Section of Dispute Resolution: Negotiation

Negotiation


Negotiation
Who We Are and Goals The Negotiation Committee works to help lawyers develop their negotiating skills and knowledge. This is a fast-moving field, so the committee's focus is on the latest and most important discoveries. Recently, the focus has been on *The Negotiator's Fieldbook* (Schneider, A.K. and Honeyman, C., editors, ABA 2006.) This is an ambitious and critically-acclaimed effort to capture the full range of new knowledge about negotiation, with eighty contributing authors. Now, the Committee is supporting a major new international effort to revamp the teaching of "executive" courses in negotiation. The initiative is based partly on the Fieldbook but takes its ideas further. See "Challenging our Assumptions" below.... CLE Ethics Series: Ethics and Effectiveness in Negotiation During 2007, the Negotiation Committee offered two regional CLE courses based on the Section publication, The Negotiator's Fieldbook. We anticipate up-to-the-minute new offerings once our next major publication (see below) is out. For current details, please email honeyman@convenor.com . International Conference Series: Advanced Topics in Negotiation Teaching The committee is supporting the next phase in the "Canon of Negotiation" initiative: revamping "executive" negotiation courses worldwide. This has become increasingly urgent in light of the many recent discoveries that affect this field. The first in a three-year series of small, international conferences of negotiation experts was recently held, with leading negotiation scholars from fifteen countries (Rome, May 27-30, 2008.) Led by committee co-chair Chris Honeyman with two other Section members, James Coben and Giuseppe De Palo, the Rome effort is the basis for a forthcoming new book (with support from the JAMS Foundation) and also, a special 2009 issue of Negotiation Journal. The series is to continue in Istanbul in 2009, and Delhi in 2010. About the Committee Chairs Both Amy and Chris are continuously engaged in negotiation research, teaching, and training as part of their own professional work and as outreach for the committee more broadly. For example, Chris gave two presentations on negotiation skills in fall 2007 for staff at the World Bank, and Amy will publish in 2008 a review essay, based on the Fieldbook, which opens an exploration of the relationship between negotiation and the emerging field of new governance.

Recent & Forthcoming

Committee Events

CLE Courses

In collaboration with the ABA's Lawyer as Problem-Solver Committee, the Negotiation Committee has offered a select series of CLE Ethics courses, collectively titled Ethics and Effectiveness in Negotiation. In October, 2007 the committee offered a CLE course at New York Law School, featuring Cardozo Law School professor Lela Love and Columbia University social psychologist Peter Coleman. In January, 2007, the committee offered a CLE course at Fordham Law School, featuring Chris Honeyman together with a team from the renowned Hostage Negotiation Team of the New York Police Department. (As an example of the kinds of ideas this series addresses, see http://law.fordham.edu/ihtml/eventitemPP.ihtml?id=37&idc=7270&template=cle)

CLEs in 2009
We anticipate further CLE offerings, following publication of the book currently in preparation (working title: Rethinking Negotiation Teaching). For details, please email honeyman@convenor.com.

Conference events:

The committee is particularly interested in what lawyers can learn from nontraditional sources. For instance, at the Dispute Resolution Section's April 2007 conference, the committee presented "The New and the Newer in Negotiation," featuring a cultural anthropologist, a political scientist, a specialist in conflict transformation, and one of the nation's most distinguished organizational ombudsmen. All are contributors to the Negotiator's Fieldbook, and their presentations are more relevant to lawyers' practice of negotiation than many lawyers might have thought. For 2009, we plan to offer a similarly interdisciplinary session at the Section's New York conference, based on the newest findings in the forthcoming Rethinking Negotiation Teaching.

Next: Challenging Our Assumptions

One purpose of this Committee is to provide a forum for challenging assumptions about negotiation. In a 2007 Negotiation Journal article, Chris Honeyman rethought some of the assumptions behind the Fieldbook, and concluded that a new challenge to our field is to think through how even supposedly "simple" negotiations may demand "advanced" knowledge, if the negotiator is to succeed by anything better than accident.

The new phase of the "Canon of Negotiation" initiative considers how best to deliver high quality, effective dispute resolution training in a global environment. Current knowledge about teaching negotiation has emerged in a largely U.S. context and rests on many untested assumptions. To improve on these assumptions for a global context, the committee is co-sponsoring a series of meetings and writings that will benchmark and update our current approaches to teaching the popular short "executive" negotiation courses. As noted above, the series began in Rome in May 2008, and it will continue in Istanbul in 2009 and in Delhi in 2010. A number of scholars and practitioners affiliated with the ABA Dispute Resolution Section and this committee in particular, including the committee co-chairs, are among the more than 50 professors of negotiation taking part. Stay tuned for more, as this series develops.

The Negotiator's Fieldbook

The ABA has described The Negotiator's Fieldbook as the foremost reference work in the field (and the critics have agreed.) The book is now available at ABA Books (enter fieldbook in ABABooks' search box) and from booksellers everywhere. At the end of ABABooks' page for the Fieldbook, you'll find several full-length journal reviews. Suggested reading lists tailored for eight different kinds of readers, along with additional reviews and an Annotated Table of Contents, can be found at www.convenor.com/fieldbook.

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Modified by Christopher Honeyman on June 30, 2008