By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: There is a perspective on negotiations focusing on tactics, secret strategies, or tricks. The problem with this tricks-based approach is that once you have two sides who think they know the tricks – like “never make the first offer,” – then you’re headed for a stalemate faster than a game […]
Don’t Play Chicken With Your Case: The Settlement Series, Part Two Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: We all have an image in our heads of the way we expect cases to end: passionate presentations, gripping witness testimony, then a tense wait followed by the dramatic verdict. In the great majority of cases, however, the dispute will end not in a courtroom but in a conference room.
Break Through the Barriers: The Settlement Series, Part One Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Perceptions can be tricky. Take the picture above for example: If you’ll do something right now, I promise that you’ll be amazed. Stand up from in front of your monitor and step back about 15 feet from the computer, and you’ll see Albert Einstein turn into Marilyn Monroe. Seriously! The image doesn’t change of
When it Comes to Bad Defense Venues, Treat Perception as Reality Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Predicting is tough, and can be even tougher when we don’t believe the limits of our own predictive abilities. Daniel Kahneman, a giant in the psychology world, recently wrote in the New York Times Magazine about an odd task that neatly parallels an attorney’s challenge in case assessment. Dr. Kahneman’s job as a British army
Predict With Care: Adapt to Overconfidence in Case Assessment Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Judges, arbitrators, mediators: legally trained and neutral minds, without the juror’s baggage of selective perception, predisposition, and bias, right? Not really. In the previous two posts on motivated thinking and instrumental argument, I wrote that an audience’s reasoning and advocacy is driven by emotions and not just by logic. While a jury’s decision making
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – Litigators like to see themselves as silver-tongued persuaders, but in an age in which fewer than one in fifty suits are resolved in trial, they may find that the negotiation skills of Donald Trump come to matter more than the rhetorical skills of F. Lee Bailey. And research is
When You Press the Negotiations, Pause the Persuasion Read More »
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – The role of a positive example in creating a “demonstration effect” has long been noted in the fields of political science and international relations, with one of the classic examples being the American Revolution that was closely followed by the French revolution. We’re seeing it now on a near daily
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – We’ve now been using the phrase “the vanishing jury trial,” for almost a decade, and the decline continues. The days when experienced lawyers could count on finding themselves in front of a jury several times a month are gone, as today’s cases are increasingly resolved by judges, mediators, arbitrators, and other routes
The Jury is Out: Make the Most of Your Experience In an Era of Fewer Trials Read More »
By: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm – On some days, just watching the news can stop us cold. Those who work in law should be proud to be part of a system that, however imperfectly, resolves disputes with appeals to reason and judgment rather than force. But the opposite end of the spectrum was seen in last week’s devastating shooting
Don’t Advocate from a Position of Hate Read More »
by: Dr. Ken Broda Bahm If it isn’t already a saying, then I’ll try to make it one: When a case gets as far as trial, it is because one side or the other is seriously misunderstanding their chances for success. When both parties are realistic about their chances, then there is really no reason
Be More Realistic Than Your Opponent Read More »