Law Technology

Negotiating

One of my favorite parts of being a trial lawyer is negotiating. Getting the other side to pay more than they wanted to. In doing this for nearly ten years, I’ve picked up a few tricks of the trade. I am consistently getting about 20% more for the same case than I would five years ago.

But it’s not something that I can realistically blog about. Let’s say I settle a case for $50,000. Maybe it was a case that I thought was worth $40,000 and negotiated it like crazy and got $50,000 for it. I then blog about it and the other side who thought they  might have done a pretty good job goes “Hey. Dave thought he got over on us….Next time, we’ll have to dig in harder.” Not good for my clients.

Or, let’s say I settle another case for $50,000. I had thought it was a $60,000 case and really, really wanted to get more for the client, but for whatever reason that was all we could get (…and don’t say Allstate). Well, if I blog about that, then people would say “Hey…..in this situation, Dave let his client get held over a barrel and so I bet we could do it to.” Again, not good for my clients.

And while over a period of time, you can get a pretty good feel for what a case is worth, you never know how much is on the table and whether you got all, or nearly all of it. And when you finish the case, all you can do is cash the check and give the money to your client. You can’t call up and say “How’d we do? Did you hold out on us and make your client happy? Did we settle to easy? Or did we get everything that was there?” Of course, they can’t tell you that, because it would be giving away their secrets just like blogging about negotiating would give away mine. Ah well… some fun stories that can’t be told.

Full post as published by South Carolina Trial Law Blog on February 24, 2009 (boomark / email).