Understanding the priorities of the other side has been very helpful in getting favorable settlements in our severe injury cases. Is there a conflict between the defendant and their insurer? Often, the attorneys for a civil defendant may be more interested in making the insurance company paying the bills happy than protecting the insured. Looking for leverage and patterns has helped us develop a strategy to resolve many accident cases favorably.
I am often looking at alternative pathways to resolution in a negotiation. If I identify what my opponent's main goals are, I can find different ways to achieve the same results without having to risk the consequences my client is attempting to avoid.
As a deal lawyer, I start a negotiation by finding things that the other side really wants but that my client doesn’t care about giving up. Next I pretend like those things matter a lot to my client, even if they don’t. Once I convince the other side that my client cares about the same issues as them, I concede those issues in exchange for whatever my client actually wanted.
In a negotiation as an attorney, there was one specific tactic that worked well and entailed switching away from the position of adversary to collaborative problem-solving. Thus, instead of being submerged in contentious debates I started a helpful discussion. I collaborated actively, finding common ground and emphasizing mutual interests within the parties. We overcame a win–lose mentality by humanizing the negotiation process and emphasising mutually favourable outcomes. This strategy created a more collaborative environment, resulting in positive results for both parties who felt that they had met their goals. This was a sign that the unorthodox approach which emphasizes cooperation may produce greater levels of satisfaction than conventional methods in legal bargains.