Aug 3, 2026 · 17 min · 11 segments
If you're negotiating with a narcissist or high-conflict personality, the first settlement offer may be a trap. In this video, Rebecca Zung, The Leverage Lawyer, reveals why high-conflict opponents…
So by the time your first settlement offer lands on your table, the other side has already made a decision about you.
It's really a control play because when you're dealing with a high-conflict personality, they don't actually want to settle.
And so what I have seen happens in these situations is they give you a settlement offer, and even if you say, "Yes, I'll take all the things," first of all, it's never fair.
It's never something that you would actually even wanna take in the first place.
But second of all, it's really, even if you agree to everything, they're gonna come back and change the terms over and over and over again.
And the other thing that I see happen is that they will, uh, hold you to the provisions in there that you're supposed to be held to, but they're not gonna, um, uh, be held to any of the provisions that they themselves came up with, by the way.
It's really just a trick, um, to see where you stand, to see if they still have control over you, okay? And, and you're gonna start to see some other power plays as this starts to unfold.
So by the time your first settlement offer lands on your table, the other side has already made a decision about you.
It's really a control play because when you're dealing with a high-conflict personality, they don't actually want to settle.
And so what I have seen happens in these situations is they give you a settlement offer, and even if you say, "Yes, I'll take all the things," first of all, it's never fair.
It's never something that you would actually even wanna take in the first place.
But second of all, it's really, even if you agree to everything, they're gonna come back and change the terms over and over and over again.
And the other thing that I see happen is that they will, uh, hold you to the provisions in there that you're supposed to be held to, but they're not gonna, um, uh, be held to any of the provisions that they themselves came up with, by the way.
It's really just a trick, um, to see where you stand, to see if they still have control over you, okay? And, and you're gonna start to see some other power plays as this starts to unfold.
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