Jun 16, 2026 · 29 min · 11 segments
If you’ve ever walked into a negotiation thinking the law and the facts would do the heavy lifting, and then watched the whole thing stall anyway, this episode will feel familiar. I’m joined by Nicole…
Damien Van BrunschotHostSo begs the question, what are the common mistakes that you think lawyers make in the negotiation context? What do you see?
And, you know, once again, the legal case and the strength of the legal case is important, but we also know that generally both parties go into a case thinking they've got reasonable prospects of success and one of them will be proved wrong.
The other mistake that I see is taking the emotion, talking about the idea of taking the emotion out.
And the reason I say that's a mistake is because we are dealing with humans.
It might be a corporate on one side, but a small business on the other side.
And you absolutely need to recognize the person, where they're coming from, what their emotional and sort of psychological needs are, because if they don't have some of those mesh, they will resist the actual practical solutions a lot more.
If you can actually deal with them in a way where they feel like they've been respected or they feel like there's a degree of fairness, there's a whole bunch of things that we're looking for, then they're much more likely to be able to move to the practical solution as well.
Yeah, so there's this innate need to be seen and heard that is always surfacing in every conflict.
And I guess why Fisher and Uri was such a game changer and seminally now understanding was looking at what are the interests, what are the underlying needs, or what is maybe not being expressed necessarily through the legal framework, but really is driving decision making and getting people to really drill down and understand that.
And that's effectively a core part of your negotiation teaching, understanding that framework.
And one of the things that I'm constantly looking at is when these disputes come before me, often the problem itself is not very complex, but the reason it's escalated is because how the communication has proceeded along the way.
If it had been handled differently, it would never have got to the point where lawyers needed to come in and, you know, it just would have been dealt with in a much, much easier way.
So begs the question, what are the common mistakes that you think lawyers make in the negotiation context? What do you see?
And, you know, once again, the legal case and the strength of the legal case is important, but we also know that generally both parties go into a case thinking they've got reasonable prospects of success and one of them will be proved wrong.
The other mistake that I see is taking the emotion, talking about the idea of taking the emotion out.
And the reason I say that's a mistake is because we are dealing with humans.
It might be a corporate on one side, but a small business on the other side.
And you absolutely need to recognize the person, where they're coming from, what their emotional and sort of psychological needs are, because if they don't have some of those mesh, they will resist the actual practical solutions a lot more.
If you can actually deal with them in a way where they feel like they've been respected or they feel like there's a degree of fairness, there's a whole bunch of things that we're looking for, then they're much more likely to be able to move to the practical solution as well.
Yeah, so there's this innate need to be seen and heard that is always surfacing in every conflict.
And I guess why Fisher and Uri was such a game changer and seminally now understanding was looking at what are the interests, what are the underlying needs, or what is maybe not being expressed necessarily through the legal framework, but really is driving decision making and getting people to really drill down and understand that.
And that's effectively a core part of your negotiation teaching, understanding that framework.
And one of the things that I'm constantly looking at is when these disputes come before me, often the problem itself is not very complex, but the reason it's escalated is because how the communication has proceeded along the way.
If it had been handled differently, it would never have got to the point where lawyers needed to come in and, you know, it just would have been dealt with in a much, much easier way.
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