Arbitration & Mediation

Another Lawyer Gets His Wings

Posted on May 31, 2010
Chris Hill's Mediation Training  By taking the role of the mediator in particular, I had to take off my advocate hat and force myself to let the parties work to a solution despite my desire to jump across the table and shake them until reason, and what I thought was the proper legal solution, prevailed...

Anchoring and Framing: They Work So Well Their Use is an Ethical Act

Posted on May 30, 2010
Check out The Impact of the Irrelevant on Decision Making in today's New York Times.  It's not just another article about the surprising power of anchoring and framing.  It suggests that "framing a discussion" is so powerful that it is "an ethically significant act...

LADIES!! Ready to Close the Wage and Income Gap RIGHT NOW????

Posted on May 30, 2010
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Should We Be Creating a New Anti-Bullying Cause of Action

Posted on May 28, 2010
Check out my first blog post on the Forbes.com legal blog, On the Docket, New York Anti-Bullying Law a Big Bad Idea. I know, opposing a law that seeks to prevent workplace bullying is like criticizing mom and apple pie.  Still.  More workplace litigation???  And why isn't the existing cause of action for the intentional infliction of emotional distress a perfectly good alternative for anyone who's truly "severely" damaged by "outrageous" conduct that goes beyond the bounds of human civility? One of the great benefits of posting on this topic over at Forbes...

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Non-news of the week with an exclamation point: GC's should negotiate their legal fees

Posted on May 26, 2010
Wow!  Does any general counsel in the land truly not know this?  Here's the law.com headline - with emphasis, mind you, as if gold had been discovered in them thar hills. EUREKA!! 'Enormous' Bargaining Chip: Survey Shows Law Firms Charging Clients Different Rates — for the Same Work! Law firms' corporate clients are not created equal, if billing rates are any indication...

Ask for Something Every Day for a Year!

Posted on May 25, 2010
Join Roxana at the Daily Asker- Take the challenge:  Can I ask for something everyday for a year? (my question:  why has it taken me so long to find Laroxy?) I've just signed up for 365 days of asking. Prompted by a book I started reading today, Women Don't Ask, about how women's reluctance to negotiate costs them millions of dollars individually -- not to mention the collective losses -- I decided, quite spontaneously when I got to the bottom of page 7, to try asking...

Lost's Moments of Clarity and the Prisoners' Dilemma

Posted on May 24, 2010
If the negotiated resolution of disputes is all about values; personal narratives; and, collaborative problem solving, the televised-negotiated-resolution-Bible is Lost, which ended a six-year run last night in a series of spiritual awakenings for each of the major characters...

In-House Question of the Week: How Do You Make Frivolous Plaintiffs Go Away without Litigation?

Posted on May 24, 2010
This is, of course, the $64 million dollar question.  Or the $640 million dollar conundrum.  Or the $6.4 billion dollar SNAFU. Abandon all hope . . . . Not really. The answer is:  make a checklist and follow it! Atul Gawande's Checklist Manifesto - How to Get Things Right is not about ordinary lists - those "to do's" we never get around to; the recipe for gramma's extra fudgey brownies; or, even the T-minus rocket launch count-down lists (forcing functions) which my friend the astral-orbital engineer has been holding his breath through this week (his satellite is about to be thrown up into orbit; last night the T-minus rocket count stopped six seconds to launch!) I'm talking about communication check-lists of the sort used by our friends in the sky-scraper business - the ones that have achieved this jaw-dropping "annual avoidable failure rate":  0...

Two Ways to Close the Wage and Income Gap in June and Ten Reasons to Invest in Negotiation Training Today

Posted on May 23, 2010
Take the month-long online coached She Negotiates! course (after getting your tasting sample for free here); or, Take the live three-hour Negotiation for Women Workshop at the Pasadena Women's City Club on June 10 at 7 p.m. - details here. I've said before that what I do for a living is to "rationalize numbers...

The Business of Employment Mediation on May 22 to Build Your Practice

Posted on May 20, 2010
  Click on program for link to SCMA Website description of the program and sign-up sheet. What You Need To Know To Succeed At Mediating Employment Cases Saturday, May 22, 2010 The Portofino Hotel and Yacht Club Redondo Beach, CA This program begins at 8:00 am with Registration and Continental Breakfast at 7:45 and ends at 5:00 pm...

Plaintiff and Defense Malpractice Counsel are Playing a Different Game than Their Clients

Posted on May 20, 2010
Insight from the academics at Concurring Opinions' post on PERCEPTIONS IN LITIGATION AND MEDIATION: LAWYERS, DEFENDANTS, PLAINTIFFS AND GENDERED PARTIES (Cambridge University Press, New York, 2009. Post by  Tamara Relis. Image from Legal Blog Watch...

Close the 40 Cent Attorney Wage Gap at the She Negotiates Workshop

Posted on May 14, 2010
Are you ready for a breakthrough in asking for what you want and getting what you're worth? Take the Craving Balance She Negotiates Course during the month of June. Register Now! at Craving Balance The She Negotiates Blog, She Negotiates Online Workshop and the She Negotiates Community are dedicated to the proposition that naming our dreams and claiming our market value is immediately within our reach...

Kagan and the Magic Number Three

Posted on May 11, 2010
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...

Cognitive Biases on a 3x5 Card

Posted on May 10, 2010
From Privilege Clouds Judgment at Indexed.    

Mothers Day Issue of Blawg Review #263 is Up and Running at the She Negotiates Blog

Posted on May 09, 2010
We're celebrating Mothers Day by posting Blawg Review #263 at the She Negotiates Blog for one obvious and some not so obvious reasons.  The obvious reason is the word 'She.'  The not-so-obvious reasons are:  (1) Mother's Day was a peace and reconciliation movement before it was a holiday; and, (2) peace exists only when we have the political will to seek and the negotiation tools achieve the resolution of conflict...

She Negotiates Blawg Review #263

Posted on May 04, 2010
She's She Negotiates, the newest blawg on the block, taking the baton from The Public Intellectual's brilliant Blawg Review #262, and getting ready  to host Blawg Review #263 for Mother's Day 2010 She negotiates Blawg Review. In addition to celebrating mothers, we'll be celebrating all women who negotiate (do you know any who don't?) posting Blawg Review #263 on all of She Negotiates' pages –  She Networks, She Resolves, She Succeeds and She Transforms, as well as on the She Negotiates posting page...

Why "She Negotiates"

Posted on April 30, 2010
There's a new blog on the block called She Negotiates!  Why she negotiates? The 'She Negotiates' blog is dedicated to the proposition that 'all [people] are created equal . . . [and that to procure the full benefits of citizenship, including economic opportunity] women must themselves become accountable for a substantial portion of the existing income and wage gap that persists with alarming tenacity two full generations (forty years) after the commencement of the Second Wave Women's Movement...

Negotiate a Pay Raise During a Recession? You Bet!

Posted on April 23, 2010
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...

Why Should Women Learn How to Negotiate? A Call to Action

Posted on April 19, 2010
Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, in the must-read Ask for It!, define negotiation as "a tool to help change [or preserve] the status quo when change [or preservation] requires the agreement of another person. Why should women learn to negotiate?  Here's the succinct and powerful message Babcock and Laschever have for us: The consequences of not negotiating in the workplace are pretty extreme...

Can You Ever REALLY Know Your Adversary's Bottom Line?

Posted on April 19, 2010
It was 8 o'clock on a mid-summer evening and the HMO's representative was packing up his brief case. "I appreciate your hard work," he was saying, "but I simply don't have the authority to compromise any further." Though we'd only met that morning, I was inclined to believe him because he'd played straight with me throughout the day...

The June Negotiation Course for Women at Craving Balance

Posted on April 18, 2010
Lisa Gates of Craving Balance and I are doing it again!  An entire month of negotiation classes that will change your life as surely as teaching it has changed my own. When Lisa and I planned our first month-long course (now starting its third week) 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...

Women in ADR with a Wake Up Sound Track

Posted on April 16, 2010
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 . . .  

Transforming Rejections into New Business with "Influence Letters" from ForbesWoman

Posted on April 16, 2010
The following article is a must-read for these economically challenging times. Excerpt below and link to entire article at end of excerpt.  This also works for consultants, attorneys, trainers, mediators, and anyone else who is marketing their services to clients...

Jim Melamed on the Entwined Development of Mediation and Web 2.0

Posted on April 14, 2010
When's the last time you enjoyed listening to an acceptance speech?  Never?  Check this out!  Jim Melamed of Mediate.com accepting an award at the Spring 2010 ABA Dispute Resolution Conference.

Negotiating Women Power Point with a Little Ari Gold Distributive Hard Bargaining

Posted on April 12, 2010
Negotiation101 View more presentations from Victoria Pynchon.

Narrative Mediation and the Subjective Experience of Money

Posted on April 07, 2010
Inga Watkins and I will be presenting this topic at the ABA Dispute Resolution Conference this coming Friday in San Francisco.  NARRATIVE MEDIATION AND THE SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE OF MONEY View more presentations from Victoria Pynchon.

Finesse the Impasse by Changing the Deal: Advice from a Former Disney GC

Posted on April 06, 2010
"Finesse the Impasse by Changing the Deal" -- Negotiation Wisdom from Lou Meisinger (right, subversive wall crossing by Bansky) Former Executive Vice-President and General Counsel to The Walt Disney Company, entertainment law heavy-weight Lou Meisinger (now Judge Meisinger thank you very much) gave me the best impasse-breaking advice ever...

Negotiation as Poker Game for Your Next Law Firm Retreat

Posted on April 03, 2010
Learn how to play Texas Hold 'Em (or win more often) while maximizing your negotiation strategies and tactics at your next firm retreat with the Pynchon Negotiation Seminar's "Negotiation as Poker Game."  For testimonials and pricing, go to the Settle It Now! website and click on "Negotiation Training...

Social Media for Lawyers, Mediators, Negotiators and Friends

Posted on April 01, 2010
I make these presentations because people ask me all the time how to use and maximize the value of social networking to build their businesses.  This presentation includes a YouTube video on building a network with Facebook Fan PagesSocial Networking 101 View more presentations from Victoria Pynchon...

Geoff Sharp Returns with the Best Negotiation/Mediation Advice in the ADR-O-Sphere

Posted on April 01, 2010
Remember mediator blah blah . . . . ?  New Zealand mediator and mediation/negotiation trainer Geoff Sharp's justly revered blog?  It still exists, along with an incredible treasure trove of helpful suggestions, insights, links, case studies, white papers, forms, shout-out's, call downs, criticisms and praise...

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