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Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution

Strategic Negotiation Skills

Faculty:  L. Randolph Lowry and Denise Madigan

Lawyers, managers, and other professionals can learn the latest negotiation theories and techniques in this interactive, practical, and entertaining course. Negotiation and Settlement Skills evolved from extensive work with more than 40,000 lawyers and managers in forty states. Building on the empirical data from the fields of business, communication, and psychology, the course utilizes sophisticated simulations and case studies to create a conceptual roadmap for negotiation strategy.

What you will learn:

  • Four stages of negotiation
  • Characteristics of distributive and integrative bargaining
  • Three styles of negotiations
  • Recognition and management of mixed-motive exchange
  • Techniques of competitive and collaborative negotiation
  • Interplay between style and strategy
  • The strength of alternatives in negotiation
  • Negotiation tactics and how to counter them
  • Sources and uses of power
  • Avoiding conflict aftermath
  • The dynamics of multi-party, multi-issue bargaining
  • Evaluation of negotiation success

L. Randolph Lowry is president of Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1986 he founded the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution and was a professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law until assuming his current position in 2005. He also works as a conflict management consultant to one of the nation’s largest hospital companies and for five years served as board chair for two nonprofit health care organizations. A lawyer, active mediator, consultant, and internationally recognized educator, he is on the faculty at Vermont Law School and City University in Hong Kong.

Denise R. Madigan has been mediating full-time for over 20 years. She entered the field as an associate director for the Harvard-MIT Public Disputes Program in the early 1980s, and after practicing law, later joined the pioneering ADR firm, Endispute, Inc., in Washington, D.C. (which later merged with JAMS).   The breadth of her practice is extraordinarily broad, and includes complex commercial, entertainment, intellectual property, insurance, mass accidents, and employment matters, among others. In addition to her full-time mediation practice, Madigan has taught at the Straus Institute since the mid-1990s, and now serves as director of its Public Disputes Project.   She also has designed and/or taught hundreds of tailored negotiation and ADR courses for courts, law firms, government agencies, nonprofits and corporations in the United States, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.