constituted only 10% of available policy limits [carrier alert here!];
• the non-settling Hospital's contention that the physicians and their attorneys engaged in "bad faith tactics" during two mediation sessions -- a factor the appellate court acknowledged it was barred by mediation confidentiality from considering -- but which it neatly avoided by concentrating on post-mediation negotiations; /*
• the timing of the physicians' settlement offer, which suggested to the appellate court that their "reason for entering into the settlement with plaintiffs was to cut off the hospital's . . .  right to indemnity from the physicians" (I thought that was a legitimate reason to settle litigation but see the Court's citation to Mattco Forge, stating that when a defendant  “enters into a disproportionately low settlement with the plaintiff solely to obtain immunity from the cross-complaint, the inference that the settlement was not made in good faith is difficult to avoid.” Mattco, supra (emphasis added); and,
• a consideration I've never seen defeat a good faith motion before - that a settlment "dictated by the tactical advantage of removing a deep-pocket defendant . . . is not made in 'good faith' consideration of the relevant liability of all parties. . . ." (leading to the question whether we're now required to consider the interests of clients other than our own in entering into a settlement agreement on a contested claim)

If this case isn't depublished (an unfortunate California practice) or taken up for review, it will bear re-reading and deeper thinking about the stategy and tactics of breaking away from the mob to cut a separate deal beneficial to one's own client without "consider[ing] . . the relevant liability of all parties . . . "

Comments welcome!!

 

________________

*/  This is a good place to note the importance of either indicating in the parties' post-mediation written negotiations that the mediation is continuing (hence the communications remain absolutely protected) or that the mediation has concluded (hence bringing those post-mediation settlement negotiations outside the scope of the strictly enforced mediation confidentiality restrictions).

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Thanks to Diane Levin at the Mediation Channel for pointing me to a recent post by Ken Adams about the adversarial versus the "meeting of the minds" approach to contract drafting.  Thanks to both!

Contracts as a Relationship-Building Tool

That’s a long way from my let’s-have-a-meeting-of-the-minds approach. But I’m so buried in detail that I find it useful to be reminded periodically that contracts serve a broader function than mitigating your risk or handcuffing the other guy. I received just such a reminder in the form of this blog post by Douglas R. Griess of the Denver law firm Dymond Reagor Colville.

Some people regard the contract process as an adversarial one. I encountered a great example of that recently: someone I’ve been corresponding with used the word “opponent” in referring to a lawyer representing the other side in a deal. When the other side is the enemy, you’re free to indulge in “creative ambiguity” and other shenanigans.

Diane, who writes the best mediation blog in the country preceded my entry into the blogosphere by years.  She could have treated me like a competitor.  Instead, she taught me how to use html code (that's how long ago in blog years we "met"); hipped me to the folkways of the blogosphere; introduced me to her best professional contacts; and, all but baked me a hot apple pie.

If it works here on the internet - collaboration instead of competition - which is where the 21st century is heading mind you -- online -- it should work equally well in all of our professional and business dealings, particularly as we struggle with the one big failing economy that will rise when one of us rises and fall again when one of us falls.

Just sayin' . . . .

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks

I'm bookmarking this article.  I'll translate its main points from the academese to plain English this week-end along with insights on how to help your opponent make the legal decision you want him to make -- settle the case in the range of reason. 

A Third View of the Black Box:  Cognitive Coherence in Legal Decision Making by Professor Dan Simon of the USC School of Law.

And, somewhat off point but triggered by this image, an excerpt from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet on the way in which wisdom eventually arrives:

try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Thanks to Anne Reed at Deliberations for "tweeting" (@annereed) the article Flexible Approach To Acute Conflict Results In More Frustration and Anger, Study Shows.

The research subject of the article suggested that having a more flexible approach to resolving an acute conflict interaction results in more frustration and anger.

I'll need to see the study itself to be convinced.  The study described merely suggests that people offering a greater number of solutions to a party pre-instructed to stonewall will become angrier than those offering fewer solutions, i.e., that those who persist in trying, and failing, to resolve a conflict, get more and more angry and frustrated than those who give up more easily.

This does not suggest to me that "greater negotiation flexibility" necessarily results in a greater degree of anger in the negotiation dyad, but only in the person attempting to resolve a dispute that his partner has been instructed to resist.  Though an apt description of the adversarial process, this is not a fair depiction of persistent attempts to negotiate resolution where the negotiators are given a fighting chance of closing a deal.

As the article explained, study participants were told that a neighbor was playing music too loudly and instructed to ask that it be turned down.

During the interaction, the [participants] followed a script of uncooperative responses such that the task could not be resolved.

"We categorized the verbal responses of participants during the task into seven types of negotiation strategies, including problem-solving and aggressive/threatening. Individuals who used a smaller set of strategies were considered less 'flexible' than those who used a greater variety of strategies," Roubinov said.

The [researchers] . . .  also looked at the intensity of participants' facial expressions of anger or frustration, and measured participants' biological response to the task using cortisol, a stress hormone.

"Our results indicated that greater flexibility may not be the healthiest approach," Roubinov said. "Unlike less-flexible participants, those who tried a greater variety of responses showed more intense facial expressions of anger and frustration. Cortisol levels in more flexible participants also reflected an unhealthier biological response to stress than the less flexible participants."

Of course persistent participants become increasingly frustrated (and angry!) when their multiple suggestions to resolve a dispute are met with stonewalling from their negotiation partner.  This doesn't suggest, however, that "greater [negotiation] flexibility" is not healthy.  It suggests that stonewalling leads to anger, one of the reasons that mediators are employed to help all participants in a negotiation generate potential solutions.

I'll look forward to seeing the study when it's released but based upon this article, I'd say the conclusion drawn is misleading broad and unduly pessimistic.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Do you know?

• the benefits of making the first offer?
• how to frame an offer in a way it will be accepted?
• how to deal with competitive negotiators?
• how to break through impasse?
• the ten cognitive biases that can cause you to leave money on the table?
• how interest-based bargaining can increase negotiation options and result in a better deal?
• when is the right time to make a bracketed offer?
• what the pit-falls of mediator's proposals are?
• what negotiation strategies are most effective when negotiating cross-culturally?
• why you don't like to bargain?
• how you can leverage your existing skills to enable you to successfully negotiate anything?
• how to negotiate with difficult people?
• why the other side is acting "irrationally" and what to do about it?

Answer all these questions and more by attending the Pepperdine University Professional Skills Program.  Click on the image of the Pepperdine brochure for details.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Maximize your recession-era negotiations by understanding the folkways of your negotiation partners.  There's lots of useful information on the internet, including the following piece on negotiating with the Chinese

Masks for losing face

By Ron Cune 

The Chinese are much less direct in their communication than Westerners. Indirect signals, avoiding confrontations; to Western entrepreneurs the experience is comparable continuously walking on eggshells.

Situations such as price negotiations, an evaluation talk or the discussion of a problem with a Chinese partner seem like an impossible task. In the West we are used to freely expressing our opinion or giving our own interpretation of things. In China, however, it is customary to refer to existing rules or external factors.

Click here for remainder of post.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

I've scaled my MCLE way back this year, including any continuing education that requires travel unless, of course, it's something I'm speaking at to continue growing my business.  Some MCLE courses, however, stay on my radar -- particularly those that don't require me to leave the office and that teach me skills to help me thrive in hard times.  This IP settlement webinar is one of those continuing education courses I'd attend unless I thought I was already the best settlement attorney I could be.  So seriously consider joining me and Chicago-IP lawyer extraordinaire R. David Donoghue of Holland + Knight for Hard Times? Learn How to Negotiate the Best IP Litigation Resolution

ADR in IP Litigation from ALI-ABA

Wednesday February 18, 2009 from 1:00-2:00 pm EST

Why Attend?

In a difficult economy, intellectual property protection and assertion is more important than ever. The combined stressors of a poor fiscal climate and shrinking legal budgets place a significant strain on any business dependent upon IP assets. as companies face difficult economic decisions, it is increasingly difficult to fit the expense and extended uncertainty of copyright, patent and trademark litigation into a forward looking business plan. This one-hour seminar explores the use of alternative dispute resolution as a means of protecting intellectual property and business activity, while minimizing the expense and devotion of time related to traditional IP litigation.

What You Will Learn

This program examines how to move an IP dispute toward alternative dispute resolution; best practices for controlling the expense and length of the process; and best practices for successful alternative dispute resolution. Whether you are an experienced IP practitioner or simply one grappling with IP issues in your general commercial practice, knowing how to offer your clients a wide array of ADR options might make the difference between a practice that survives and one that thrives. The seminar will cover the following topics:

How to choose between litigation and ADR.

• The most successful strategies for guiding your dispute into the best ADR forum at the most productive time.
• The five basic rules of “distributive” or “fixed sum” bargaining that will give you the “edge” in all future settlement negotiations.
• The five ways to “expand the fixed sum pie” by exploring and exploiting the client interests underlying your own and your opponents’ legal positions.
• The Ten Mediation/Settlement Conference Traps for the Unwary.
  

Invest just 60 minutes at your home or office to learn about alternative dispute resolution in the IP field from this duo of experts. This audio program comes to you live on Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 1:00-2:00 pm EST, via your phone or your computer. Materials corresponding to the course may be downloaded or viewed online.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Nice piece on negotiating just about anything -- gym memberships; flat screen TV's; watches at retail stores --  on Marketplace with a little opining on the issue by yours truly.

Podcast:  Consumers Display Negotiating Nerve here.

Excerpt below:

KAI RYSSDAL: We're in what you might properly call a buyer's market. We saw it at Christmas with retailers all but giving things away just to get customers into their stores. And the worse the economy gets, the more it's true.

It doesn't apply everywhere, of course. But if you want a better deal on your cable bill or your broadband Internet, nowadays all you have to do is ask.

From Philadelphia, Joel Rose reports.

JOEL ROSE: My friend Amy Voloshin is not what you'd call an intimidating negotiator.

Amy Voloshin: I'm not really comfortable negotiating things. The only thing I've ever negotiated was my salary.

Amy says she wasn't even trying to negotiate with the sales guy at her local gym. But that two-year contract . . . it was a big sticking point.

Voloshin: I think I frowned. Then all of a sudden, it became a one-year commitment.

Amy got the shorter commitment -- and unlimited yoga -- for less than she expected.

TONY KIM: This is all upper body here . . .

Tony Kim shows me around City Fitness in Philadelphia, where he's director of sales. Kim says the gym might have lost a few dollars on Amy. But it got a happy new customer who might spread the word to her friends.

Kim: Hopefully, they'll come and see us. And see how just how honest we are, and how friendly we are. And they actually join, too.

The evidence is strictly anecdotal. But experts say consumers nationwide are taking advantage of the recession by negotiating better deals on all kinds of stuff, from flat-screen TVs to cosmetic surgery to the rent on their apartments.

VICTORIA PYNCHON: I think that if you reach the right person, you can negotiate anything in this economic climate.

Victoria Pynchon is a Los Angeles attorney and blogger who specializes in mediation. She says successful negotiators do lots of research ahead of time. And they also make sure they're talking to someone in a position to make a deal. Often that's not the first person who answers the phone. Pynchon says it helps to know the industry jargon.

Pynchon: I've found that the two words "customer retention" are a magic carpet ride to a good consumer deal. . . .

Click on above link for full story.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

From today's Wall Street Journal, Don't Buckle in Layoff -- timely advice for one of life's worst case scenarios - being made "redundant." 

First piece of layoff wisdom:

Negotiate Your Severance

While not required to do so by law, many employers offer severance packages to laid-off employees. The package's size is usually based on the employee's length of service -- some are entitled to two weeks of pay, while more seasoned employees may receive as much as a year's worth.

If you've been working at your company for only a year or two, there are ways to wring a little more pay from your employer. First, ask that any unused vacation days get tacked on to your final paycheck. (You can also try to do this with sick days, but it's often a long shot.) If you have a stellar record with the company, it's also worth asking for more severance pay or an extension of your health coverage.

For the rest of the WSJ's timely tips, click here.

And while we're on the topic of severance pay, here are a few tips about signing releases offered in connection with severance packages for those over forty.

Know Your Rights If You're Offered Severance by WorkWise columnist Dr. Mildred L. Culp

Two main forces — a declining economy and the graying of the workforce — are causing people to ramp up discussions about age discrimination in layoffs and severance. Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), employers must follow certain guidelines when they're offering severance, says Andrew Milne, senior counsel with the Bethesda, Md., firm of Garson Claxton L.L.C. He warns employees to:

• Watch for undue pressure to sign release of claims when handed a severance package. "You must be given at least 21 days to think about the package," Milne states, "when you're terminated but not part of a group."
• You must be given the option to revoke the waiver within seven days after you sign it. "This must be set out, in writing, in the release of claims," Milne notes.
• You also have rights if severance accompanies a group layoff or early retirement program, he indicates. The ADEA stipulates a period of 45 days or more to make your decision, along with the seven-day revocation provision. 

Milne says these requirements alone, unmet, won't give you enough to sue. However, if you have evidence of age discrimination, a signed release that doesn't follow ADEA guidelines won't block you from a bias claim.

For full story, click on headline above.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

From the Department of Counter-Intution we learn that our general assumption about pre-trial discovery -- that the open exchange of information will help align the expectations of disputants and increase efficiency by facilitating settlement /1 -- is probably inaccurate.

In When Ignorance is Bliss:  Information, Fairness, and Bargaining Efficiency, George Loewenstein, Department of Social and Decision Sciences and Don A. Moore, Graduate School of Industrial Administration, at Carnegie Mellon University, tell us that when "information . . . is complex or ambiguous enough to allow for different interpretations" by opposing counsel,

[s]elf-serving interpretations of fairness encourage biased estimations of the probability of prevailing in court and lead people to hold out too long, fight too hard, and settle too slowly.

Simply put, because we interpret incoming information as confirming -- and often strengthening -  our existing views, the "convergence" of adversarial views pre-trial discovery proponents hoped for, does not occur.  Rather, discovery tends to increase the parties' belief in the rectitude of their analysis, thereby proportionally decreasing the potential for settlement.  As Loewenstein and Moore explained:

In studies examining the self-serving bias, the magnitude of the bias was an extremely strong predictor of impasse, and two different manipulations that eliminated the bias led to close to 100 percent settlement compared to an impasse rate of about 25 percent in the absence of such debiasing.

The full article is well worth reading even though much of it is burdened with academese.

Because we attorneys pride ourselves on being able to "see the other side," here's an article entitled Confirmation Bias in Complex Analyses about a study in which intelligence analysts were provided with an analytic tool to help them overcome confirmation bias.  The tool -- Analysis of Competing Hypotheses -- was an

hypothesis testing matrix,” where the rows represent the evidence, the columns the hypotheses under consideration, and the cells the extent to which each piece of evidence is consistent or inconsistent with each hypothesis. The goals of the ACH matrix [were meant] to overcome the memory limitations affecting one’s ability to keep multiple data and hypotheses in mind, and to break the tendency to focus on developing a single coherent story for explaining the evidence—a tendency which [other researchers] hypothesized create[d] predecision distortions (and presumably the confirmation bias).

ACH [was] hypothesized to offset confirmation bias by ensuring that analysts actively rate evidence against multiple hypotheses and reminding analysts to focus on disconfirming evidence.

Absent the template, the process sounds a lot like that we attorneys use to test our theories and evaluate those of our opponents'.  Alas ACH provided the least amount to help to those study participants with professional analytic experience.  As the authors report, "ACH had no impact at all" on the professional analysts' tendency to give greater weight to the evidence that supported their theories and less to that which disconfirmed them.

What to do?  I'll attempt to find an answer before writing my next post.

______________________

Loewenstein and Moore quote Richard Posner on this expectation as follows: 

a full exchange of information…is likely to facilitate settlement by enabling each party to form a more accurate, and generally therefore a more convergent, estimate of the likely outcome of the case.

Richard A. Posner (1986:525) Economic Analysis of Law (3rd ed. Little, Brown 1986)

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

It's the British, of course, who we have to thank for the common law, the adversarial system of justice and that most lyrical denunciation of lawyers' passionate pursuit of legal procedure, Bleak House.  Charon QC is a serial podcaster, writer and producer of the satiric online soap opera West London Man, founder of the largest private law school in Great Britain, and all around QC about town.

My postcast interview with the great QC is here and his own is below.

Podcast 94: US lawyer Victoria Pynchon on ADR, mediation and settlement in the USA

Today I am talking to Victoria Pynchon, a US lawyer based in Los Angeles, California. She was a commercial litigator and trial attorney for 24 years before shifting her practice from representing clients in court to helping lawyers settle lawsuits hat involve greater risk, expense or time than their clients wish to expend. She this work through Judicate West Dispute Resolution Services, serves as a private judge (arbitrator) for the American Arbitration Association, is an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University and blogs at IP ADR and Settle it now. Interestingly Vickie also acts as a sherpa for Blawg Review the international rolling carnival of law bloggers and is on Twitter.

So who is Charon QC?  Let him tell you himself in this Podcast Interview at Family Lore, the blog of British family law attorney John Bolch.  To get an even better idea of Charon QC and the many reasons to read his blog, I give you his own introduction to himself at Charon QC the Blawg.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

In Hijacked on the High Seas When Somali Pirates Attacked, They Kicked Off 56 Days of Drama Over the Fate of a Ship and 28 Crewmen, The Wall Street Journal details the negotiation strategy and tactics that resulted in the release of the hijacked ship and its crew.

(pirate photo from the cat dirl sez blog)

Excerpt below - "Mr. Christodoulou," the shipping company's negotiator, called himself "Gus."

Mr. Christodoulou made an initial offer, which he declines to reveal. The Somali negotiators -- first a man named Hussein, then another who called himself Abbas -- took the offer to the pirates. They called back the next day with a response.

"Hey Mr. Gus, the Somali gentlemen say the money is very less," Abbas said, according to Mr. Christodoulou. "They need more money."

Mr. Christodoulou didn't budge. The Somalis needed to feel they had squeezed every dollar out of the ship's owners, he had been advised, so he shouldn't increase his offer early.

"We want you to get the money and move onto another project," Mr. Christodoulou recalls saying. "But you have to understand, we have our limitations."

The conversations continued daily through December, with little progress. By the end of the month, the families in India were feeling desperate...

Tom Rozycki, Mr. Christodoulou's public-relations adviser, says he decided a new approach was needed to keep the families hopeful -- and away from the media. Publicity could empower the captors and delay the hostages' release, he believed. It would also be embarrassing for the company, making it even more difficult to face the families.

On Jan. 6, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel near Mumbai's international airport, Mr. Christodoulou met with the families of the crewmen.

Seeing Mr. Sharma's hunger-striking grandmother in the front row, he knelt beside her and held her hand. "Granny, your grandson is going to get out. And we want him to get out and come back to the healthy loving family that he left," he said, according to Mrs. Sharma and Mr. Christodoulou. That night, Mrs. Sharma ate some strawberry ice cream, her son recalls.

By mid-January, the pirates on the Biscaglia were growing frustrated. "They told us they were going to take us off the ship and hide us in the mountains," Mr. Khan, the crewman, says. The pirates gave him and the others a mobile phone to call home. "We all told our families that unless the company gave more money, we would be killed," Mr. Khan says.

Mr. Kapade, the chief engineer, says he realized the pirates were trying to pressure the company by terrifying the crew. When he spoke to his wife on Jan. 14, he lowered his voice and spoke in Hindi. "Pass on to others that we're fine," he whispered.

By then, Mr. Christodoulou says, he thought it was time to raise his offer. He declines to say what he offered, but says it was close to what he thought the Somalis would accept based on the range provided to him by experts: $700,000 to $3 million.

He set about trying to raise the money. He approached his own company's biggest investor, Regent Private Capital LLC, a private-equity firm based in Tulsa, Okla. Lawrence Field, Regent Private Capital's managing director, declined to discuss the conversation with Mr. Christodoulou. "Regent does not negotiate with terrorists or pirates or any kind of criminal," he said on Friday.

That evening, Mr. Christodoulou called Per Gullestrup, the Danish chief executive officer of Clipper A/S, a larger competitor in the chemical-transport industry. The two men hadn't known one another until both had vessels hijacked by Somalis. They had often commiserated.

Mr. Christodoulou told Mr. Gullestrup he was struggling to raise the funds. A few days later, Mr. Gullestrup called back. "We'd be happy to advance the money if that's what it takes," he said. That promise allowed Mr. Christodoulou to secure a loan for the purpose.

Buoyed by that success, Mr. Christodoulou decided to apply some pressure. He raised his offer slightly, he says, and told the negotiator: "You have 24 hours to accept this offer, or we have to retract it."

Over the next 24 hours, the two sides exchanged at least 20 phone calls. "Mr. Gus, this isn't enough money for the Somali gentlemen," the negotiator said several times, according to Mr. Christodoulou.

The next day, Mr. Christodoulou went a little higher, he says. At 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 16, Abbas called back: "The Somalis accept your offer. Thank you very much. It's really been a pleasure to work with you on this project."

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

If you live in Ohio, there's some hope that you can negotiate your way out of foreclosure with a Court-annexed foreclosure mediation program.  See Foreclosure filings rise in five counties at the the Crescent News. Excerpt below.

UPDATE:  Connecticut also has a foreclosure mediation program: See
Success For Mortgage Mediation in Connecticut?

Effective July 1, 2008, Connecticut established a mediation program for foreclosures.  Statistics available for the latest period ending November 30 2008 reveal some interesting detail.  Mediators are working diligently to rescue residential homes from the auctioneer.  However, the program is missing important components.

In the period of July 1st to November 30th, there were 9,917 foreclosures filed in the state, an average of 450 cases per week.  In that period, mediators successfully negotiated 519 cases so that homeowners got to remain in their homes.  This is just slightly over 5% of all cases filed.  Only 380 cases or 3.83% resulted in a modification of the mortgage terms.  Despite the hard work of Connecticut’s mediators, the state’s residents are not being protected from foreclosure.

UPDATE:  You can find a podcast about the New Jersey foreclosure mediation program on the New Jersey Law Blog here!  Here's the New Jersey Court's material for that program.

UPDATE:  Thanks to the ABA Dispute Resolution Magazine for informing us that Minnesota now also has a foreclosure mediation program.  See Minnesota Law Offers Foreclosure Mediation to Homeowners at the Foreclosure Listings blog here.

UPDATE:  Foreclosure Mediation Programs Commenced Under Local Ordinance in Providence, Rhode Island: Providence Foreclosure Ordinance Aims to Protect Renters (excerpt below):

 PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - In an effort to protect families from foreclosure, Providence Mayor David Cicilline unveiled two ordinances Monday morning during a news conference in the city's Olneyville neighborhood.

The first proposal, Tenants Protection Against Foreclosures Ordinance , is meant to protect renters from eviction when their apartments are subject to foreclosure proceedings.

A proposed state law, that would have provided similar requirements, failed in the General Assembly last year. Rhode Island Housing Executive Director Richard Godfrey applauded Providence for stepping in to provide that protection.

The second proposal, Foreclosure Mediation Ordinance , would require financial institutions and property owners to engage in mediation with a HUD-approved counselor before moving ahead with a foreclosure.

UPDATE:  Lawsuit stops eviction in predatory lending case in California here.

"We have a court adjunct mediation program," said Schmenk. "The worst thing people can do is do nothing. The best thing is to get an answer filed on their behalf and open up a discussion with the mortgage holder to avoid it going to the foreclosure sale. Often times they can get something worked out with the lending institution short of losing their home."

When a foreclosed home goes up for auction bids start at two-thirds of the property's appraised value.

"Most time the lenders are holding significantly more than that in debt," said Schmenk. "We've noticed in a number of cases things get worked out and they are able to enter into some kind of accommodation that works for lender and mortgage borrower."

Schmenk encourages individuals facing foreclosure to take part in mediation programs.

There was a mediation just last week in Defiance County, said Cheryl Timbrook of the common pleas court. Overall, she said that they haven't had many requests for mediation so far.

Sonnenberg said Henry County has had a mediation program available for foreclosure for a year. She said there has been an increase in requests for mediation since the court started sending out information about the program as well as how to file an answer to the foreclosure summons received by defendants.

"I don't think many people knew about it before," she said.

Chris DelFavero, mediation coordinator for the state's Northwest Ohio Court Mediation Services, said he's seen an increase in individuals asking for foreclosure mediation. Northwest Ohio Court Mediation Services covers Henry, Defiance, Fulton, Paulding, Williams and Putnam counties. The program started last spring.

"With the help of the (Ohio) Supreme Court we established a process for referrals through the (county) clerk's offices," said DelFavero, who added that referrals started to pick up this summer. "Last month I had the most referrals since we started. I had 11 referred this past month. We started with just two or three a month, and now we have two a week."

DelFavero said that many cases involve jumps in interest rates, causing payments to increase or individuals who have seen a decrease in pay.

"Those are the cases we hopefully can resolve and come up with a repayment plan or refinance their rates," he said. "The general problem in the industry was the subprime rates. Some of it is the economy, with people losing their overtime. Sometimes loans are given based on people making $40,000 and then they lose their overtime so now they are making $30,000. They are working, but may have fallen four to five months behind. The lender usually will work with them."

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks

It's getting very late in hour eleven of the mediation and everyone is tired and cranky.  We've agreed upon:

• the total sum of the settlement;
• the period of time over which the settlement will be paid;
• the Stipulated Judgment in the event of default; and,
• the amount of the Stipulated Judgment (far more than the agreed upon settlement sum).

We could put these terms in a skeletal settlement agreement right now; include the "magic language" from Evidence Code section 1123 that will permit enforcement of the mediated agreement; and, let everyone get on the road, onto a plane and into bed.

Because these parties couldn't agree on what year it is, however, no one balks at my suggestion that we write up the entire deal -- settlement agreement with mutual general releases; the Stipulation for the Entry of Judgment; and, the proposed Stipulated Judgment itself.

The first problem is everyone's failure to bring a form Settlement Agreement and Mutual Release, let alone one that included enforceable terms for the entry of a Stipulated Judgment in event of default.   

ADVICE???  Carry these documents on a "flash" or "jump" drive whenever you're going to a settlement conference or mediation.  Heck, carry them with you to the first day of trial where you might be startled to learn that your adversary is prepared to settle the case right now!

Fortunately, I had access to my own files which contained detailed forms for everything we needed, forms I offered to counsel as guides. I did so only with the express understanding that I did not recommend my own forms as adequate, complete or enforceable.  

I'm just the mediator, not the legal representative of the deal in loco parentis.

It's a good thing we made the effort to fully document the deal because it threatened to fall apart over all of the following terms:

• the dismissal of ancillary proceedings
• forbearance from inducing future actions by non-parties
• liquidated damage clauses for the breach of certain critical deal points
• indemnification for future actions if induced by certain of the parties

Each of these items required separate negotiation and compromise and as to each I helped the parties calculate the degree of possible misbehavior by their adversaries and the protections that might "fit" the probable harm.  I do not believe the parties would have been able to resolve these terms (as well as others too confidential to mention) without third party assistance.  One was so difficult to predict both the series of possible events and potential remedies that we provided for arbitration of that term alone in the event of alleged default.

When we all finally left the building at one in the morning, we had fully completed paperwork, signed by all parties in hand. 

And yes, I was the only one present who could type.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (4)
• Trackbacks

The anger, suspicion and ill will that has characterized the first eight hours of this mutli-party, eight-figure antitrust mediation is about to heightened as I deliver Defendants' terms:  they will pay the settlement agreed upon in six equal yearly installments over three full years without any security to back it up.

Are you wondering what your mediator is thinking at times like this?

Aaaarrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

That "thought" is momentary, however, like the cry you squelch when the trial judge does something like, say, grant the other side's motion to disqualify your expert witness during the second week of trial. 

I don't have a plan, but I do have ideas.  Just as my suggestion that we use a bracketed offer to break impasse had eventually done just that, I'm already thinking of ways that the parties' most intractable and conflicting positions might move them toward agreement.

"They can wait," defense counsel is saying, "or they can try the case in February and see if they can collect it," to which a principal adds,  "this puts them on our side for a change.  If we make the money we believe we can, they'll benefit too."

"I thought you said you knew you could," I say, laying groundwork for the contingency ahead. 

"Yes, absolutely.  We know we can."

Back in the Plaintiffs' caucus room, the parties and their counsel aren't simply angry; they're flabbergasted.

"They sand-bagged us," says Plaintiffs' counsel.  "We'll report this to the Judge.  They didn't come here in good faith.  They're deliberately wasting our time."  

After some calming discussion about why the cash-poor defense would deliberately pay their own attorney and one-half of my daily fee in bad faith . . . a question to which no answer ever eventuated . . . Plaintiffs and their counsel begin to confidently predict the defense's inability to make a single installment payment.  Plaintiffs believe the defendants have resources - secreted away somewhere - but will never use them to settle this case.

When the temperature of the room has diminished to that of the sun's surface rather than its core, I ask about the possibility of a stipulated judgment in the event of default. 

"In a sum you hope the jury will award you at trial," I proffer.  "If you're right; if they have no intention, nor any ability, to pay even the first installment, you'll be in the same position on default that you'd be in if you prevailed at trial.  And if they're capable of paying, they're much more likely to do so if the alternative is a mutl-million dollar judgment against them."

Though the total sum of the Stipulated Judgment is the main topic of discussion over the following two hours, the parties' insistent conflicting predictions for the future make it all but inevitable they will eventually reach agreement.  If the defense never pays, the Plaintiffs will have their judgment more or less immediately, without the burden of proving it up.  And if the defendants are good for their word that they can service the "debt" the settlement agreement creates, they never have to worry about this potential judgment becoming a reality. 

The Stipulated Judgment as Contingency Contract

As Professor Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, writes in The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, the contingencies built into the parties' agreement (and the Stipulated Judgment providing for its enforcement) permit them to use their differences to reach agreement - betting on their own predictions for the future and protecting themselves against their worst fears about the other.  As Professor Thompson instructs:

Often, a major obstacle to reaching negotiated agreements concerns negotiators' beliefs about some future event or outcome.  Impasses often result from conflicting beliefs that are difficult to surmount, especially when each side is confident about the accuracy of his or her prediction and consequently uspicious of the other side's forecasts.  Often, compromise is not a viable solution, and each party may be reluctant to change his or her point of view.

Fortunately, contingent contracts can provide a way out of the mire.  With a contingency . . . differences of opinion among negotiators concerning future events do not have to be bridged; they become the core of the agreement. . . . [Parties] can bet on the future rather than argue about it.

Here, the agreement calling for a Stipulated Judgment of sufficient size to deter default, allowed the parties to:

1. bet on rather than argue about their different forecasts for the future;
2. manage their decision-making biases (overconfidence and egocentrism) by building them into the settlement agreement itself;
3. solve the trust problem by creating a contingency (judgment) against the unknown ability of the defendants to perform
4. diagnose the other side's honesty by "daring" him to bet on his own predictions
5. reduce risk through sharing the upside gain (defendant will pay) and the potential loss (defendant will default)
6. increase defendants' incentive to perform at or above contractually specified levels.

See The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, The Six Benefits of Contingency Contracts, Box 8-2.

There's more, however.  The parties agree to the Stipulated Judgment in principle and sum during hour eleven and we've got three more hours to go.

Stay tuned!

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks

As you'll recall, we're in hour nine of the mediation.  The parties have finally agreed to settle the antitrust litigation the Court ordered them to mediate ("we won't settle; we'll only be here for an hour"). 

Defense counsel wants to write up the "deal points" and make a quick getaway.  Before she does so, we have the following conversation.

"We'll need three years to pay it."

I fake calm.

"Your security?" I ask, my mind racing to the other room where an already unhappy set of plaintiffs are sitting.

"We don't have security.  I told you my clients are broke.  I also told you we'd need terms but you didn't want to talk about them."

This is true.  From hour one the defense insisted they'd need to pay over time and the Plaintiffs wanted to know what terms the defense was thinking of.  Throughout the day I'd told them both the same thing:  "let's see if we can agree on a number before we start talking terms."

I have reasons for this.  They are as follows:

• once people have agreed upon a number, it's far more difficult for them to walk away from a deal; the Plaintiffs have already begun to think about what the money will mean to them and the defense has begun to imagine life without the litigation;
• people are risk averse.  So long as there is no (or only minimal) money on the table, it's easy to refuse to engage in the often difficult process of readjusting their expectations and compromising their desires.  When there's enough money on the table to make both parties want to settle, walking away involves loss.  

This is often the trickiest part of the mediation.  The three-year time table and absence of security is, I know, enough to blow up this deal.  I'm going to take heat from the Plaintiffs' side, for resisting their efforts to learn the Defendants' terms before they spent an entire day agreeing upon the price.  I don't, however, regret my decision.  If these terms cause the negotiation to break down now, they certainly would have done so in hour one.

How I help the parties negotiate what is poised to become a rancorous impasse in the next post.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

It's 8 p.m. and you've just spent nine straight hours negotiating the settlement of complex commercial litigation with multiple parties that was filed before George Bush first took office.  The case has been up on appeal twice and is now scheudled for trial in February.  All defendants but the final three standing have settled.   Three of the principals have flown in from out of state and two of the attorneys have driven a few hundred miles to Los Angeles from their home towns. 

"Let's just write up the deal points," says Lawyer No. 1, yawning.  "We can write up the full agreement over the long weekend."

Lawyer No. 2 turns to me and says "Judicate West has a form, right?  Let's use that."

Before we go further, let me give you the complete, verbatim language of the online skeletal Judicate West form.

Date:_________________

Stipulation for Settlement


    VS.                           

IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED by and between the parties through the respective counsel or representative of each that the above-referenced case has been settled according to the terms memorialized herein below.  This document is binding on the parties and is admissible in court pursuant to Evidence code section 1123 and enforceable by motion of any party hereto pursuant to CCP section 664.6.                                                                                   

In order to facilitate the above specified terms of settlement, the parties further agree that on or before the          day of          they will execute or change the following:

• Settlement / Release Agreement   Prepared by _____plaintiff_____defendant

• Request for Dismissal     Prepared by _____plaintiff_____defendant

Other____________________________________________________________

All relevant parties must sign below.  Copies are acceptable in lieu of originals.

I know.  You didn't expect the case to settle.  At least that's what I've been hearing you all tell me since hour one of the mediation.  But now we're in hour nine and the basic deal points have been reached.  It's January 15.  Trial is in 30 days.  You have all the parties present and the mediator who has by now sussed out the BS; developed a good working relationship with all sides of the dispute; knows how hard the parties worked to get here; and, is unlikely to let the "devil" in the details sink the settlement ship.

What do you do?

My own answers in next post.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (3)
• Trackbacks

Anyone who's been living in outer Mongolia for the past couple of years should head on over to Adams Drafting straight away.  Why?  Because once you negotiate the best deal you can, you have to write it up on the best terms you can.  Hence the need -- yes need -- for Adams' Drafting.

Today Ken Adams addresses a "rule" that one Court has dubbed "Forthright Negotiator" and the rest of us have always understood to be . . . well . . . the law, i.e., that one's subjective intent can be used to interpret an ambiguous contract term so long as that intent has been objectively manifested.

This gives Ken Adams an opportunity to address the question whether it's ever beneficial to purposely include ambiguity in your contracts -- a question I'd answer after nearly a quarter century of contract litigation practice with this -- sure, if you'd like to put my husband's and my grandchildren through prep school and college.  Otherwise, not so much.

But don't take it from me.  Go see what the master of contract drafting says.

NOW!

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

I've always recommended barter when cash is tight.  In an early post entitled The Benefits of Barter, I explained how interest-based barter is not simply for small-fry.

 AT&T used interest-based negotiation tactics and bartering in its 1999 fight with Comcast Corporation for the acquisition of MediaOne Group. All parties were at impasse until AT&T offered to provide Comcast with surplus AT&T cable systems that would fill Comcast's critical need for additional subscribers -- 2 million to be exact. In exchange, Comcast withdrew its $48 billion bid for MediaOne, leaving AT&T as the only potential purchaser in the field.

Interest-based negotitions such as the AT&T-Comcast deal go beyond evaluating the strength of the parties' "positions" (or muscle) by engaging them in a mutual exploration and assessment of everyone's needs and resources -- a process that can create new buisness opportunities or relationships that increase the value of Business A without concomitantly decreasing the value of Business B.

"This type of negotiation begins with all community resources and know-how with the goal of increasing the well-being of all stakeholders rather than assuring victory to one of them," I wrote.

For those of us in the wisdom business, much of what we have to barter is our ability to mentor and be mentored.  The Professional Women's Network of Southern California is, essentially, a "mentoring circle," in which each member teaches, each member learns, and each member connects every other member to her network. 

Now, the Women Lawyer's of Los Angeles is putting its wheels on recovery road by kicking off its existing Mentoring Circle Program to meet the challenges of the coming year. 

For a number of years, the WLALA Career Mentoring Committee has organized a West LA Mentoring Circle for WLALA members to meet and support each other's career development over lively dinner conversation.  These meetings have served as a forum for participants to share stories, goals and advice.  Over the years the women involved in the Mentoring Circle have become a close-knit group of champions for one another's success.

The WLALA Career Mentoring Committee is excited to expand mentoring opportunities for WLALA members by starting a Downtown Mentoring Circle.  If you are interested in mentoring others or benefitting from the experience of other WLALA members, please join us for the first meeting of our new Downtown Mentoring Circle at Bonaventure Brewing Company at 6:30 on January 29. 

Our discussion topic will be career goals and objectives for 2009.  Please RSVP to Jessica Pink (jlpink@allenmatkins.com) if you plan to attend.

Bonaventure Brewing Co.

404 South Figueroa St. Suite 418A
Los Angeles CA 90071
(213) 236-0802

We look forward to seeing you!

Your Career Mentoring Chairs,
Gigi and Jessica

Check it out!  And for women AND men professionals in all parts of the country, you couldn't do better by yourself and your business than to start your own mentoring circle.

Laissez les bon temps rouler! 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Before you start bargaining your way through the current recession, you need to decide which of your expenses might be negotiable.

Your office or residential rent?  I have friends who have successfully negotiated reductions mid-lease on the strength of their desirability as tenants and good relationships with their landlord. 

Over dinner with friends last night, I learned that a local shopping mall recently agreed to renovate the commercial space of one of its major department store tenants in exchange for the store's promise to renew its lease at the end of this year on existing terms. 

When I asked my twitter network what recurring expenses they'd like to reduce this year, I got answers on everything from diapers (@mglickman) to flat Westlaw fees (@dtoddsmith).  And though she rejected their offer, attorney Jeena R. Belil provided an excellent example of an integrative negotiation tactic - offer more value for the same price -- here, the Yellow pages offering to provide her with a half-page ad at the quarter-page price (@jeenaesq).

So, make a list of expenses that make your monthly "nut" difficult to crack during a down economy.  Even if you believe these expenses to be non-negotiable, give it a try.  You've got nothing whatsoever to lose by asking.  

And once you enter negotiations, here are five rules from the Harvard Negotiation Project to speed you on your way to a more economical year.

1. Don’t Bargain Over Positions
Most of us begin negotiation by identifying a position and arguing for it, such as: “I want to retain the CEO title.” But such positional bargaining can limit your ability to arrive at a “wise agreement” that benefits both parties — the proverbial middle ground and the whole purpose of negotiation. Instead of thinking of a “position,” identify the goal. You want remuneration for the sweat you put into your company. You want, for example, status (to remain CEO). But a specific position is binary — you either get it or you don’t. A goal can be attained in many ways, giving you many more options for arriving at a solution.

2. Separate the People From the Problem
Most negotiation is emotional. You want something, after all. And emotion clouds our objectivity. But you can limit the emotional content of your negotiation by thinking of the person you’re talking to as your partner and the problem you’re trying to solve as an object. Take, for example, the question of how much a company’s equity is worth. In this case, you’re not negotiating against the investor over a position, you’re engaged with that person to arrive at the right answer to the question. Some will urge you to make your negotiation opponent a partner, but this can lead to Stockholm Syndrome. Instead just think of engaging the other person, using their input to arrive at the right answer. Maintain your independence.

3. Focus on Interests
We all have interests. The pursuit to fulfill our interests leads up to adopt positions. But bargaining for stated positions, such as titles, will not necessarily produce a wise agreement that takes care of the interests that led you to adopt the positions in the first place. Think instead: I want to remain engaged in the business. There are many ways to achieve goals without having specific positions.

4. Invent Options for Mutual Gain
This is the creative part. You must examine each other’s interests to come up with options in which both parties gain. Your investors have an interest in a pro-CEO who can sell into large corporations (you’ve never done that). You need funding, but also want to remain engaged. Both parties can draft a list of options for your new role that satisfy everyone’s needs: COO, president, chief innovation officer, etc. Negotiate from this list.

5. Insist on Using Objective Criteria
We all have personal standards. CEO conveys more status than chairman, etc. The key is to let go of personal standards in favor of objective ones upon which both parties can agree. (Think of the Kelley Blue Book, a set of agreed-upon standards for those looking to buy or sell a car). But here you have to do some real homework and investigate the objective standards that apply to your negotiation ahead of time. Some to consider: market value; legal or business precedent; scientific judgments (patents); efficiency; and reciprocity.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Daily Journal Newswire Articles www.dailyjournal.com © 2009 The Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved.

FORUM (FORUM & FOCUS)  •  Jan. 08, 2009 Every Case Is a Winding Road FORUM COLUMN By Victoria Pynchon I have a confession to make. I am about to become embroiled in litigation. Though I preach the religion of negotiated resolution, I've nevertheless hired litigation counsel to assert my rights and pursue my remedies. This is one of those moments when the rubber of our ideology meets the road of personal circumstance, the moment we are called upon to decide to walk our talk or take the more familiar road. For more than 30 years - first as paralegal, then as a law student and finally as a commercial litigator - I'd been swimming in the waters of legal rights and remedies. The adversarial ocean had become so familiar a habitat that it rarely occurred to me that I was under the surface. One day toward the end of my first year of mediation practice, a much more experienced friend hooked me by the cheek and threw me on the deck of his ship, where I was gasping for air. He'd asked me to co-mediate a will contest without the benefit on my clergy - lawyers with experience in the field. The "fish out of water" conversation that ensued went something like this: Joe Mediator: "The family doesn't want to hire a lawyer. They just want to mediate." Vickie: "But I know absolutely nothing about wills, trusts and estates. The parties need to talk to a lawyer first to learn their rights and remedies." Joe: "You still don't get it, do you?" Vickie: "Get what?" Joe: "It's not about rights and remedies. It's about interests." Vickie: "But how can they evaluate their interests without knowing their rights and remedies?" Joe: "Because they're not interested in what the law says - they want to do what they believe is right for them as a family under the circumstances." These people wanted to resolve a legal dispute without knowing their legal rights? Were they nuts? I understood "interests" - they were all the rage in ADR circles - the desires, fears and needs of the parties that drove them to take legal positions. Sometimes those interests were non-economic - the need for revenge, the desire to be personally accountable, the fear of failure, the hope for forgiveness and reconciliation. Others, though economic, could not be remedied by way of damages - better access to foreign markets, for instance, or wider distribution chains; the acquisition of better manufacturing processes; or, the retention of executives with "pull" in Washington. But all of those matters were secondary to legal rights and remedies, weren't they? You had to know what your rights were. To read entire article, click here. Here's a .pdf of the article taken from the "hard copy" of the paper.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

There's a great new LinkedIn Group Mediators and Peacemakers that anyone interested in the dynamics of conflict and its resolution should think about joining.  Recently, a group member posed this question:

How do you as a mediator recognize the signs of cross cultural differences and how do you resolve that type of dispute? How often do you come across this type of dispute?

I was thinking about how I might answer it when I noticed that my colleague and friend, mediation guru Lee Jay Berman, had taken the time to jot down his thoughts, which were better than any I was having, yet precisely expressed my own experience mediating conflict.

Here's what Lee Jay had to say:

I think that some is easy to recognize, like two Korean businessmen walking in with their counsel, knowing that they will have a value system that is based around how Korean businesses conduct themselves, and knowing that trying to overlay that onto an American legal system is going to be awkward for them.

But my belief is that NEARLY ALL conflicts are cross-cultural. The vast majority of what I see as cross-cultural conflicts don't present themselves as such at first glance because they may occur between two people of the same color skin, same nationality, same faith and even same family. I think we risk falling into the belief that cross cultural disputes only exist when we have people of different racial cultures at the table. We sometimes think we can turn our cross-cultural radar off when both people sitting there look the same to us. But to me, most conflict comes from different cutltural perspectives, different expectations based on how we were raised and what they see as "normal" or how people "should" conduct themselves.

The example I live with is that my wife and I were both raised Jewish, both families grew up with Christmas trees in our homes, too. We both went to UCLA, we both love sports, and the list goes on and on. When we married, we had the expectation that we would be relatively the same when it came to living our lives together. But when it came to communication styles, especially around disputes or disagreements, what we each learned from our families (the tribes in which we were raised and where we learned our norms) could not have been more different. Early in our marriage, this created constant cross-cultural disputes, which turned into conflict because of the assumptions we each made about what was the "normal" way to deal with disagreements. On paper, most people would never say that my wife and I were cross-cultural, but in real life, we had a huge cross-cultural rift that was invisible to most, and even to us at first.

The moral of this story is that we must ALWAYS be looking for evidence of cross-cultural issues, even when they don't present with different skin color.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

I'd stop flogging this dead horse if I didn't have to weekly convince litigants of their own enduring human tendency to prefer relative well-being over absolute material possessions.

This week, that "news" is brought to you by the New York Times to explain why a surprising number of us have not been made terribly unhappy as our financial fortunes decline.  As Op-Ed contributor Sonja Lyubomirsky (of The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want) observes today:

the economists David Hemenway and Sara Solnick demonstrated in a study at Harvard, many people would prefer to receive an annual salary of $50,000 when others are making $25,000 than to earn $100,000 a year when others are making $200,000.

Why? Because we "care more about social comparison, status and rank than about the absolute value of our bank accounts or reputations."  In other words, we're more concerned with justice (fairness) than we are about the money.  Which is why our clients have sought out our help with their personal, financial and commercial problems -- because we're in the justice business.  When we understand this, the negotiation of financial settlements becomes a whole lot easier because there are many more ways to deliver justice than by throwing money at it.  

Read the full (short) article Why We’re Still Happy here.

 

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks

Book Review of Conflict Revolution; Mediating Evil, War, Injustice and Terrorism: How Mediators Can Help Save the Planet by Kenneth Cloke reviewed by Victoria Pynchon - Get more College Essays

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

From E-discovery implications of Twitter at Lawyers USA

The social networking site Twitter.com allows users just 140 characters to describe what the user is up to – a post known as a "tweet."

But lawyers advising clients on e-discovery or using Twitter themselves need to realize that tweets are discoverable.

"Twitter posts are like any other electronically stored information," explained Douglas E. Winter, a partner at Bryan Cave in Washington, D.C. and head of the firm's Electronic Discovery unit. "They are discoverable and should therefore be approached with all appropriate caution."The increasing popularity of Twitter has made electronic discovery even more complicated.

Litigators!  Remember, you and your opponent(s) have a choice. It's not only in arbitration that you can make your own law, but by way of stipulated case management orders cooperatively crafted with an eye toward relative cost and likely benefit (ask me for a template!)

I don't need to tell you that clients are cutting back in 2009.  The litigation practice that thrives will be the most efficient and effective dispute resolution vehicle on the road.

And now, for your moment of zen - Charlie Dickens.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.

Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out of it. Every Chancellor was "in it," for somebody or other, when he was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port- wine committee after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it neatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he observed, "or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr. Blowers"--a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and purses.

How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that eternal heading, no man's nature has been made better by it. In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle, Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter and see what can be done for Drizzle--who was not well used--when Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right.

Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

 

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

The National Law Journal's annoying practice of making its "best" content available only with a secret decoder ring forged in the fire of subscription dollars, nevertheless did not stop me from access to an intriguing article about arbitration's "e-discovery conundrum" (here for people with the secret code).

In Arbitration's e-Discovery Conundrum (thank you Mr. Thrifty for the copy) the author contends that:

. . . as litigation discovery techniques have become more prevalent in arbitration, arbitration has become just as time-consuming, expensive and burdensome. Without the benefit of an appeal process for the losing party, the primary remaining benefit for binding arbitration -- privacy -- is often outweighed by the other negative factors.

Parties and their litigation counsel have pointed to runaway discovery as one major reason why they have abandoned arbitration in favor of mediation in the United States and even internationally.

So how can "the long-recognized benefits of arbitration -- speed and cost savings -- be restored?"

(top:  is this what any of us went to law school for? Flowchart from Integreon)

The author recommends that the process must "address the needs and interests that led them to arbitration in the first place: to balance the need to discover those documents reasonably necessary for a party to prove its case with the cost, burden and time involved in producing such documents, while taking into account the need for fundamental fairness and to avoid surprise and trial by ambush."

Here's where reformers fail to get the direction the law is moving in.  It's not about finding a process that fits your needs - it's about creating the process that is tailor-made for your one and only completely unique and unrepeatable dispute.

The beauty of arbitration is not what it is.  It is what it can be.  The beauty of arbitration is that it allows you to make up your own $%#@^ law and procedure.  It restores control of the process to you.

What, you say?  Your opponent and you can't agree?  This is no longer a good enough reason, particularly because I do not see many attorneys making the effort to craft discovery and case management plans that reasonably addresses the parties' actual need for every document that someone marginally involved in the dispute might have once breathed upon.

I know whereof I speak.

The solution?  Sit down, for goodness sake, with your adversary, for as many days as it takes, to reach agreement about what each side actually needs.  Leave your huffing and your puffing, your posturing and your adversarial chops at the conference room door.  There will be plenty of time for all of that after the only people who actually understand the dispute -- YOU -- agree upon the type of process necessary to resolve it as efficiently and effectively as possible.

The law firms that do this will survive the recession. 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

Are mediators being hook-winked by clients who create artificial impasses for the purpose of procuring a favorable mediator's proposal?  Does the mediator's recommendation carry so much weight that the parties are subject to a manipulated mediator's proffer?  Does the mediator become just a tool of a party bent on flim-flam?   Or is all distributive bargaining flim-flam?

Check out John DeGroote's in-house point of view over at Settlement Perspectives and leave a comment.  I've already left two there myself.

I understand some lawyers are settling all their cases with mediators' proposals.  Why is that?  Are they savvier than their colleagues?  Or do they just need the authority of the mediator to "sell" settlement to their clients?

Jump in here or over at John's place.  Whether you're a mediator, a litigator, or a client, we'd both appreciate your fresh ideas. 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks

By Greg Katz

Daily Journal

Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - The crowded Los Angeles mediation market is about to get a new competitor.

Professional Mediation will open its doors in January. It is the brainchild of Cary Sarnoff, president of Sarnoff Information Technologies, whose main enterprise is Sarnoff Court Reporters.

Among the company's first signees is Jeff Kichaven, who is leaving JAMS for the new provider after two years with the dispute resolution giant. He said that although he has enjoyed his time with JAMS, he had tired of the large company's bureaucracy and was feeling "entrepreneurial."

"The new company will be shared with a very small number of mediators, all very skilled," Kichaven said.

Sarnoff billed Professional Mediation as a high-end dispute resolution boutique. Unlike some large panels, he said, it will have no more than 25 or 30 panelists.

By comparison, JAMS has 262 neutrals nationwide, including 133 in California alone.

"We don't want to be the biggest - we simply want to be the best," Sarnoff said. "I think that we can create an environment where very well-respected and well-thought-of mediators can collaborate together."

Sarnoff said he decided to open a mediation shop after his children, who are lawyers, began using mediators more frequently. The new panel has been in the works for several months, he said.

Professional Mediation will be a subsidiary of Sarnoff Information Technologies, he said. It will operate out of that company's five existing offices in California and Nevada, as well as a forthcoming office in Century City. Its downtown Los Angeles office shares a floor with JAMS.

Besides Kichaven, the panel also will include Los Angeles mediator Deborah Rothman, who said she will continue to work with the other providers she has been with recently.

Independent San Diego-based mediator Scott Markus, who was affiliated with JAMS in the 1990s, and Irvine mediator John McCauley, also said they plan to sign on.

To continue reading, click here.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

From this coming Monday's Forum Column in the Los Angeles Daily Journal (byline V. Pynchon):

 

Psychologists tell us that we are not only "meaning making" beings, but that we are all born conspiracy theorists. Viewing a field of nonsensical, unrelated data, we naturally begin to "connect the dots" - to organize the information into a coherent, and often compelling, narrative.

Pattern making or conspiracy theorizing is a human survival mechanism. We have never been the fastest or the biggest creatures on the planet. We don't have the sharpest teeth or blend in all that well with the scenery. Our soft, easily punctured skin is not covered with a protective shell. In a pinch, we can't take a running leap and fly away from land-bound carnivores who might make us their prey.

We are, however, the canniest creatures on the planet. To avoid the tiger who made lunch of our best comrade, we surveyed the scene and committed the pattern of otherwise unrelated details to memory. Five banyan trees, a narrow stream, and, a pile of rubble left by a recent avalanche means "there are tigers here."

Couple this with Fundamental Attribution Error and you have all of the ingredients necessary to blame inadvertently caused harm on elaborate conspiracies cooked up by our untrustworthy companions - Fundamental Attribution Error being our universal tendency to over-emphasize the role of others' negative personality traits to explain why harm befell us.

So it is with our legal adversaries. Once the channels of communication have been severed by the filing of a lawsuit, attorneys and clients alike begin to make up "what really happened" based on predispositions, scattered conversations, faulty memories and scraps of documentation.

 

Continue reading Monday's Daily Journal Forum Column here.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

More than 360 Connecticut homeowners have avoided foreclosure in the past five months thanks to a new mediation program established by the state, but some think it’s still being underutilized.

The program, which was part of comprehensive mortgage relief legislation passed earlier this year, allows borrowers to meet their lender face-to-face to try to reach a settlement on an overdue mortgage.

If the borrower chooses mediation, lenders are required to participate and the process can delay foreclosure by 60 days or more.

Some lawmakers have touted the program as the first of its kind in the country.

About 28 percent of the estimated 5,513 homeowners who are eligible for the program have applied for mediation, and 361 people have reached a settlement that allowed them to keep their home. Another 116 homeowners decided to leave their home but were able to reach an agreement with their lender to pay off the balance of their mortgage. Mediation remains unsettled in 203 cases.

“All of us familiar with the program would like to see more people participate,” said Ann Parent, an attorney for the Connecticut Fair Housing Authority. “We don’t know why more homeowners aren’t requesting mediation, but we feel like more should.”

Parent said she supports the program and agrees that it is serving an important purpose, especially for homeowners who can’t afford a lawyer to guide them through the foreclosure process. At the same time, however, she said it’s unfortunate that less than 30 percent of eligible homeowners are using it.

Continue reading here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Friend and colleague Los Angeles attorney-mediator Linda Bulmash of ADR Services, Inc. advises  us to be consistent in negotiating the resolution of litigation in this month's LACBA negotiation tip.

The Power of Consistency in Negotiation and Mediation
 
When a person makes a public commitment to a course of behavior, the human psyche will push them to follow through with their commitment. For instance we break New Years resolutions because we seldom share them with others and usually do not write them down.

An interesting phenomenon occurs when the commitment is made public or a person pro-actively takes the first step to follow through with a course of action. An interesting research study found that although people are often unsure of their choice of the winning horse at a racetrack, they become much more confident of their choice once they place their bet. They are driven to consistency once they make a public commitment to a course of action.

Therefore experienced negotiators and mediators focus on getting people to publicly verbalize and/or write down each small commitment to follow a certain course of action (e.g. buy a car or resolve a dispute) knowing that once done publicly, it is highly likely that they will believe this is the best choice and will find a way to attain the object of their commitment.

Thanks, as always, for the great advice Linda!  And if you're looking for a local neutral, check out Lucie Baron's dynamite list of L.A. mediators here!

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

We are in this together. Remember. The bottom supports the middle and the middle supports the top. The current economy is Exhibit A.

Link to L.A. Times story (more in-depth analysis) here.

If your side of the boat sinks, my does too.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Thanks again to Vicki Flaugher of SmartWomanGuides.com for inviting me to have this conversation with her about ways in which women can and do maximize their bargaining power.  And yes we do talk about negotiating the purchase of an automobile here as well!

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

This segment of my interview with Vicki Flaughter is primarily about why women don't negotiate - to their substantial economic detriment - (see Women Don't Ask Here) and what they can do about it.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

In part two of Vicki Flaugher's interview with me, we discuss ways in which women can comfortably respond to aggressive zero-sum distributive bargainers and  negotiate better business deals using their natural strengths.

I'd like to once again thank Vicki Flaugher of the Smart Woman Guides for helping me stay (somewhat) on point in discussing those negotiation challenges particular to women.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Video below is part I of an interview on negotiation challenges, strategies and tactics for women with

Vicki Flaugher, founder of SmartWoman Guides.  The full audio of the video is here along with Ms. Flaugher's kind comments about our conversation.   Ms. Flaugher describes her site resources as follows:

If you’re a beginning female entrepreneur or a women who is thinking about starting in business for herself, you have found your tribe. You have arrived at a safe place to talk about business. Especially if you are 35-55 years old, you are going to love this site because that’s a magic age time. You really discover who you are during those years and finally decide to do what you love instead of just what you’re “supposed” to do. The spirit of that revelation and all the promise it holds is why this site was created.

Now, Part I of Negotiating Women!

"Never Fear to Negotiate" from JFK's Inaugural Address with video here.

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."

And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Planning on partying like its 1999 to boast morale in your law firm?  Check out tips offered by Morrison & Foester in  Holiday Parties: Morale Boost but Employer Beware back in December of 1999, advice that is as timely today as it was then.  And remember, there's no conflict management strategy better than conflict prevention.  Here then are MoFo's excellent tips, which is just a small excerpt of the good advice to be found on the link above.

 

What Can Employers Do?

Short of assuming the role of "Grinch" and canceling the holiday party, what can employers do to protect themselves from liability for sexual harassing conduct during holiday parties?

First, employers should make sure that they have a comprehensive, written sexual harassment policy in place, including sexual harassment training in the workplace. Employers might also re-circulate the sexual harassment policy prior to the holiday party, or send a memo to employees reminding employees to act responsibly at the party and expressing a zero tolerance for harassing behavior.

Second, if the budget permits, employers could invite employees to bring their spouse, significant other, or guest. Although such an invitation will not rule out incidents of sexual harassment, it may reduce the likelihood of such incidents occurring, as employees may tend to act more responsibly and in a less flirtatious manner towards each other if they bring a spouse or special friend to the party.

Third, employers should monitor closely any employees who have a history of harassing behavior, or who have been involved in complaints of sexual harassment. If such an employee is observed engaging in any inappropriate behavior, he or she should be asked to leave the party immediately, and the employer should apply appropriate discipline upon the employee's return to work.

Finally, employers receiving any complaints regarding inappropriate behavior at the holiday party should treat such complaints seriously and should take prompt, effective steps to address the complaints. This includes interviewing the alleged harasser and harassee, talking to potential witnesses, and administering appropriate discipline if inappropriate behavior is found to have occurred. By taking prompt, remedial action to address complaints of harassment, employers can reduce and in some cases altogether eliminate liability for sexual harassment.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

See the Complaint here.

h/t to @taxgirl

As the ABA Journal explains:

A law firm contends new Louisiana lawyer advertising rules slated to take effect in April will restrict its right to comment on Twitter, Facebook, online bulletin boards and blogs.

The Wolfe Law Group filed a federal suit today challenging the rules, claiming they would subject each of the firm’s online posts to an evaluation and a $175 fee, according to a press release. The construction law firm says in the suit that its own blog may qualify for an exemption for law firm websites, but its comments on other blogs would not.

The firm claims the rules would restrict its First Amendment right to speak freely about its trade. To make its point, the law firm has launched a blog called Blogging is Speaking.

Sometimes your business or professional negotiation has to take place in Court.  This is an example.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Many in the legal blogosphere are buzzing about the recent Supreme Court decision letting stand a Central District injunction barring wheelchair-bound Jarek Molski from filing further ADA accessibility cases in our local federal trial court here in Los Angeles.  See Justice Berzon's and Kozinski's spirited dissents to Ninth Circuit's Per Curiam refusal of the Petition for a full panel re-hearing here.

Mr. Molski was declared a vexatious litigant by the California Central District federal court back in 2004.  See Wendel Rosen's excellent report of that case here.  Molski v. Mandarin Touch Restaurant, 347 F. Supp. 2d 860 (C.D. Cal.2004) (declaring Molski a vexatious litigant and requiring court approval prior to his filing future lawsuits); aff'd Molski v. Evergreen Dynasty here.

Still active is Molski's case in the Eastern District of California which was recently permitted to go forward by the same Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal.  As the Ninth Circuit explained the factual background of Mr. Molski's "serial litigation,"

[Plaintiff] Molski and his lawyer Thomas Frankovich (“Frankovich”) were purportedly in the business of tracking down public accommodations with ADA violations and extorting settlements out of them. On cross examination, Molski acknowledged that: he did not complain to any of [the defendant's] employees about his access problems; he had filed 374 similar ADA lawsuits as of October 8, 2004; Frankovich had filed 232 of the 374 lawsuits; even more lawsuits had been filed since that date; Molski and Frankovich averaged $4,000 for each case that settled; Molski did not pay any fees to Frankovich; Molski maintained no employment besides prosecuting ADA cases, despite his possession of a law degree; Molski’s projected annual income from settlements was $800,000;2 Molski executed blank verification forms for Frankovich to submit with responses to interrogatories; they had also filed lawsuits against two other restaurants owned by Cable’s; they had filed a lawsuit against a nearby restaurant; and Sarantschin obtained up to 95% of his income from Frankovich’s firm for performing investigations for ADA lawsuits.

See Molski v. MJ Cable, Inc. here.

Despite these apparently damning facts, in its 2007 affirmance of the vexatious litigant finding, the Ninth Circuit noted some of the reasons why Molski and his lawyer could not be condemned for their pursuit of serial ADA litigation.  The ADA, noted the Court,

does not permit private plaintiffs to seek damages, and limits the relief they may seek to injunctions and attorneys’ fees. We recognize that the unavailability of damages reduces or removes the incentive for most disabled persons who are injured by inaccessible places of public accommodation to bring suit under the ADA. See Samuel R. Bagenstos, The Perversity of Limited Civil Rights Remedies: The Case of “Abusive” ADA Litigation, 54 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 1, 5 (2006).

As a result, most ADA suits are brought by a small number of private plaintiffs who view themselves as champions of the disabled. District courts should not condemn such serial litigation as vexatious as a matter of course. See De Long, 912 F.2d at 1148 n.3. For the ADA to yield its promise of equal access for the disabled, it may indeed be necessary and desirable for committed individ- uals to bring serial litigation advancing the time when public accommodations will be compliant with the ADA.

But as important as this goal is to disabled individuals and to the public, serial litigation can become vexatious when, as here, a large number of nearly-identical complaints contain factual allegations that are contrived, exaggerated, and defy common sense. False or grossly exaggerated claims of injury, especially when made with the intent to coerce settlement, are at odds with our system of justice, and Molski’s history of litigation warrants the need for a pre-filing review of his claims. We acknowledge that Molski’s numerous suits were probably meritorious in part—many of the establishments he sued were likely not in compliance with the ADA.

On the other hand, the district court had ample basis to conclude that Molski trumped up his claims of injury. The district court could permissibly conclude that Molski used these lawsuits and their false and exaggerated allegations as a harassing device to extract cash settlements from the targeted defendants because of their noncompliance with the ADA. In light of these conflicting considerations and the relevant standard of review, we cannot say that the district court abused its discretion in declaring Molski a vexatious litigant and in imposing a pre-filing order against him.

In other words, when the legislature puts the enforcement of the ADA in the hands of disabled individuals without permitting them to recover damages, you can't blame private attorneys for working the market created for the private enforcement of public laws even if you can blame them for the manner in which the market is worked.

So what does this have to do with the settlement of litigation and, in particular ADA Litigation?

Because these accessibility cases always cost more to defend than to settle and because they're often indefensible, the rational business decision is simply to settle the darn things.  

No one, however, wants to be extorted.  And in the few ADA cases I've mediated, it's the principled refusal to pay money at the point of a gun that interferes with a business establishment's willingness to do the economically "rational" thing rather than, say, try it;  appeal it to the Ninth Circuit; and, pursue it to the Supreme Court of the United States.

For those representing defendants who are feeling extorted, I offer my own (previously posted) ADA mediated settlement story below.

Continue Reading...

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

I have recently been asked by several lawyers to write a few posts on mediation and negotiation terminology not only because some attorneys are unfamiliar with these terms, but also because different mediators and negotiators use them to mean different things. 

Mediators, lawyers and negotiators who read this post are invited to add, correct, object, or suggest further refinements and to add their thoughts on further strategic and tactical uses and perils of the impasse-busters we discuss today - the bracketed offer and the mediator's proposal.

And because my readers may find this post as dry as bones, I once again offer the X-rated "Negotiation Table" as pretty #%$@ true and funny  (think Ari Gold). 

Bracketed Offer:  Party A makes an offer to bargain in the zone he wishes to see the negotiation move to.  This is often used when neither party wishes to step up to the line of probable impasse and it can also be used to re-anchor the bargaining zone.  Quite simply, Party A offers to bargain in the range of, say, $2 million and $3 million.  He offers to put $2 million on the table if party B is willing to put $3 million on the table, i.e., "I'll offer to pay you $2 million if you'll offer to accept $3 million to dismiss your suit."

If party B does not accept the bracket, party A will not be "stuck" with having actually placed $2 million on the table when the next exchange of offers and counter-offers begins.

Responding to a Bracketed Offer:  Party B can:  1.  respond with a counter-bracket, i.e., I'll make an offer to accept $3.5 million in settlement if you'll put $2.5 million on the table; or, 2.  refuse the bracket and ask for an unbracketed counter.

Mediator's Proposal: 

The basics:  the mediator chooses a number for the parties, making an "offer" to settle for, say $2.3 million which the parties are free to accept or reject.  It is a double-blind "offer."  If either party rejects the "offer" neither party knows whether the other accepted or rejected.  Acceptances are communicated only if both parties accept, in which case they have a deal.

The circumstances:  The parties should seek a mediator's proposal only when they have reached a hard impasse.  A hard impasse exists when both parties have actually put their true bottom line on the table or their next to the bottom line and they see no hope of it closing the deal.

The purpose:  Both parties believe they could convince their principal  to accept a deal that is more than they wanted to pay or less than they wanted to accept, but they cannot convince their principals to put $X on the table or accept $Y.  They hope to use the authority of the mediator to sell the deal to their principals.  If they are the principals, they are willing to settle for a number lower or greater than planned but not willing to close the bargaining session having made such a concession, which would have the effect of setting the floor or establishing the ceiling of all future bargaining sessions.

The Mediator's number:  I do not know whether there is a general practice among mediators about how they choose the number proffered.  When parties ask me to make a mediator's proposal (I rarely recommend one in the first instance) I explain my practice as follows:  When I make a proposal I am not acting as a non-binding arbitrator or early neutral evaluator.  In other words, my proposal is not a reflection of the value of the case.  The number I propose will be a number that I believe the Plaintiff is likely to accept and the Defendant is likely to pay.

In rare instances, the parties wish to continue bargaining in the event a mediator's proposal is not accepted by both parties.  I have permitted this in a few circumstances after explaining to the negotiating parties that it often causes resentment on the other side because they feel as if the party who wishes to continue negotiating is unfairly attempting to use the mediator's number as a new bench-mark from which to bargain. 

I highly recommend against continued bargaining after the rejection of a mediator's proposal on the day of the mediation.  It should serve as a hard stop because the parties respond to it as an ultimatum.  That's part of its power.  Take it or leave it. 

Just as you would not continue bargaining after indicating that you were putting your last dollar on the table, you should not continue bargaining (during that session) after the mediator has, in effect, put both parties' anticipated bottom lines on the table for them.

 

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

First she's all about the election and now she's back to post-mid-Century America's gender wars?  Say it ain't so, Vickie!

These are just statistics from an extremely limited sample that tells more about this particular program in this particular place concerning the particular types of cases being mediated than they are about the relative abilities of male and female mediators.

I'm unaware, however, of any controlled studies on gender differences in mediation results.  I do know that there's a gender imbalance in the profession and have had panel administrators acknowledge on the QT that even when they're choosing mediators or settlement officers pro bono lawyers tend to choose men most of the time.  

So for women struggling in the profession, here's your moment of zen.

Examining the graphical representation of mediator gender and settlement rates, one can see that there are male mediators who settle cases at higher than average rates, as well as female mediators who settle cases are lower than average rates. Nevertheless, it appears that most of the popular mediators who settle cases at higher than average rates are women, while the majority of popular mediators who settle cases at lower than average rates are men.

Some may object to this “battle of the sexes” analysis on the grounds that men and women should be treated as equals. Based on our data, however, male and female mediators are not statistically equal with respect to the rate at which they settle cases. Whether this “good” or “bad” is more a matter of philosophy than statistics.

In her book In a Different Voice, Carol Gilligan described how men and women think about moral conflicts differently. Her research suggests that men tend to consider conflict in terms of rights while women generally view conflicts in terms of dynamic relationships. Accordingly, a “female” approach to conflict resolution may be better suited to the process of facilitating mediated settlements than a “male” approach to conflict.

For a colored chart and remainder of post, see Correlation of Mediator Gender to Settlement Rate at Practical Dispute Resolution here.

When I think of my own experience as a neutral for the past four years and compare it to my experience as an attorney in the first four years of my practice 1980-1984, I can only say that it is somewhat similar.

What made the difference in the years that followed?  Women flooding the profession.  As women litigators and bench officers begin to retire, I suspect that we'll begin to see greater use of women neutrals.  And no, I do not believe that the paucity of women on commercial mediation panels nor what I believe to be their greater struggle to build a thriving practice there is based upon conscious sexism.

Like the tendency to prefer judges over attorney mediators (a preference I believe to be waning) I believe that the sub-conscious preference for male over female mediators arises from a continuing misunderstanding among members of the bar about what settles cases.  Too many attorneys continue to believe that they need a mediator who can overpower the will of their adversary.  And if you're looking for raw power (particularly the power of authority) in American commerce and law, you will naturally choose the judge over the attorney and the man over the woman.

I haven't written about this in the past because it is a topic that tends to divide people and it is not my intention to start a tiny gender war in the tiny world of mediation.

But when these statistics started pouring into my in-box, I couldn't ignore the topic any longer.

Please feel free to comment.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

Mr. Thrifty and I were discussing the increasingly depressing state of air-travel with our neighbors over take-out last week when frequent-flyer cosmetics rep Sean mentioned that U.S. Air was planning to stop showing in-flight movies for a $10 million cost saving.

Since all four of us are frequent flyers, a lively discussion ensued about ways the airlines could deliver entertainment at lesser cost.

Sean's life-partner, the rocket scientist, Tony, wasn't chiming in as usual.  Only when the conversation flagged did we notice that he had one of those "I'm about to invent something" looks on his face.  

"You know," Tony finally offered, chopsticks hovering in mid-air, "producers ought to offer unreleased movies to U.S. Air in exchange for the airlines making willing passengers available as focus groups.  U.S. Air would be able to offer its passengers something better than the other airlines -- movies that haven't hit the theaters yet - and the production companies would probably pay the airline a fee for the focus group service."

This is why people say this or that doesn't require you to be a rocket scientist.  These are the types of innovative solutions Tony calls up daily on a moment's notice.  His take-out dinner proposal was what  negotiation gurus are talking when they suggest that bargaining parties use their negotiation for the purpose of creating value.   

As Harvard negotiation luminaries Lax and Sebenius have written, however, 

having created new value, negotiators must still divide the resulting goods. Unfortunately, the competitive strategies used to claim value tend to undermine the cooperative strategies needed to create value. The exaggeration and concealment needed for effective competition is directly opposed to the open sharing of information needed to find joint gains. Conversely taking an open cooperative approach makes one vulnerable to the hard bargaining tactics to a competitive negotiator.

The Manager as Negotiator: The Negotiator's Dilemma: Creating and Claiming Value

Lax and Sebenius' recommendations to encourage value-creating cooperation?

1. Focus on interests rather than positions.
2. Make a strong early commitment to cooperative attitudes.
   
3. Capitalize on past histories of cooperative dealings.
   
4. Shift focus from competition to relationship.
   
5. Make an early agreement to be guided by the principle of just division of mutual gains.
   
6. Stress norms of appropriate behavior, such as being reasonable, civilized or fair.
   
7. Reward cooperation with cooperation.
   
8. Punish competition with competitive moves.
   
9. Readily provide your bargaining partner opportunities to resume cooperation.
   
10. Be clear and simple, so your responses are consistent with your stated intentions.

I will discuss each of these techniques in subsequent posts.

In the meantime, any U.S. Air people out there can have Tony's idea free of charge.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (1)
• Trackbacks

 

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

Here are my upcoming speaking and teaching engagements in November and January!

I'm baaacccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!!!!!!!!!!

Judicate West Neutral and IP ADR Mediator and Blogger Victoria Pynchon.

Coach/Instructor, National Institute of Trial Advocacy: Building Trial Skills
Location: Loyola Law School Los Angeles
City: Los Angeles, CA
Dates: 1/2/2009 - 1/8/2009
Director: Williams, Gary C.

This is a week-long intensive program for new and/or experienced attorneys who need to learn/brush up on their basic trial skills.  If you can take the time, your entire practice will benefit from the experience.

BrightTALK Intellectual Property Summit here! on November 11, 2008 Webcast Free

Negotiating a Settlement in IP Litigation

   12:00 pm
   Presenting Victoria Pynchon, Judicate West, CPR, Settle It Now, IP ADR Blog

And coming soon!  Deposition Skills Training (NITA techniques) at Solo Practice University!!

 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks

See Make Mediation Matter over at Jill P. Rawal's new California Custody Blog.  (right, Jill Rawal, fellow U.C. Davis School of Law alum) Excerpt of Ms. Rawal's post below.

Before you go to your mediation, think about what you want. Specifically, you want to think about the following issues:

Write your thoughts down and take the notes to mediation with you.

Once you are in mediation, be prepared to listen to the mediator and the other parent. Mediation is about learning and understanding, it is not about making the other person see that you are right.

• What are your goals?
  
• What parenting plan (i.e., custody and visitation schedule) would you like to see?
  
• What about the holidays? Think about your family traditions and what would maximize the child's experience for each parent's special traditions.
  
• What are your concerns about the other parent's lifestyle or parenting skills?
  
• What can you do to help the other parent adjust t