Negotiation Law Blog

Why should the Congressional Super Committee be 50% women? Let me count the ways.

1. women are 50% of the electorate (talk about taxation, cuts or spending without representation)
2. it’s not “affirmative action” to include half the population in the country’s decision making process
3. it only takes three women on any Board of Directors to significantly and immediately favorably impact the bottom line (no, we’re not better, we just destroy group-think)
4. it’s God’s plan – one man, one woman, right anti-gay activists?
5. more women, fewer testosterone-fueled ultimatums (I didn’t say none, I just said fewer)

To make your voice heard, click here. Read Deloitte’s The Gender Dividend to learn more about the need for women at the table. While you're at it, read Leslie Bradshaw's recent ForbesWoman post Why Women Having a Seat at the Table is Not Enough.

After the jump is the Women’s Media Center press release that gave rise to this post.

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As Bill Maher so hilariously explained, the three primary servings on America’s debt plate are social security, medicare/medicaid and defense. All other government expenses are just garnish – a sprig of parsley, a caper or two, those tiny corncobs you avoid at networking events and a bit of radish.

Assuming (without admitting) that we need to expend $680 billion annually on military hardware and personnel to defend ourselves against invaders from foreign shores, the only meaningful reductions in spending will have to come from delayed or diminished social security and medicare/medicaid benefits.

We’re not talking about funding for the arts (parsley); Planned Parenthood (capers); or, education (tiny corncobs). We’re talking about monies devoted to the most needy among us. And most of the most needy among us are women.

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Let’s start with a statement about which there can be no controversy. The healthiest law firm is one that uses its human resources most efficiently.

By now, anyone following women in business has read or heard about the 2007 Catalyst Report, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards, demonstrating that the prime markers of business success – return on equity, return on sales, and return on invested capital — show marked improvement in Fortune 500 companies when there are at least three women on the Board of Directors.

This phenomenon does not occur because women are better managers. Improved corporate performance occurs as a result of diversity alone. As Harvard Business School professors Lakshmi Ramarajan and David Thomas explained in their 2010 working paper A Positive Approach to Studying Diversity in Organizations, the notion that minority board members bring unique information to the table that leads to improved performance, though beneficial, does not account for better results.

Rather, “mere membership in a diverse group is sufficient to motivate enhanced information sharing and processing and thereby improve group performance.”

Diversity Immediately Hits the Bottom Line.

You’d think that law firm managing partners and its business leadership would leap on this information and transform their diversity initiatives from the tepid initiatives they remain, with little funding beyond the maintenance of a web page - see how committed to diversity we are! - and the occasional public exhortation to hire, promote and retain women and minorities.

Yes, I’m talking to you AmLaw 100! with your miserable record in promoting and retaining women and minorities. We know that in your heart of hearts you’ve all but given up that which you’ve never sufficiently funded. But I’m being negative again . . .

Read on at ForbesWoman here.

Economic recovery depends upon the entrepreneurial class. We’re the ones who are the prime movers of new job creation. That’s what Lesa Mitchell tells us this morning in her post Women Entrepreneurs Are Trapped Within Glass Walls. “The new firms on their way to becoming big,” she writes, “create the lion’s share of new jobs, and become the anchors for new industries.” The new Google, Apple, and Microsoft. That’s where new jobs are made. We women, who are vastly over-represented in public employment and therefore lagging behind the guys in recovery from joblessness (Women Trail Men in New Job Gains) are not playing the role our country needs us to play to get people back to work. Frankly, we’d really rather be rearranging our sock drawers. Read on at the Forbes Woman She Negotiates Blog.

For Supreme Court watchers, here's my article on Duke v. Wal-Mart over at the She Negotiates ForbesWoman blog, Wal-Mart Discrimination Case Grapples with Implicit Biases against Women.

As the New York Times‘ Adam Liptak reported today, the Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday whether 1.5 million women will be permitted to proceed with their gender discrimination class action against Wal-Mart.

The high court is being asked to decide what role it believes social science research should play in determining whether implicit bias is responsible for women’s underpay and under-representation in Wal-Mart’s management ranks. At the center of the Supreme Court case is the testimony of Sociology Professor William T. Bielby, at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Briefs and articles for the serious student of Constitutional Law below.

Ninth Circuit Opinion in Dukes v. Wal-Mart

Opening Brief

Opposition Brief

Reply Brief

Thanks to Rex Stevens for passing these links along to me.

Over at B-School today, you'll find a collection of blog posts that will give you an entire semester's worth of negotiation knowledge, training and (if you practice) experience. Don't miss it. Excerpt below and link here.

Learning to be a great negotiator is a skill that will serve you in a variety of situations. Whether you're buying a car, setting a salary, or in an international business deal, negotiation skills are essential to getting what you want. These blog posts share tips, strategies, and more for becoming a better negotiator.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your settlement engines. Your clients will repay you with more work than you can handle!

The week at our ForbesWoman She Negotiates blog.

From The Japanese Quake, Pearl Harbor, Karmic Payback and Cognitive Biases.

Pearl Harbor is unfortunately a trending Twitter topic because millions of little microphones have been given to people unable to think things through.

People who say the Japanese “deserve” it, like those who believe that AIDS is God’s punishment for immorality, are suffering from a cognitive bias called Fundamental Attribution Error. Here at She Negotiates, we’re deeply concerned with cognitive biases because they cause otherwise kind and rational people to believe that their neighbors are mean-spririted, ill-willed or downright evil.

And that prevents us from being compassionate, helping out in times of crisis or negotiating the resolution of disputes.

Instead of becoming mired in the debate between the  Japan-deserved-it tweeters and those who call the tweeters stupid jerks, let’s use the trending Pearl Harbor-Japanese earthquake topic as a teaching moment.

From Excuse Me for Having to be Rescued: Negotiating Order in Japan.

Today, the newspaper of record for Los Angeles, its own readership jumpy and restless, tells us that the Japanese are maintaining order by exhibiting behavior (“impeccable manners”) that most Westerners would consider overly deferential and needlessly self-sacrificing.

From Please Don't Buy Me Retail - Negotiating with Professionals

The Women Don't Ask author quoted her keynote fee as $10,000, which is an eminently fair price. A man of similar provenance would have asked for at least twenty grand. If you’re skeptical about that, check out the fees at BigSpeak which lists a couple of male Harvard Business Professors at $40,000 + (Clayton M. Christensen) and $20,001 to $40,000 (John A. Davis) while quoting a couple of women at the top of the corporate ladder at $7,500 to $10,000 (former Accenture managing partner and author Susan Bulter) and $10,001 to $20,000 (Kate White, Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan and New York Times Best-Selling Author).

Before taking a look at this video, please check out the services of Edwin Duterte of The Viral Publicity who conducts the interview below and who appeared on CNNLive's 30-minute pitch segment (which you can also see below).

Edwin turned around two highly professional videos in less than a week after he conducted them. His company is in start-up mode and he's actively seeking both capital partners and clients. I highly recommend his work, and not just because he gave me two free videos. We'll be hiring his company to provide us with publicity before the month is over . . . we just have to negotiate the terms!

Without further ado, Edwin and She Negotiates.

Sure we give our signature on-line course every few months (the next one expanded to six weeks and beginning on April 11). But what if you have a team or a group of friends or an association who would like us to tailor our negotiation class to your particular needs - your business, your profession, your occupation.

Wait no longer. We will customize our training for you! Just click on the image at the left to receive our Custom Training 2-sheet.

We promise, you'll be glad you did.

Where we've trained or appeared

In-house legal

Qwest Communications 

Warner Brothers 

AmLaw 100 law firms, including Mayer Brown, Katten Muchin, O'Melveny & Myers, Squire Sanders and more than a dozen more.

Law Schools:  USC and Pepperdine University

Business Schools: UCLA Anderson School of Management

Organizations:

Southern California Mediation Association

X2N Executive Healthcare Network

ABA Dispute Resolution Conferences

LACBA Solo and Small Firm Conference

Long Island Professional and Business Women's Organization

Federal Bar Association, SDNY Chapter

Pincus Professional Education

and a dozen more . . . 

Don't forget to follow us at Forbeswoman here!

My ForbesWoman blog post on Rep. Kucinich's instantaneously infamous lawsuit Kucinich vs. The Olive Pit in a World of Injustice here.

Whether we’re working on the transformation of women’s lives in the workplace, the home, or on the national stage, an unbelievably powerful network of women is growing, most of it under the radar of today’s power structure. There are numerous ways into this network – through finance, law, leadership, science, entrepreneurism, politics and dozens of others.  And there’s no better place to start than by buying, reading, and applying the lessons of Gloria Feldt’s No Excuses.

For a short review of Feldt's book, click here for post at ForbesWoman.

We kicked off the new year over at ForbesWoman this past Sunday with my short think-post on gay marriage and the razor's edge on which we women negotiate for ourselves - both of which I tied to our fear of losing the benefits and the restraining influences of traditional gender roles.  See Negotiating Sex and Gender here. There's also a bit of instructive back-and-forth in the comments on the question whether the income gap is a systemic problem or simply the result of women being . . . well . . . lazy bitches. Those who know me well can marvel at my admirable restraint.

On Monday, The Daily Asker, Roxana Popescu, penned the most popular She Negotiates post of the week - Six Things Every Woman Should Ask for in 2011. Roxana is a black-belt "asker," taking the opportunity to negotiate literally everything. She'll be adding six more categories of "asks" over at our ForbesWoman blog today so keep an eye peeled for it.

And though Roxana doesn't know it yet, we're planning on having her lead day-long bargaining expeditions in 2011 for those who don't notice the dozens of opportunities that present themselves to us every day for a little haggling. Stay tuned for that announcement over at our home She Negotiates site. For more information on Roxana's "asking" quest, see Day One:  Can I Ask for Something Every Day for a Year.

On Tuesday, She Negotiates rested so that Wednesday could bring you Forget Resolutions: Disrupt and Execute in 2011, by She Negotiates co-founder Lisa Gates. I'd just been telling a book publicist how I'd been dying the death of a thousand book promotion cuts. A couple of hundred here, a thousand there, went out to consultants in 2010 who simply threw me back on my own promotional resources with a little advice about working different or harder. That's what I hired you for! If you're suffering from a similar consultant-overload dis-ease, go no further than consulting with Lisa Gates where the focus is implement and execute. She changed my life. Let her change yours for the better in 2011.

Yesterday, our Gen-Y blogger Katie Phillips, recently graduated from the Tisch School of Arts at NYU, wrote in despair and celebration of entering the unknown in Negotiating Uncertainty: Gen-Y Women are Busy Being Born. Our boomer readers will see themselves in the same circumstances thirty or forty years ago, but this post is not for us. It's Gen-Y to Gen-Y and one of the finest pieces of writing you're likely to see anywhere on ForbesWoman. Really. Check it out.

With part 2 of Roxana's six tips for 2011 today, we'll close the week in asking, haggling, bargaining, negotiating, trading, and bartering for the first week of the new year. Please let us know which topics would be most useful to you for us to cover as we make 2011 not just the Year of Recovery, but the Year of Abundance! 

From Z is for Zen Master in A is for Asshole, the Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution.

Dr. Kenneth Cloke tells us that every conflict “occurs at the intersection, or crossroads, between problems we need to solve in order to grow and skills we do not yet possess. With each level of growth and development, we experience fresh conflicts and transcend old ones that we not only successfully resolve, but develop the skills to move beyond.”

Let’s take marriage, or long-term relationships of any kind. Whenever I complain about a conflict with my husband, my friend the Buddhist reminds me that my husband is my Zen master. Her reminder focuses my attention back on myself and what I have to learn from the dispute I’m having with my husband. The two of us are like the couple in Anne Tyler’s novel, The Accidental Tourist. We sometimes feel like rivals competing for the “better housekeeper” award. Should I win the prize for insight and understanding even though I am haphazard and mercurial in my habits? Or should the blue ribbon be awarded to my husband who is methodical and steady? When we first met, he loved my spontaneity and I his dependable nature. Now his steadiness irritates me and my disorganization angers him.

This intractable meta dispute – the dispute on which all others are based – evaporates when I realize it has something to teach me about my own character and presents a challenge against which that character could possibly develop. What if we solved the immediate problem? “If only you’d put your car keys in the same place every time,” my husband says for the umpteenth time, “you wouldn’t have to spend twenty minutes searching for them.” I could choose to shift the argument to my home court (“you are too controlling”) or take the lesson that a little advance planning might ease rather than burden my busy day.

Here’s the transformative part. When I change in a fundamental way, the people in my life inevitably change in relation to my change. Once my husband and I resolve the order-versus-chaos problem, he will have to find someone else to play the "I'm more orderly than you" game or give it up altogether. If his desire is truly to help me lead a more efficient and productive life rather than “trying to control me,” the two of us can move on to greater, more interesting challenges than this one on which we have been stuck for years. The same is true for relations between workers, members of extended families, red states and blue, and America against the rest of the world.

If we were finally able to resolve our differences over, say, the separation of church and state, we could free up our energy to address other pressing problems, like poverty and intolerance, the environment and health care, and full employment for anyone with the desire to work as a contributing member of the society. Conflict among human societies has caused incalculable loss and suffering. It is also the way in which people have finally stood up for human rights, self-governance, peaceful dispute resolution, independence, and tolerance of differences.   If we encounter conflict with courage and self-reflection, it can and will lead us, and those who surround us, to greater freedom and authenticity, to greater self-reliance, acceptance, accountability, forgiveness and, at long last, a far more peaceful world.

Priming Legal Negotiations is the winner of this week's Golden Asshole Award. /*  An autographed copy of A is for Asshole, the Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution will be winging its way to author Carrie Sperling, Executive Director of the Arizona Justice Project today!  Excerpt below.  Full article at the link.  

Thanks to the Legal Writing Prof Blog for the head's up.

As I left for work one crisp, sunny April morning, I spotted a five-by-seven printed form on my car’s front windshield. The form’s message proclaimed, in large, bold letters, “youparklikeanasshole.” The form had a checklist of infractions like “two spots, one car,” “that’s a compact?” and “over the painted lines.”The bottom of the printed form said,

Parking is far too limited in our overcrowded streets and parking lots, and you happened to park like an asshole. Go to the above web site to see why someone else thought you parked like an asshole. Don’t be too offended, we all do it one time or another—it just so happens you got caught.

My next-door neighbor, who evidently put the note on my car, listed my infraction as “other” with a follow-up explanation written by hand: “You are parking too close to my garage. It’s hard for me to pull my truck in.” I studied the note for a few moments. I felt my heart start to pound and my whole body became uncomfortably warm. I wadded the note and tossed it. I was angry. When I arrived at work twenty minutes later, I was still angry. I told my co-workers about the note.

They all agreed with me; it was rude and inappropriate.

When I returned home that evening, I visited with neighbors who were not complaining about my parking. I showed them the note, now crumpled and dirty. They, too, became angry. One neighbor suggested exacting revenge on the note’s author by letting the air out of his tires. Another neighbor excitedly suggested something involving Crisco. Although I am a trained mediator, I became giddy about the prospect of getting even.

Perhaps it was a moment of self reflection that led me to question why I was even thinking of revenge. But that written demand evoked intense emotions in me and in my neighbors. We did not care about investigating appropriate responses or attempting to resolve the problem; we wanted to make my neighbor pay for his rude behavior. Instead of encouraging me to change my behavior in the way my neighbor requested, the note had an entirely different effect. The written demand prompted me to make my neighbor regret placing that note on my windshield.

This incident led me to question the legal demand letters lawyers write. I wondered if demand letters often evoke similar negative emotional reactions in their recipients. And, if so, do those emotions influence the recipients’ behaviors in ways that hinder settlement?

I'll be providing a template for a negotiation request letter later today.

And all kidding aside, this article should be required reading for every legal writing class in every law school in the country!

Cross-posted at The ABCs of Conflict Resolution Blog.

__________________

*/  The Golden Asshole Award is given once a month to the individual making the greatest contribution to reducing assholishness in the profession.

• UNCOUPLE YOUR PRESENT VALUE FROM WHAT YOU MADE LAST YEAR
  
  • your present compensation serves as a powerful anchor of your value to your employer's advantage
  • the following suggestions are a way of re-anchoring that value so that your starting point is greater than what you made this year
  •  recalibrate your value according to what you are worth in your employer's hands, i.e., what does your employer save or make based upon the work you do (this may require research on your part)
  • use that value in setting your desired compensation (also include the cost to your employer of replacing irreplaceable you)
• ASK DIAGNOSTIC QUESTIONS
  • begin asking your employer and superiors diagnostic questions (questions designed to learn what your employer needs, desires and prefers and what your employer is most concerned about in regard to the continued profitability of his/her business)
    • "how's business" is a great open ended diagnostic question that does not assume the answer
    • more specific questions include "what does the company need to accomplish in the first quarter of 2011 to meet its financial goals?"; "what are the company's first quarter financial goals?" "what do you see as the primary obstacles to achieving those goals?" "what do you see as the primary drivers of success in reaching those goals" etc. etc.
    • don't ask these questions impromptu; write them down as a way of brainstorming the most powerful questions and those that would be easiest to ask

Continue Reading

Click on the ForbesWoman link for the newest "She Negotiates" columnist, Roxana Popescu who here not only learns the lessons of street haggling, but who "outs" herself as the Daily Asker!

Nothing, and I mean nothing makes me happier than watching this new generation of women grow. Please drop by the Daily Asker and ForbesWoman to meet the brilliant and inspirational Roxana!

Cross-posted at She Negotiates

What does this man have that you don't?

A year-end 2009 salary of $21,340,547 during one of the worst year's in the history of his industry ~ banking.

Listen!  The recession is just another excuse for not paying you what you're worth.

How do we know?

Because the most effective negotiators on the planet ~ corporate CEO's ~ are finding the downturn to be the best time to squeeze every last living dollar out of their employers.

If they can do it, so can you!

 Here's the evidence:

	Bank of America Corp. Thomas Montag 2009 Total Compensation: $29,930,431		JPMorgan Chase & Co. James Dimon 2009 Total Compensation: $9,274,494
	Citigroup Inc. John Havens 2009 Total Compensation: $11,276,454		Morgan Stanley Walid Chammah 2009 Total Compensation: $10,021,969
	The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Lloyd Blankfein 2009 Total Compensation: $9,862,657		Wells Fargo John Stumpf 2009 Total Compensation: $21,340,547

 Whhaaaaaatttttt? do these men have that you don't have?

• Social networks with rich and powerful people who sit on their Boards of Directors and influence policy makers and Wall Street power brokers
• The self-created illusion that they are "too big to fail" /1
• The persuasive argument that only they, with their unique combination of experience, education, knowledge, savvy, can-do-spirit, and leadership qualities can pull these banks out of the sinkhole of the recession.
• Friends in very high places.
• Chutzpah and shamelessness (not that we'd want to encourage this second character flaw in our readers).
• Self-satisfaction.
• Entitlement.
• An employment history of asking for and receiving increasing levels of compensation based upon their salary negotiations at every career point possible (and every career point impossible)
• the demonstrated ability to produce results (our readers do possess this strength but haven't used it to their greatest advantage yet)
• the tendency to measure their market value by their value in the hands of their employer, not by what they "need" or what they are "worth" according to some internal metric that depends upon how they feel about thier accomplishments.

__________________

1/  This is where collective action comes in.  When we aggregate together America's employees, small business owners and homeowners, we get a non-corporate "entity" that is waaaayyyyyy bigger than some little piss-ant bank and it is we who are too big to fail.

Most law firms state their commitment to diversity and inclusivity, prominently featuring on their diversity pages the pathetically few women and minorities in positions of genuine economic power in the firm.  Are they walking the talk?  Let me count the ways.

O'Melveny & Myers ~ We attract, retain, and promote people of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability, or any other group characteristics.

201 male partners and 21 women ~ 10%.  In the legal realm, you win awards for this.

O’Melveny & Myers LLP has been named to The American Lawyer’s 2010 A-List, which recognizes the nation’s most elite law firms for stellar performance in the areas of revenue generation, pro bono commitment, associate satisfaction, and diversity representation.  This is the Firm’s third consecutive year on the list of 20 firms judged best at balancing the practice of law with their obligations to the profession.

I don't mean to pick on O'Melveny.  It's representative of the whole.  Any AmLaw100 law firm that would like to crow about its great track record in retaining and promoting women and minorities, please do drop by with your results and suggestions to your peers for improvements in these figures that the smartest guys in the room just can't seem to be capable of figuring out.  

Today, Forbes Corporate Social Responsibility Blog is commencing a series on how a serious commitment to diversity results in improved bottom line performance.  I commend that series to the attention of the real powers that be inside AmLaw 100 law firms and they cannot be found in the Diversity Programs, of that I can assure you.  Here's the intro to the McDonald's diversity program series:

How does a company that serves 56 million customers a day across 118 countries become a leader in diversity hiring and retention? According to the inclusion and diversity team at McDonald’s, it takes a combination of knowing how to leverage a multicultural customer base, a C-suite-led commitment to talent management, and academic-style learning labs.

If you're a woman, like me, we have our own garden to tend.  We leave the Fortune 50 and the AmLaw100 out of discouragement.  But part of that discouragement is born of our own diminished expectations and failures to build serious rain-making activities into our daily practices along with our failures to demand assignments to the types of cases where partners are made.

If your law firm or corporation does not have a serious diversity program, click your ruby slippers three times, say "there's no place like the board room," take the She Negotiates signature course, and kick a little butt. 

Remember, as Gloria Steinem said, "the truth shall set you free, but first, it will piss you off."

Cross-posted at She Negotiates.

. . . and the Supreme Court has it.  Check out The Female Factor over at Slate (excerpt below):

Cross-posted at She Negotiates.

At 8 PM Women on the Move gets down to business with attorney Victoria Pynchon, author of the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, who has been called a “master of conflict resolution and deposition skills.”

Victoria recently became a regular contributor to Forbes.com’s “On the Docket” column.

You can call in with questions! 

Call-in Number: (347) 857-2102

Dear Fabulous Women Neutrals of Los Angeles:

One last time!! before the door closes on the opportunity to have your picture in the WLALA Tribute book and to share two tables with your fellow neutrals at the WLALA annual Installation Dinner and Gala. 

I have three more places at the table and on that ad.  I need your check for $175 and a .jpg by Friday to put you in it!  Please, let's show WLALA how eager we are to cross-refer business.

This is a particularly good year to join us as we begin the first WLALA ADR initiative in its nearly 100 year history.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS! of women lawyers - way past time to reach and firmly occupy the higher reaches of the profession.  We've been graduating from the nation's law schools in nearly equal numbers with men for more than 20 years.  My own U.C. law school class (King Hall, '80) was 50% women thirty years ago.

The ADR pipeline is full of competent -- indeed glorious -- women.  Yet the statistics at the top remain grim.

Chopped Liver?

Why is your ADR practice not everything that Tony Piazza's or Eric Green's or even Steve Cerveris' is?  Research shows that both men and women have negative implicit attitudes toward women in leadership and authority positions.  The good news is that women are slightly less pre-disposed than are men to picture a man in a suit when they're looking for access to money and power.  I've had at least half a dozen women commercial litigators look straight at me and say "I don't know any women mediators."

Huh????

Followed by, "well their names are never on the lists [circulated in my firm]."

Women, with their slightly reduced inability to "see" women in authority positions, are our foot in the door. And the new WLALA ADR Committee is our opportunity to open that door wide.

As a member of the CPR-led Joint Task Force on Diversity, I have heard the verdict of JAMS and the AAA.  "The market has spoken.  Commercial lawyers just don't hire women and minorities."

What????

We're advocates, for goodness sakes.  When we come into town we have to register our skills of persuasion with local law enforcement authorities.  We're change agents, opinion makers, powerful holders of the keys to the kingdom. 

And the market has spoken? 

We make the market!

This year's ADR Committee is dedicated to closing the gaping void between men and women neutrals.  We're not going to ask for special treatment, picket the LASC's ADR office, pass new laws or burn our ADR certificates, Super Lawyer plaques, Ivy League diplomas, or our bras (not at this age!). 

We're going to market like no one has ever marketed before and we're going to do so as a group so that we don't each hesitate, as we women tend to do, to promote ourselves and our services.

2010 and 2011 will be the years in which top women will refer to other top women.  2010 and 2011 will be the years in which we close the income gap not only between men and women neutrals but between men and women lawyers (its 40% at the top).  2010 and 2011 will be the years in which we make a market younger women lawyers will be entering in the next decade and the one after that -- one in which they'll flourish after they grow weary of fighting over interrogatory objections and e-discovery.

How?

Marketing.  Proctor and Gamble does  not say, "well, the market doesn't want a new improved laundry detergent."  P&G asks "how?" not "can we?"  And it certainly never says "we give up, the market has spoken."

We're putting our first stake in the ground on September 16 at the  WLALA Gala.  There's no event more important for women neutrals to attend this year. 

Our current attendees will appear in two full-page ads in the Tribute Book and two color flyers to be distributed at the dinner. 

To date those women are Eleanor Barr, Joan Kessler, Lynne Bassis, Katherine Edwards, Laurel Kaufer, Linda Klibanow, Denise Madigan, Stephanie Maloney, Deborah Rothman, Jan Frankel Schau, Gretchen Taylor, Caroline Vincent, Diane Wayne, Linda Bulmash, Lisa Gates (my She Negotiates business partner), Kathy Balin, and Erica Bristol. 

We need three more women neutrals to fill table two.  If you want to sit at another table, ask a woman litigator to change places with you while whispering "cross-refer" in her ear.  The key is that you'll be there to network.  You'll show your support to WLALA by showing up and WLALA women (among the most entrepreneurial in the Bar) will see your beautiful face and panel affiliation or business name in the  Tribute Book while enduring the inevitably tedious speeches at these events. 

Do you want to double your income by 2012?  If we've lasted this long in a profession that was solidly male when so many of us were in high school, we can close this gap by coming together and just doing it.

And if the $175 is too steep a price during these recessionary times or if you'll be out of town or otherwise engaged on the 16th of September, please let me know that you want to be a member of the new WLALA Committee by return email.

Our first event will be an afternoon on arbitration in October with CPR CEO Kathy Bryan and other powerful women attorneys, GC's and CEO's who arbitrate, either as advocates, as clients or as arbitrators.  The panel will be moderated by complex-commercial AAA arbitrator Deborah Rothman.

Shock me!  Let's fill Table Three!!

I look forward to hearing from you and to kicking the last pitiful shards out of that darn glass ceiling.

Best,

Vickie

Victoria Pynchon, Esq., Incoming Chair, WLALA ADR Committee
ADR Services, Inc. and She Negotiates Consulting and Training

From today's "She Negotiates" lesson.

If negotiation is a conversation with agreement as its goal, we should not be wasting our time arguing with one another about whose point of view is the best. We should be talking to one another about how we can both achieve as many of the goals we both want to achieve as a result of our conversation.

You do not have to change anyone's mind to give them what they want to get. And you don't have to grudgingly accept half a loaf (a portion of the pie) if, unbeknownst to one another, you possess five items of value your bargaining partner wants or needs, and your bargaining partner possesses a dozen items of value you want or need. In a really effective negotiation, you may find that together you and your bargaining partner can whip up a dozen pies and end up with more than either of you had imagined.

Wouldn't you like to be learning how to do this instead of working on that sanctions motion for your adversary's bad faith refusal to answer interrogatories?

The next game-changing She Negotiates month-long coached course begins on September 16.  Stop trying to change people's minds and start changing the world!

And gentlemen, tell your women friends.  Husbands and significant others benefit from this course as well!  My own happily came back from the gym the other day saying "I did what you taught me; I got two extra months of gym membership free."

My friend's Women's Bar Association is looking for a speaker. 

They wanted that other woman who speaks on the topic of women negotiating.  You know the one . . . what's her name.  Yes, that's her.  The annual meeting committee gave her a ring and she quoted them $10,000 for an hour keynote.  To be fair, an hour keynote takes all day.  First, you've got to travel, then stay over night, then, if you're really serious about being of service to women lawyers, you get up early and listen to the morning speaker, talk to your table mates, find out what their challenges are, and, then alter, ever so slightly, your noon keynote to deliver exactly what this particular unique group of women need to hear.  You stay after, of course, to answer questions and sell copies of your book, which is, after all, your time, the time you'd be spending anyway spreading the good news that women can negotiate away the glass ceiling and the pay gap and their kids' private school tuitions.  Because that's just how you roll.  So it's never just an hour.

Still.

$10,000. 

"Did you negotiate with her?" I asked.

"The search committee didn't even try," said my friend.  "They figured her price was retail."

I don't mind being second choice.  That other woman, well, shoot, she pretty much started the whole women-negotiating-revolution.  I get it.  So I gave my quote and added, "but I'm not a suit on a hanger at Bloomies.  You don't have to buy me retail.  Remember some of what I taught you about money and value."

"Uhhhhh, make an aggressive first offer?"

"Well, yes.  But that's not what I'm talking about here.  I'm talking about the money is meaningless lesson.  You remember.  You can't eat or drink it.  It won't actually do the surgery nor build an addition to your house.  Remember how it just evaporated overnight right before George Bush left office?  Remember how your house was worth $500,000 on Monday and two fifty on Tuesday?

'Money has a value only because we give it value.  It's only worth what we say it's worth.

"Uhhhh . . . . "

"O.K.  I know.  I talk too much and too vaguely."

Here's the deal.  My price is X + expenses.  That's negotiable.  I don't tell you it's negotiable because as soon as I do you'll start negotiating!  And since it was me who taught you to negotiate, I'm not wild about bargaining with you.  The desire to teach is way to strong in me.

"I'm negotiable.  So is that other woman, the one whose book title is Ask for It!  And money isn't the only measure of value.  It would also be of value to me for your women's bar association to sell my book.  Of course I'll bring it with me to autograph and the like.  But you could also include it on your invitations.  If someone in your Bar Association blogs, they could give it a review.  If you haven't already pledged that you wouldn't give away anyone's email address, you could give me your mailing list so I can stay in touch with your members.  Each of your members also has her own network.  We could brainstorm about ways that you could give me the benefit of my pre-speech networking acumen to get more women to your convention.  It's hard to sell seats these days.  How many people are you expecting?  What if we double that?  Could you pay me my full fee then?

"None of us is a suit on a rack.  And what we can do for one another is so much greater than opening our wallets and shelling out a few dollars that money sometimes seems just laughable.  So let me say this again.  I know you've heard it before but I want to highlight it here again.

"I am a store of value and you are too.  My network, my social capital is a store of the store of value of each member in it.  And in that, you and I are both rich.

"Got it?"

My friend, my student, is smiling, even though I can't see that over the telephone.

"I got it."

"Now what was that offer again?"

 The next game changing She Negotiates workshop is still open for a few last-minute members.  We start on Monday.  Don't be a suit on a rack.  Join us!

(cross posted at She Negotiates)

Pictured:  Chere Estrin, Chairperson, Board of Directors, The OLP;  Editor-in-Chief, SUE for Women Litigators; Editor-in-Chief, KNOW the Magazine for Paralegals; CEO, Estrin Education, Inc.

I've written about happy and unhappy lawyers before - here and here but I've rarely framed the issue as succinctly or as well as Chere Estrin at the Organization of Legal Professionals.  In the sidebar to her article The Secrets to a Stress Free Career, Estrin says work does not give you stress. Feeling bad about work gives you stress. 

What does Estrin know? 

Quite a lot. 

"I used to be the most stressed-put person I knew," says Estrin.

I averaged 90 hour weeks in the legal field as an executive in a $5 billion corporation, traveled three weeks out of four, answered to some big shots who thought they owned the planet, and managed hundreds of people.  It wasn’t much different when I was a paralegal manager.  There were critical deadlines to meet, difficult attorneys to juggle, anxious clients to handle and something called a “minimum billable hours” requirement, now referred to as “suggested” hours in a more politically correct and less actionable environment.  I recently looked at a picture of myself during that era.  I was holding my new-born niece, Cristina, a joy to behold and I looked like I just escaped from a train wreck and stopped by to say howdy.

Sound familiar?  After debunking some stress myths (you should go right over there now to read them) Estrin suggests the following:  

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Do come visit us and consider enrolling in our July 19, month-long, coached negotiation course here.

The blog, which is today offering prizes, is here.

Testimonials

It's the quality instruction, real world experience, and bevy of resources brought to you by Victoria Pynchon that makes this course a stand out. On the internet a lot of people purport to deliver courses that will 'transform your life' or 'bring you to a new level in your business,' but often prove to be nothing more than advertising vehicles to enhance their lives and not yours. Victoria, with the support of that fabulous woman behind the Craving Balance curtain, Lisa Gates, has created a real winner with this course. And yes, it is transformative--it changes your beliefs about what you're capable of doing and having, because you're given the know-how and tools to make it happen."

Doreen Lima, Wildly Successful Personal & Professional Development

 "I am embarrassed to admit that I had only a glimmer of the science behind the negotiation process. And I had not given much thought to how often we bargain every single day in every part of our lives. Victoria has opened my eyes and helped me to fill a huge gap in my business and life tools. The change in my attitude toward money was a surprising bonus! I no longer dread talking about the fees I charge for my services. I may never eagerly embrace negotiation, but I no longer fear it and better yet, I appreciate and enjoy the process now. Thanks to She Negotiates, I am making great bargains and walking away when I say it’s the right time."

CaZ of Writing Bytes and 2 Chicks at Home

"Thank you so much Vickie and Lisa for raising my level of awareness of the power of negotiation, for helping me re-examine my self worth, and for encouraging me to stand up for my bottom line and not be swayed by someone else's bottom line."

Lori Lacey, Corporate Learning Specialist and Coach

"I learned more during this hands-on negotiating course than in another higher-priced class I took. Victoria and Lisa helped me make the emotional changes necessary to demand a higher value for my work, and taught a step by step process for getting the most from sales negotiations." 

Linda Gryczan, Mediator

 "Victoria and Lisa are an amazing team. Their individual areas of expertise create the perfect blend and balance for understanding the subtle nuances of the art and science of negotiation, and they do so in a way that is fearless and authentic. Thank you for this incredible opportunity. You've empowered me and I am grateful."

Debra Healy, Beaverton, Oregon

In  Workplace Negotiating Secrets From Bethenny's Shrink over at Forbes.com, Xavier Amador, the therapist on Bethany Getting Married? gives his "secrets" for "winning" workplace arguments.  What Amador suggests (below and at the link) is really just collaborative interest-based negotiation, but his catchy acronym - LEAP - is a good one to remember for all negotiations, whether you're brokering peace in the Middle East or getting your guy to put the toilet seat down.  If you read the article, and I highly recommend doing so,  you'll see that no one is "winning" any "argument."  Rather, people are finding ways to accomodate all of their needs simultaneously.

Lisa Gates of Craving Balance and I are doing it again!  An entire month of negotiation classes that will change your life. 

When Lisa and I planned our first month-long course (you can see the testimonials here) I told her that the women participating in it would make back the cost of the class in the first negotiation they conducted after the course ended.

I was wrong.

They made it back before the course was over  it back.  One participant said after the first weekly group teleconference,

I could drop out now and feel that I'd gotten more than what I paid for.

The response to our second course (now starting its third week) is even more powerful.  So powerful that an attorney I ran into at the recent WLALAPalooza event said,

I took your 90-minute free teleseminar and tripled my hourly rate in response.  I just did it today!  I'm so excited and so proud of myself!

So we've decided not to let the grass grow under our feet or yours.  We're offering the course again - with a  money-back guarantee - beginning on July 19.

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UPDATE:  Something to keep in mind:

When Deepak Malhotra, co-author of the brilliant Negotiation Genius, taught business students at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, he required each one to “go negotiate something in the real world” and write a report about it.  As Babcock and Laschever report in Women Don’t Ask,

• Of 45 students, 35 negotiated something for themselves and ten negotiated something for their employer;
• The average savings realized by students who negotiated on their own behalves was $2,200;
• The average savings realized by those who negotiated on behalf of their employers was a whopping $390,000;
• When asked what the most important negotiation tactic had been, the students said “choosing to negotiate at all.”

From Women Don't Ask.

There's still time to sign up for the roof-raising "She Negotiates" online negotiation course.

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Yesterday at the She Negotiates blog, I posted two quotes by a woman executive (President and CEO) who is blazingly successful in one of the most male-dominated industries in the world - construction of sports arenas.

Here they are again:

After she’d been in business for 15 years, a colleague told [Alvarado] she had two problems.

[Y]ou have a Hispanic company name, so you may be stereotyped [and] when you walk into a conference room to negotiate, you look like a woman.

When her son was five and asked if he wanted to grow up and be a “contractor like your mother and build sports facilities and schools,” he said “with disdain,

“No, that’s women’s work.”

Ba ba bump! (rim shot). Or as the old feminists used to say, "click."

My partner in negotiation-for-women crime is life-balance coach, Lisa Gates. 

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More important than her religious background (Jewish) her Ivy League Credentials (Harvard) her progressive, liberal or conservative Democrat political leanings, is the prospect that Kagan's addition to the Supreme Court will result in the magic number of three women on the United States Supreme Court. 

Why is three the magic number?

Recent studies have shown that it takes three women corporate board members to avoid the deliterious effects of group think on corporate decision making - my own supposition on the question "why three" being that one or two women easily risk falling into male group-think.  This isn't male bashing, by the way. I assume three men on an otherwise all woman's board would have a similar performance enhancing effect.  

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Can't ask for a raise during an economic downturn?  If the recession doesn't stop insurance executives from increasing their own pay and benefits by more than 50% (to $13.1 million) why should it stop you?

Just in case you were manning the Antarctic Ice Station at the time of the revelations prompting this post, here's the L.A. Times Executive Summary.

WellPoint Inc. revealed Friday that it boosted . . . chief executive [Angela Braly's] compensation 51% last year, even as the health insurance giant prepared massive rate increases in California that embroiled it in a national controversy over skyrocketing health insurance costs.

The proposed rate increases of up to 39% in individual policies turned the insurer into a flash point in the healthcare overhaul battle, breathing new life into President Obama's effort at a crucial time in the debate.

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Anyone who's known me for more than twenty minutes will realize the soundtrack to this Women in ADR video is a very very good sign that I'm regaining my sense of humor without losing my commitment to this issue. Rock on . . .

My article on this subject from which these slides were drawn, appears in the ABA's Law Practice Management Magazine for April, 2010, online here.