Life Is a Minefield

I have wanted to write a book about negotiation for along time because life is a minefield. A person who does not know how to negotiate the perilous landscape of life can end up unhappy emotionally, legally, or economically, and can suffer personal damage to pride and self-esteem.

Several books have been published about the art of negotiation. To be blunt, these tomes are garbage, often written by university professors who have learned what little they know—or think they know—from other books written by similar academicians. None of these people have labored with insight or acumen in the field.

True to the way the United States conducts business, corporations that look for a negotiator often turn to academia. They rely on the false premise that somebody who is a professor in a particular subject must be proficient. The expert take the assignment and then uses the work as confirmation of ability to perform such tasks. The process represents a perfect circle of the blind teaching the blind, who are then hired by the gullible.

Throw those books away!

I have negotiated billions of dollars, most often paid by a person who would have preferred to pay nothing. I have negotiated settlements for homes and boats, interests in businesses, patents, pets (including a parrot, Scottish terrier, and a boa constrictor), furniture, jewelry, and piece of the Berlin Wall; child custody and visitation rights; monies that allegedly did not exist; free airline miles; vehicles (from a Rolls-Royce and electric scooters to a private railroad car and a Boeing 727 airplane); the value of legal, medical, and veterinary practices; who will do the dishes; where people will live or work; who will pay for hair plugs; the dollar value of celebrity in every profession from authors to movie stars; membership in country clubs, rubber rooms, and S&M dungeons; and collections of items ranging from toy trains, antique weather vanes, and biscuit tins to antique armor.

I am familiar with razor-sharp applications of negotiation skills for all occasions, legal and otherwise. Over the years, I have learned many proved and successful negotiation practices and have invented several new ones. Some of the concepts involve straightforward common sense and a few are devious and cunning. But they all work; take my word for it.

When people brag about their ability to negotiate, they often sound like people who boast about how they perform sex. They proudly proclaim how well they do it—but just completing the act does not mean it was a bravura performance.

Negotiation is both an art and a skill. A truism is that some people have the ability to negotiate and others do not. In more than 40 years of practicing law, I have witnessed some of the great negotiators in action and have seen firsthand the favorable results of their expertise.