Negotiation Skills for Lawyers

Negotiation Skills for Lawyers is a practical course and an ideal introduction to planning and handling successful negotiations. The course focuses on effective strategies and tactics, both how to use them and how to react to them, and includes engaging and challenging practical work involving listening and understanding, presenting arguments, assertiveness and co-operation. The course tutor’s input is almost entirely in the form of feedback on the delegates’ work during and after the negotiation exercises. If you have never negotiated in a professional capacity, or you are a lawyer who simply wants to improve your negotiating skills, this course will be ideal.

Content

Negotiation skills are important in most legal work types and this course covers a range of techniques that you can use in any negotiation when representing clients.

What is a negotiation? 

Defining the term and understanding your aims

What do skilled negotiators do?

Identifying the behaviours that work, and those that don’t

Competitive or co-operative negotiation?

Characteristics, advantages and disadvantages

Breaking deadlocks

Techniques for making progress

Identifying personal styles

How to develop a range of approaches and controlling your emotions

Preparation

• Why you should identify gaps in your knowledge
• How to set objectives, identify the important issues, and select the right strategy

The negotiating process

• When and how to open a negotiation
• Making proposals, making concessions, and using deadlines Deciding when to stop negotiating

Examples of negotiation tasks

1. The ‘Red and Blue’ Game

Based on the ‘Prisoners’ Dilemma’, this task is a negotiation between two teams trying to achieve the same result. Team members have to negotiate with each other in order to develop a strategy, and then communicate effectively with the other team. They learn about competitive and co-operative negotiation, personal styles, and building and undermining trust through decision making.

2. Sale/purchase exercise

Multiple teams prepare and conduct negotiations to sell or buy a commodity. Team members learn about asking questions to collect information, listening actively, and using effective opening positions. They also learn to handle several issues simultaneously.

3. Handling a complaint

Multiple teams prepare and conduct negotiations in relation to a complaint. Team members learn about persuasive and non-persuasive behaviours, problem solving, and fighting over differences. This negotiation also introduces client-handling.

Outcomes

As a result of attending the course, you will:

• plan negotiations more effectively
• choose negotiation strategies and techniques that work
• identify and use negotiation levers to get the best results
• respond successfully to the techniques used by others

Format

This course requires two adjacent rooms.