Direct Negotiation

The attorneys at Miller Shah are regularly complimented for their direct negotiation skills by clients, courts, and third-party neutrals alike. Successful direct negotiation requires a careful and balanced blending of advocacy and interpersonal skills with an emphasis on candor and the careful use of empathic positioning techniques. Simply put, if your adversary does not trust you and/or if you do not understand your adversary, the opportunity to maximize the outcome for a client in any direct negotiations is substantially diminished (if not nonexistent).

In approaching and conducting direct negotiations, Miller Shah professionals focus particularly on client goals, potential trades with the other side(s) and alternative proposals that may be applicable to the situation, the relationship between the parties and the extent to which that relationship will continue in the future following the negotiation (or if the parties will be negotiating regarding a different matter in the future), the outcome expected by the client, the relative bargaining power of the parties, including the consequences of “winning,” “losing” or failing to reach agreement for each party and, perhaps most importantly, the availability of creative and “win-win” solutions to bridge gaps between the parties.

The attorneys and other professionals at Miller Shah particularly embrace the negotiating principles and approaches espoused in Fisher & Ury’s seminal work, Getting to Yes (1981), and the focus in that important work on creating “win-win” situations in various areas of direct negotiation. Miller Shah’s attorneys have honed their direct negotiation skills both in the classroom through substantial training exercises and in real-world negotiations in which they have collectively spent thousands of hours in direct negotiation settings, including, but not limited to, collective bargaining negotiations, commercial contracts and similar arrangements, intellectual property licensing and similar arrangements (including agreements in the software field), merger and acquisition deal-making discussions, and settlement negotiations in various kinds of complex litigation and other disputes.

To be put in contact with the right member of our team to assist in direct negotiations, please contact Nathan Zipperian at nzipperian@millershah.com or call 866-540-5505.