Add Your PerspectiveDecember 9, 2009

Delivering Bad News in Negotiation: 3 More Tips

Last week we discussed why a small group is usually a better audience for bad news in Delivering Bad News:  How Big Is Your Conference Room? Yet if small group delivery is not an option, what else can you do to get a difficult message across?  Three tactics come to mind.

Manage Expectations

Long Before the Mediation Starts. Last year I wrote Managing Expectations:  An Unexpected Lesson on the Bus to Hertz, and the lesson holds true in conference rooms, too.  Not so long ago I had a case against an online retailer whose CEO enjoyed an irrational confidence in his case. With our mediation just a month away, I knew we had to move the CEO much closer to reality to get the case settled.  Rather than surprise him at mediation with documents and bad facts he hadn’t yet seen — like the guys in my post last week did to me — I spent a great deal of time More…

Categories: Communication,Fundamentals,Mediation,Negotiation,Settlement,Strategy,Tactics

2 PerspectivesDecember 4, 2009

Delivering Bad News in Negotiation: How Big Is Your Conference Room?

The conference table had 40 chairs, and my client’s team filled almost half of them.  We had been asked to show up with the folks needed to get a deal done, and the backchannel weekend chatter had all been positive.  As the meeting began, our optimism crashed as the other side went on the attack, denying my client’s most important request and questioning why it had ever been included.

People usually need to hear the truth whether it’s convenient or not, but there’s more than one one way to convey a difficult message.  How often have you seen someone delight in dropping bad news onto the conference table as the meeting begins?  The adrenaline rush might satisfy some, but does this approach do any good?

Thank You for Your Interest

The lawyer who delivered the bad news to my team that day prided himself in his aggressive persona, and his performance was true to his reputation.  Unfortunately his glee was short-lived; my team and I worked night and day to More…

Categories: Communication,Fundamentals,Mediation,Negotiation,Settlement,Tactics

Add Your PerspectiveNovember 28, 2009

Early Case Assessments: More on the ECA Toolkit from PD Villareal

“In 60 days . . . you will know 80 percent of what you will ever know about a case.”  PD Villareal’s quote was critical to our efforts to define Early Case Assessment in 2008 as we started our series on ECA, and we’re always happy to hear more from him.   Fortunately, an interview with Villareal in this month’s Metropolitan Corproate Counsel gives us just that.

CPR’s Early Case Assessment Guidelines Revisited

In CPR’s ECA Toolkit – A Great Contribution to Controlling Litigation Costs, Villareal discusses CPR’s new ECA guidlines and Early Case Assessments on a broader level.  Villareal jumps right in to tell us how ECA differs from the status quo:

The thing about lawyers is that by mindset and by training, they will want to collect facts and analyze them forever because every additional piece of More…

Categories: ECA

4 PerspectivesNovember 25, 2009

In-House Legal Blogs, Social Media and Web 2.0: Can They Advance Your Career?

I don’t stray off topic often, but occasionally I do — with a warning.  This is one of those rare occasions where we won’t talk about negotiation, mediation or settlement strategy; feel free to scroll to the next post if that’s why you’re here.

This month InsideCounsel magazine published an article from the always interesting Mike Evers with a title that — for some reason — caught my eye:  Using Web 2.0 to Advance Your Career.  Although Mike admittedly says some nice things about Settlement Perspectives, he also gives us a rare recruiter’s-eye view of why in-house counsel might want to join the online conversation.

Why Manage Your Digital Footprint?

With the popularity of Legal OnRamp and LinkedIn and more, the opportunities to manage your digital footprint expand every day.  But many in-house lawyers aren’t convinced.  Isn’t there safety in anonymity?  Mike’s response is simple and direct:

For readers with privacy concerns, get over it.  Embrace the fact that your professional life is public.

And Mike is right.  I did an Internet search for a fellow in-house lawyer More…

Categories: Blogging