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And the Award for the 'Greatest Contribution to Reducing Assholishness' in the Legal Profession Goes to ...

By Bruce Carton

Today, Victoria Pynchon's Negotiation Law Blog awarded its "Golden Asshole Award" to Carrie Sperling. Before anyone gets too ticked off here, let me quickly clarify that receiving the Golden Asshole Award is supposed to a good thing, as it goes out "once a month to the individual making the greatest contribution to reducing assholishness* in the profession." So, umm, congrats Carrie! Sperling is the author of a recent paper,"Priming Legal Negotiations Through Written Demands," that draws upon research in social psychology to demonstrate that lawyers' written demand letters deserve more attention and study. The words lawyers use to convey their demands can have powerful, lasting effects on the course and nature of negotiations because they almost certainly frame the issues, anchor a recipient?s perceptions, and prime the recipient?s goals and behaviors. If we are to fully understand what causes protracted, hostile litigation as opposed to cooperative negotiations and lasting resolutions, we must start by applying sound negotiation theory to the written demand. The paper starts with an interesting anecdote that helps demonstrate how an initial written demand can have the exact opposite effect of what is intended, perhaps even permanently destroying any hope that the sender may have had of...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on November 15, 2010 (boomark / email).