Most of my day is spent negotiating. Almost all of my negotiating is on behalf of my clients.
Recently, I purchased a new car. This was the first car that I’ve purchased since passing the bar. The process caused me to realize that I do very little negotiating in my daily life. After all, there is no haggling with Amazon.
In many ways, negotiating the purchase price of a new vehicle was much easier than any negotiating I do in practice. The reason: purchasing a car occurs in an open market. If you don’t like the offer one dealer gives you – you simply call another dealer. A consumer also has the advantage of being able to have dealers compete for a sale.
I can’t tell you how many times I’d love it if my clients could negotiate with a different spouse during a divorce.
In the practice of law, we are often stuck with the party across the table from us. Often this relationship does not occur by choice (you don’t get to choose who hits you head on) nor do you get to choose your judge.
My negotiation skills did help me to leverage a good deal. Negotiating the price of a car is in many ways no different than negotiating in a case – there is no substitute for research. Learning as much as I could about the car I wanted to purchase and market research on its cost ended up saving me money.