Negotiation Skills for Lawyers
Background
Osborne Clarke is an international legal practice headquartered in London, England with offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore and the United States.
Need
The training need was to provide the lawyers with the fundamentals of negotiation. This was to make the training as practical as possibe and to include practice scenarios.
Some of the specific objectives included:
- Improve strategy for negotiating.
- Basic skills for negotiation and different behaviours.
- Learn strategies for dealing with different styles of negotiation.
- Refine techniques, developing alternative approaches and methods for resolving deadlocks.
- Tips on resolving deadlocks and understanding negotiation styles.
- To get a better idea of how to deal with different personality types when negotiating.
- Improve negotiations skills – get good tips.
- Tips to overcome deadlock.
- Learn negotiation techniques / things to think about and develop.
- Tips and techniques; understand different styles of negotiation; how to overcome deadlock / negotiations challenges.
Activity
The session was designed as two half days. Some feedback told us that they would like one full day, but the pressure of work doesn’t always allow that.
We included a major role-play with video playback. The scenario was drafted for the firm to illustrate a range of challenges they could face at the firm.
The agenda included:
- What is a negotiation.
- When does negotiation happen.
- Negotiating strategies.
- Personalities in negotiating.
- Negotiating principles.
- Tradable factors.
- Negotiating tips.
- Role-play.
- Feedback.
- Personal actions.
Outcomes
The lawyers really engaged with the training. Each participant left the sessions with vivid experiences of the role-plays and a number of personal actions.
Participant Feedback & Actions
“I really enjoyed the role-play. It just brought all the issues into focus.”
“The role-play was excellent. It’s all well and good discussing how to negotiate, but when you have to do it, it’s a different thing.”
“Enjoyed exercise – good fun and good way of learning!”
“Becoming more aware of how best to negotiate with different styles of negotiators.”
“I need more preparation for negotiations”
“Have less preconceptions about lawyers on the other side and adapt negotiating method to suit different personality types on other side.”
“Continue to consider objectives and plan for negotiations in advance.”
“Apply ” styles of negotiating / people. Blue / red exercise v interesting and insightful.”
“Use preparation sheets before going into a negotiation and try to understand different styles.”
Client Comment
“We always get very good feedback from the participants on this training session. It’s challenging and fun at the same time.”