If you want to achieve optimal results in a mediation or other type of negotiation, you must be organized, know your case well and know as much as possible about your opponent’s case. The Negotiation Preparation Form below, adapted from a similar form in the excellent materials provided by Professor Charles B. Craver in his seminar entitled On Effective Legal Negotiation and Settlement given in New Jersey earlier this year, will help advocates and participants in organizing their preparation time.
Negotiation Preparation Form
1. Determine the lowest result you would accept given your alternative(s) to a negotiated settlement, including transaction costs associated with both settlement and non-settlement:
2. Determine the best result you might achieve on each item to be negotiated:
3. Try to estimate the lowest result your opponent would accept given his/her alternative(s) to a negotiated settlement:
4. Estimate the best result that your opponent might achieve on each item to be negotiated. Try to use the opponent’s value system when estimating the opponent’s potential results instead of using your own:
5. Think through the factual and legal strengths and weaknesses of your case, and list each below. Prepare logical explanations supporting each strength and anticipate ways which you might minimize each weakness. Prepare a principled opening offer-try to begin as far from your actual objectives as you can while still being able to rationally defend your proposals:
6. Think through the factual and legal strengths and weaknesses of your opponent’s case, and list each below. Try to prepare effective counter-arguments:
7. What information do you plan to elicit from your opponent during the “information exchange” stage of the mediation in order to determine the opponent’s underlying needs, interests and objectives? List the questions that you anticipate using:
8. What information are you willing to disclose and how do you intend to divulge it? How do you plan to prevent disclosure of sensitive information?:
9. Describe your negotiation strategy. What is the agenda you will follow and what are the tactics you will use? What is your anticipated concession pattern so that you will disclose only that information that you intend to disclose?:
10. What is your prediction of your opponent’s negotiation strategy, and what counter-measures will you use to neutralize your opponent’s strengths and emphasize his/her weaknesses?:
11. What negotiating techniques do you plan to use to advance your interests?:
12. What negotiating techniques do you expect your opponent to use, and how do you plan to counter those actions?:
Categories
- Affordable Care Act
- Alzheimer's Disease
- Arbitration
- Attorney Ethics
- Attorneys Fees
- Beneficiary Designations
- Blog Roundup and Highlights
- Blogs and Blogging
- Care Facilities
- Caregivers
- Cemetery
- Collaborative Family Law
- Conservatorships
- Consumer Fraud
- Contempt
- Contracts
- Defamation
- Developmental Disabilities
- Discovery
- Discrimination Laws
- Doctrine of Probable Intent
- Domestic Violence
- Elder Abuse
- Elder Law
- Elective Share
- End-of-Life Decisions
- Estate Administration
- Estate Litigation
- Estate Planning
- Events
- Family Law
- Fiduciary
- Financial Exploitation of the Elderly
- Funeral
- Future of the Legal Profession
- Geriatric Care Managers
- Governmental or Public Benefit Programs
- Guardianship
- Health Issues
- Housing for the Elderly and Disabled
- In Remembrance
- Insolvent Estates
- Institutional Liens
- Insurance
- Interesting New Cases
- Intestacy
- Law Firm News
- Law Firm Videos
- Law Practice Management / Development
- Lawyers and Lawyering
- Legal Capacity or Competancy
- Legal Malpractice
- Legal Rights of the Disabled
- Liens
- Litigation
- Mediation
- Medicaid Appeals
- Medicaid Applications
- Medicaid Planning
- Annuities
- Care Contracts
- Divorce
- Estate Recovery
- Family Part Non-Dissolution Support Orders
- Gifts
- Life Estates
- Loan repayments
- MMMNA
- Promissory Notes
- Qualified Income Trusts
- Spousal Refusal
- Transfers For Reasons Other Than To Qualify For Medicaid
- Transfers to "Caregiver" Child(ren)
- Transfers to Disabled Adult Children
- Trusts
- Undue Hardship Provision
- Multiple-Party Deposit Account Act
- New Cases
- New Laws
- News Briefs
- Newsletters
- Non-Probate Assets
- Nursing Facility Litigation
- Personal Achievements and Awards
- Personal Injury Lawsuits
- Probate
- Punitive Damages
- Reconsideration
- Retirement Benefits
- Reverse Mortgages
- Section 8 Housing
- Settlement of Litigation
- Social Media
- Special Education
- Special Needs Planning
- Surrogate Decision-Making
- Taxation
- Technology
- Texting
- Top Ten
- Trials
- Trustees
- Uncategorized
- Veterans Benefits
- Web Sites and the Internet
- Webinar
- Writing Intended To Be A Will
Vanarelli & Li, LLC on Social Media