Arbitration & Mediation

Rx for Negotiation Anxiety over at ForbesWoman

Posted on January 15, 2011
Come on over to the ForbesWoman She Negotiates Blog to learn how to improve your negotiation performance by writing about it in advance. Excerpt below. Full article at the link. In a recent effort to remedy the persistent problem of women performing poorly on math tests, researchers at the University of Chicago asked women to write about their test-anxiety or about their personal values...

What Makes a Great Legal Blog? For Niki Black It's Passion

Posted on January 14, 2011
From the Detroit Legal News, Nicole Black on Blawging: It's All About the Passion. Regardless of your goals, there's no point in blogging unless you enjoy the process of writing and have a passion for your subject matter. Otherwise, the blog will fall flat...

The Week at ForbesWoman's "She Negotiates" Blog

Posted on January 07, 2011
We kicked off the new year over at ForbesWoman this past Sunday with my short think-post on gay marriage and the razor's edge on which we women negotiate for ourselves - both of which I tied to our fear of losing the benefits and the restraining influences of traditional gender roles...

The ABCs Will Help X2N Explore Improved Patient Care

Posted on January 07, 2011
The X2 Healthcare Network (X2HN), a nonprofit group of women healthcare executives dedicated to improving all aspects of healthcare, announces Markle Foundation managing director Dr. Carol Diamond, MD MPH as the round table guest at its fifth annual meeting...

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The Week in Assholes

Posted on January 06, 2011
A new regular weekly feature at the Negotiation Law Blog ~ The Week in Assholes. Gawker Calls Scalia an 'A-Hole' as He Questions Women's Rights Under the 14th Amendment at Legal Blog Watch.  I grew up in Impeach Earl Warren territory - San Diego in the late 50's and early 60s, then primarily a Navy and defense industry town - read:  None Dare Call it Treason-Duck 'n Cover-Fallout Shelter-Flouridated Drinking Water as Communist Plot-John Birch Society pre-Tea-Partyville...

10,000 Boomers a Day Do Not Go Gently into Retirement

Posted on January 01, 2011
Even before the recession I was asking anyone within shouting distance just exactly what the country was going to do when the largely bankrupt baby boom became the largest impoverished retired class the country has ever known.   Post-recession, we're even deeper in debt and searching for last minute solutions...

East Coast Book Tour for the Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution

Posted on December 30, 2010
She Negotiates . . . and everything changes When: January 10, 2011 Where: 7725 Jericho Turnpike, Woodbury, NY Time: 6:00 p.m. Federal Bar Association (S.D.N.Y.) Book Launch When:  January 11, 2001 at 6:30 p.m. Where:  Pierre Loti, 53 Irving Place, New York City 10003 (details to follow) She Negotiates to Win! in Boston Date: January 18, 2010 Time: 6:00 pm (networking until 6:30, book signing to follow program) Location:     YWCA - Library, 2nd floor, 140 Clarendon Street,Boston, MA 02116 Tuition:    $35     includes workshop and autographed copy of the ABCs of Conflict Resolution (a portion of your tuition will benefit Massachuesett charities)

She Negotiates for Crystal Harris ~ About that Pre-Nup

Posted on December 27, 2010
The question why Hugh Hefner is marrying his 24 year old girlfriend Crystal Harris has been raised around many a post-Christmas table since Hef popped the question along with the diamond on Christmas Day. Jeez, my 85-year old mother doesn't even have a computer, but the ever-young Hef tweeted his proposal...

Christmas and Conflict ~ a Meditation

Posted on December 24, 2010
It's Christmas Eve and I am moved to talk about religion and violence, particularly since the New York Times' most prominent Christmas story is about furious family battles over the pressing question of white lights or colored on the Christmas tree. My conflict resolver's stream of consciousness moves from family strife to violence for reasons both global and personal...

Negotiating with Mattie Ross of True Grit

Posted on December 23, 2010
Please note that this is a combination of the dialogue from the Mattie audition videos on YouTube and the script online.  I'd love to have the figures used in the lines where they're missing and the remainder of these two scenes from the Coen brothers script...

Happy Holidays from She Negotiates and the ABCs of Conflict

Posted on December 22, 2010
Fa la la la la la la la la . . . .    Catch us over at ForbesWoman on the battle of the Gens and why peace and gratitude will bring prosperity to all in 2011.   With gratitude to all of our ForbesWoman She Negotiates Bloggers:  Lisa Gates, Katie Phillips, Roxana Popescu and our kindly editor Caroline Howard...

Our "She Negotiates" Core Curriculum Year-End Deal

Posted on December 15, 2010
Mark your calendars women! Our Core Curriculum is a full five months of course work that will bring all that's important to you in your life and work front and center in 2011. You'll discover your passionate purpose, set meaningful, resonant goals, put new legs on your productivity practices and learn to negotiate everything from relationships to corner office deals...

The Peace and Prosperity Gang of She Negotiates Now Live at ForbesWoman

Posted on December 10, 2010
Thanks to ForbesWoman, we've just inaugurated the She Negotiates Blog at the best women's business magazine around.  We introduce our mission and our contributors here.  Excerpt below. You'll want meet with us here on a regular basis because women's misperceptions about their market value along with our negative attitudes toward asking, bargaining, haggling and negotiating are a big part of the reason why we haven't smashed the glass ceiling to smithereens, or flattened the wage gap...

The Bronze Asshole Award for November Goes to Akin Gump Partner Steven Pesner

Posted on December 06, 2010
As you may recall, we've recently given Gold and Silver Asshole Awards here ~ the Golden to the "individual making the greatest contribution to reducing assholishness in the profession" and the Silver to the person who best illustrates the proposition that an asshole is not a person but a behavior and not one person but two...

Mediation, the Music Video

Posted on November 30, 2010
Thanks to @NeilDenny of Lawyer 1point9  for the head's up.

Valuing Commercial Enterprises in Business Litigation

Posted on November 30, 2010
Much of the complex commercial litigation that I mediate requires that businesses be valued.  Although we litigators tend to hire experts to do the dirty work we went to law school to avoid (math!!) we do need to understand our own consultants' valuations as well as those of our adversaries in order to perfect our strategy and prevail at trial...

E is for enemy ~ Poland (and we) demonize without them

Posted on November 28, 2010
I've said this before.  "I don't take it personally" is the biggest lie in the legal business.  Well, that and "it's only about money" which is pretty much the same thing.  But let's pretend that you, a seasoned litigator and trial attorney, have achieved legal practice nirvana...

Fighting at the Thanksgiving Table? Let Conflict Be Your Zen Master!

Posted on November 24, 2010
From Z is for Zen Master in A is for Asshole, the Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution. Dr. Kenneth Cloke tells us that every conflict 'occurs at the intersection, or crossroads, between problems we need to solve in order to grow and skills we do not yet possess...

Negotiating a New Economic Paradigm

Posted on November 23, 2010

The Silver Asshole of the Month Award to the Cornell Senior Lecturer and His Anonymous Student

Posted on November 21, 2010
You may have heard from Legal Blog Watch (here and here) that we're giving a Golden Asshole Award once a month to the individual making the greatest contribution to reducing assholishness in the [legal] profession. See You Park Like an Asshole here...

Negotiating the Times of Our Lives with "Our Family Wizard"

Posted on November 20, 2010
This is a commercial litigation, mediation, arbitration and negotiation blog.  My dad ~ proud graduate of the San Fernando Valley College of Law at age 42 ~ was a Beverly Hills family law attorney before he became a Superior Court Referee and then Commissioner in the Juvenile (Referee), family law, writs and receivers, law and motion and trial setting departments (Commissioner)...

Gekko the Great and the Smell of Napalm in the Morning

Posted on November 16, 2010
One of my early mentors instructed me that "any yutz with ears can win a case on the merits ~ a truly great lawyer wins on procedure." Still, when the New York Post crows Judge tosses Michael Douglas' ex-wife's bid for 'Wall Street' money and proclaims Gekko the Great wins again, I'm expecting actual victory, not the following: Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Matthew Cooper ruled that a New York court was not the proper venue for the suit by Diandra Douglas...

"You Park Like an Asshole" ~ How Not to Commence Negotiations

Posted on November 15, 2010
Priming Legal Negotiations is the winner of this week's Golden Asshole Award. /*  An autographed copy of A is for Asshole, the Grownups' ABCs of Conflict Resolution will be winging its way to author Carrie Sperling, Executive Director of the Arizona Justice Project today!  Excerpt below...

Extreme Negotiations at HBR

Posted on November 14, 2010
Check out Extreme Negotiations at Harvard Business Review this month (kicker:  What U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan have learned about the art of managing high-risk, high-stakes situations). I have to tell you that I believe every one of our She Negotiates graduates understands and knows how to use the bullet point takeaways from Extreme Negotiations below...

Negotiation Tips Using the New Expedited Jury Trial Procedures

Posted on November 13, 2010
Check out Julie A. Goren's excellent article California Expedited Jury Trial Act Opens New Avenues for California Mediators over at Litigation by the Numbers.  Excerpt below. Every California mediator needs to read the California Expedited Jury Trial Act (AB 2284) and the rules implementing it...

How to get a raise in 2011 (the bullet point outline with a special note for women)

Posted on November 13, 2010
UNCOUPLE YOUR PRESENT VALUE FROM WHAT YOU MADE LAST YEAR your present compensation serves as a powerful anchor of your value to your employer's advantage the following suggestions are a way of re-anchoring that value so that your starting point is greater than what you made this year  recalibrate your value according to what you are worth in your employer's hands, i...

How black is Obama and why negotiators should care

Posted on November 12, 2010
I was cruising a conservative political blog this morning and noticed how much darker the photographs of Barack Obama appeared to be there than I am used to seeing in the mainstream press. Odd, I thought, and tweeted this: have you ever noticed that Obama is BLACKER on conservative political sites? think it's intentional?  Not long after, a member of my Twitter Brain Trust, attorney, mediator and consultant Iván Ríos-Mena ~ @IvanRiosMena ~ tweeted back Maybe this explains it… http://j...

Speaking Up for Others Requires Us to Speak Up for Ourselves As Well

Posted on November 11, 2010
We're pleased and proud to introduce the last of four "She Negotiates" columnists, Katie Phillips, a "She Negotiates" graduate and one of two Gen-Y writers for our ForbesWoman negotiation column.  Click on the image to read Katie's terrific article on developing the "speaking up" muscle in defense of the bullied and marginalized...

Blogging at the ABCs while LexBlog Provides New Template!

Posted on November 07, 2010
 How to Ask Your Neighbor to Quiet Their Dog Bullying, Bad Behavior, Bad People and Children's Ability to Judge Can We Change Someone Else's Mind? The Debauchery of the Holidays Will Be Followed by Resolutions Oh yes, and have I said . . . buy the ABC's lately? Here's my author page at Amazon...

The Negotiation Law Blog Has a Brand New Look!

Posted on November 07, 2010
Oh yes, and have I said . . . buy the ABC's lately? Here's the book at Amazon.   While you're there, buy my friends' books too.  Check out local attorney Rick Wirick's amazing collection of short fiction that anyone with literary taste and an appreciation for the absurdities of legalized conflict must read ~ Kicking In; Kathleen Wakefield's award-winning Snaketown (like a 20-year old scotch smuggled into a shotgun shack); Rita Williams haunting memoir If the Creek Don't Rise; Jackie Gorman's arresting memoir of temporary blindness The Seeing Glass; and, everything Cathy Scott here...

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