4 PerspectivesJanuary 30, 2009

One Tire Too Many: An Unexpected Lesson in Trust

The story might be better if I could make it more dramatic, but tires aren’t all that exciting. My car had turned 5 and rolled past 45,000 miles, and there was little debate — I needed new ones. I braced myself for an expensive day, pulled into Sewell Lexus, and asked for four new tires. My unexpected lesson in trust came when my service rep suggested that wasn’t really what I needed.

One Tire Too Many

As you might imagine, I wasn’t in the mood to reconsider my need for tires, and my request hadn’t been ambiguous. But my longtime service advisor pushed, and I listened with patient annoyance. She explained that she’d be happy to sell More…

Categories: Communication, Education, Negotiation, Theory

1 PerspectiveNovember 16, 2008

The National Arbitration Forum Blog: A Great Resource Turns Four

In September I wrote Come on In, the Water’s Fine to mark the end of this site’s first month in the blogosphere. While Settlement Perspectives’ 30-day anniversary was hardly the time for a memoir, it still felt like a milestone. But on Friday I ran across The National Arbitration Forum Blog’s most recent post: Celebrate the National Arbitration Forum Blog’s 4th Birthday. Four years of great content. I am truly impressed.

The Forum’s Fourth Birthday Post lists “some of the most talked about posts of the last year,” and it links to some good ones.  I’ll say “Happy Birthday” by doing a bit of the same from my own perspective — the following are a few of my favorite posts from the past four years at The National Arbitration Forum Blog, in no particular order: More…

Categories: Arbitration, Blogging, Education, Fundamentals, Mediation, Miscellaneous

6 PerspectivesAugust 29, 2008

Why Are We Here?

A few years ago I had a case in Chicago bankruptcy court that needed to settle. In another post we can talk about why it needed to settle, why it didn’t, and the trial that ultimately resolved the case, but something I noticed as I tried to settle that dispute drove my desire to start this blog.

A Cold Meeting in Chicago

As so many do, my case hit that awkward pause between the production of documents and the first deposition. My team and I had done an early case assessment and we knew our opponent’s case had real problems, but we weren’t sure the plaintiff understood how difficult his case would be. As the holidays approached and before the other side invested any more in the case, I reached out to propose a face-to-face meeting to discuss the potential for settlement. Armed with my comprehensive presentation on the three reasons why the plaintiff couldn’t win, I asked Simon Fleischmann, then a young associate at my outside firm, to go with me. More…

Categories: Education, Negotiation, Selected Posts, Settlement