“Negotiation skills for lawyers”

Negotiation is one of the ‘alternative dispute resolution’ techniques, which holds utmost
importance both in present as well as in future for solving various legal disputes. It is a process
where both the parties to the dispute strive to resolve their dispute by using their bargain skills.

According to black’s law dictionary, ‘negotiation’ means: the deliberation, discussion, or

conference upon the terms of a proposed agreement; the act of setting or arranging the terms and
conditions of a bargain, sale, or other business transaction. Also the transfer of, or act of putting
into circulation, a negotiable instrument.1

We negotiate each day with different people in our day to day life, either formally or informally.
It is an integral part of human behaviour to negotiate in order to reach at a conclusion. For eg., If
we go to shop for buying something and we don’t find the price of that particular article to be
reasonable then we negotiate with the shopkeeper in order to alter the price, it is called
negotiation. This can also be termed as informal negotiation.

On the other hand, legal negotiation is quite different. It is a unique process to resolve legal
matters by employing some specific negotiating techniques; it’s totally different from general
negotiation. It requires professional skills for a negotiator to resolve disputes between two
parties.

1. What made you interested in negotiation?

Negotiation is a technique, which is being used for a long period of time, for resolving
disputes outside the sphere of common courts. Where the decisions given by Courts are
based on procedures (civil or criminal procedures), legal evidences (which is fundamental
for a court proceedings), witnesses, etc., the judgments passed by these courts are usually
in the favor of one party discarding the other party completely. This means other party
has to suffer the loss. But the procedure adopted in negotiation is quite different from
court proceedings, here the award is for the benefit of both the parties and there is no
prescribed set of procedure (civil and criminal procedure) for a negotiation process.
While courts, in general, require evidences, negotiation doesn’t rely much upon them.
2. How do you think it can change the way of lawyers?

1 https://thelawdictionary.org/negotiation/ <accessed on 10/03/2018.>

 When we analyse the mechanism of negotiation, the first thing which comes to our mind
is that negotiation is a process which is far away from judicial proceedings. The award
decided under negotiation is not binding like the decision of Courts. In the modern
scenario, negotiation can prove to be very helpful as it will reduce the burden of lawyers
by providing them with many benefits like less paper work, less use of evidential process,
no need to go before court and argue, etc. As a whole, negotiation will completely change
legal life of lawyers from procedural to non-procedural.

3. How have you used it to become a better law student?

For a law student, the understanding of the mechanism of negotiation is of very much
importance. A law student himself must be a negotiator so that he could sort various
problems out. For a law student, Moot Court Competitions are integral part of his
professional career. In case you’ve participated in a Moot court competition and the judge
gives you a complicated situation which you don’t know how to tackle, then you can get
through the situation by persuading the judge. This requires tremendous negotiating skills
and one can develop them by only continuous practice and hard work.

What do you see our future looks like?

Our future is looks quite bleak without negotiating skills inside lawyers as well as in
general public. The scope of negotiation is quite wide and if we look forward to the
upcoming times we can clearly see that filing a suit in ordinary court will hardly solve the
purpose of parties as it has several drawbacks like time consuming, no cost effectiveness,
involves complicated procedures, and last but not the least, it is not an amicable method
to resolve disputes. Thus, future holds high stakes for amicable processes of settlement
and negotiation would always be preferred over court’s proceedings. In the modern world
where everyone is running out of time, Courts will hardly be preferred as the mechanism
consumes a lot of time. Thus, I am of the view that people must choose negotiation as a
dispute resolving technique so that they can get their disputes sorted by following a very
simple procedure in much less time.

4. What are your negotiator’s superpowers?

People who work for the welfare of the public must possess some superpowers. Thus,
negotiator is a superhero in the eyes of their clients as he helps them resolving their
disputes without any chaos. The superpowers of a negotiator are as follows:
 i. Interpersonal skills: it is the most important skill in alternative dispute resolution
process where without trusting bonds between the parties and negotiator, he
cannot resolve the dispute because trust is fundamental for reaching a settlement.
ii. Listening skill: without listening skills, one cannot be a negotiator. In order to
persuade the parties to agree to the terms of settlement, one must himself be a
good listener.
iii. Good communication skills: communication skills are very much needed to be a
good negotiator because if you cannot communicate your words then the whole
argument will become worthless.
iv. Analytical skills: in the legal field, one cannot easily survive without analytical
skills and these are of equal importance for negotiation as well because without
analyzing skills, he cannot go through the subject matter and thereby cannot
resolve it.
v. Logical thinking ability: with a baseless argument, you cannot imagine success in
negotiation because if you yourself will give an illogical statement then there are
hardly any chances that you could provide them with an amicable settlement.

5. How can it inspire other people and help them?

Negotiation inspires lot of people because of its amicable method of settlement. It
involves resolving the dispute without any ill-will and biasness thus imparting a social
message that a dispute can really be settled without any ill behavior and that a conclusion
can be reached which is acceptable to people at large.

6. Are we living in the past? Or in this future? How should we define success as legal
negotiators?

Success in every field is viewed with great amazement. As a negotiator, being successful
means a lot as it may provide the individual with some remarkable opportunities for future.
Though negotiation is different from judicial process, it works for achieving the same aim
which is dispute resolution. Thus a successful negotiator is on a better footing as compared to
ordinary lawyers. Being a good negotiator is a huge accomplishment as it will be the most
acceptable instrument for the resolution of disputes in future.
Conclusion:
Negotiation is an amicable process which works for the settlement between the parties. It
is an alternative dispute resolution technique which will be a preferential in our future
disputes. Nowadays, it is only used by the companies but it may be preferred by other
people in future since it will help them a lot in their dispute settlement. It is much
beneficiary since it lessens the burden of our ordinary courts, is cost effective, less time
consuming, easy procedure and flexible, amicable settlement, willingness of parties and
much more.