Course Description
Basic negotiation skills and transactional problems commonly confronted in a general business law practice. Deals with cover bilateral, multilateral, and repeated negotiations in addition to principal-agent problems. Timing and desirability of disclosure of information, misrepresentation, and legal ethics are also discussed.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate law students will not be doing any extra work beyond
that required of the Juris Doctor students. J.D. students are
post-baccalaureate students and the workload expected of them is
the same workload expected of post-baccalaureate graduate students.
Athena Title
Business Negotiations
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in JURI 4211E or JURI 6211E
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Designed to provide broad overview of negotiation theory and strategy, including identifying the nature of the problem and the bargaining zone, learning how early choices affect later outcomes, impact of culture and gender on negotiations, and impact of private information and its (non)disclosure on negotiation outcomes. Provides chance to engage in multiple negotiations to develop skills and enchance awareness of strengths and weaknesses. Aims to improve: critical thinking and analytical skills, facility and comfort in soliciting information from clients, ability to offer constructive criticisms of ideas, confidence in volunteering experience and viewpoint and problem solving.
Topical Outline
1. Conceptual approaches to negotiations 2. Estimating the bargaining zone, identifying the best alternative to negotiated agreements, estimating reservation prices and the impact of aspirations on bargaining 3. Behavioral aspects which may influence negotiations 4. Integrative vs. distributive bargaining 5. Effective usage of power in negotiations 6. Impact of social norms on negotiations 7. Identifying your own conflict style and eliminating unwanted behaviors in negotiations 8. Identify other factors which may influence negotiation style such as culture or gender. Study some successful internation negotiations 9. Study the impact of the principal-agent relationship on negotiations (with lawyers as agents and business owners as principals) 10. Multilateral negotiations and the changes to the basic structural models of negotiations necessitated by multilaternal negotiations 11. Evaluate the impact of reputation and verifiability on negotiations 12. Study the (lack of) guidance provided by the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility and tort and contract remedies to misrepresentation in negotiation