Speaker 1: Today, we are going to talk about negotiation tactics that lawyers use. I developed these tactics from my own experience, my own research, and my own reading. I'm going to go over three of these tactics with you today. They are effective, attorneys use them, and as you all may or maybe you don't know, attorneys are professional negotiators. It's one of the biggest skills that an attorney must have to get the job done. Those three tactics are number one, open high, number two, give a reason, and number three, be the middle man. But before we begin, if you like this show, Joe the Lawyer, I'm Joe Pometo, an attorney practicing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, primarily in criminal defense, but I also do some civil law, personal injury, etc. If you like this show, Joe the Lawyer, please like, subscribe, comment, and share these videos. It helps me to grow my channel. It gives me positive feedback so that I can make more videos, and it allows YouTube to know that my show is popular, and in that sense, YouTube will reward me as well. Before we begin, for those of you who have watched me in my other channels, let's do a simultaneous sip. Today, I have one of my favorite coffee brands, Dunkin' Donuts, same time sip, absolutely delicious. I'm pairing that with my favorite poison, Diet Coke. Okay, so let's dig in. I briefly touched on the negotiation tactics that I want to talk about today. Number one, open high. Number two, give a reason. Number three, be the middleman. Let's talk about number one, open high. A lot of attorneys will ... Let's take a civil case, for example. When it comes time to negotiate, and you want to talk dollars and cents, I may be representing a plaintiff who was in an auto accident. They're hurt. What is the value of their case? What is their pain and suffering? It's kind of a weird thing to monetize. What I do is I open every negotiation high. Here's the thing, you really can't go wrong opening high because you can always come down, but if you open low, you don't leave yourself any room to negotiate. For example, let's say I want to settle a case for, I don't know, $40,000, and my first offer is $40,000, the defense attorney on the other side is going to come back with something like $5,000 or $10,000. Then the expectation is going to be to meet in the middle at $20,000, $25,000. By opening with what I wanted to end with, I've already backed myself into a corner. I can't get that amount. You could open with that number and then just not move from that number, but then it makes it impossible for the defense attorney to go back to his client and say that he got anything for his client. He can't save face. Even if he was willing to pay $40,000, the lawyer needs to show that he created some value for his client. You want to open high so that both parties can move closer together. Let's say I want to settle a case for $40,000. I make my opening bid $200,000. Then the opposing counsel can come back and say $20,000. I can drop it to $150,000. Now he can go back to his client and say, hey, I saved you $50,000. Let's say you end up settling it for $40,000. He can go back to his client and say, I saved $160,000 for you. If you open lower, you don't give that defense attorney any means of saving face if he's asking his client to pony up some money. You need to have room to go from one number to another number. That is true of both sides. That's one reason to open high. Another reason to open high is a concept called anchoring. I believe if you Google this, anchoring and negotiation, you'll see some talk on this. Whoever puts the first number out first and puts a large number out first creates a high expectation in the minds of all parties involved. Therefore, you're more likely to get to a final number that is larger than if you anchored with a lower number. If you anchor with $200,000, the other side maybe says, wow, well it's a deal if we settle this for $75,000 or $100,000. You may have been thinking when you first took the case that it was only worth $20,000 or $30,000. It creates an anchor in everybody's minds and will usually pull the other party to something higher than what you expected or at the very least get you to what your expectations are. There's no reason not to anchor high. The only downside is if the other side may get offended, they may get upset. They say, oh, that's ridiculous. They don't want to come back with another offer. You can always lower your offer. You can always say, okay, all right, come up with some excuse. Always give a reason. That's going to be the next one. Come up with some excuse and lower it to $100,000. Then maybe you can continue the negotiations, but you can't continue a negotiation if you open low. Always open high on your negotiations. The same is true of criminal defense because in criminal defense, I always tell the other side to drop the case, have my client pay a fine, no process. What way can I get the case dismissed? That's always my opening on every single case. How can I get this case dismissed? Then I'm pulling the prosecutor towards me. This tactic doesn't always work, but it's very effective. It's going to help you get more consistently stronger results. Number two, give a reason. Anything you do in negotiating, anytime you change your offer, give a reason. If you first say, I want $200,000 on this personal injury case, you can't just say, give me $200,000. The attorney says, why? You say, because that's what I want. Otherwise, I'm going to move forward with the case. Some attorneys will do this. They just talk shit and they think that's effective. No, give a reason. Give a reason, because the other side needs to go back to their client and talk to them. Reasons also make the offer more compelling and logical. If I say, even if my opening is very high, I say, listen, I want $200,000 on this case. That's because I've researched similar auto accidents with similar injuries. I've seen the verdict settle for $200,000 and point to the cases that you are reasoning with. When you lower your offer, so you say $200,000, the other side says $20,000, you come down to $150,000. You want to give a reason for coming down to $150,000. You can say, look, I want to save both sides time, costs, and money on litigating this case. I'll knock another $50,000 off. Do that every single time that you come down. It makes you seem like a savvy negotiator. Even if the other attorney is thinking, oh, this guy's full of shit, or they kind of know the game, it works anyway. That's one of the interesting facts about psychology, is that psychology often has an impact, even if the other side sort of knows what you are doing. The key is to always find a compelling reason for every step you take in the negotiation. If you go back up at a certain point, which is not a tactic I'd necessarily recommend, but anytime you lower your negotiation, give a reason. When you make a final offer, say something along the lines of, this is the lowest that my client would accept. I found some, again, cite other cases, cite other authority, cite things like time, stress, et cetera, but say, listen, you went from $200,000 to $150,000, you come down to $100,000, say listen, again, we want to save time. This offer is way below what we believe this would be worth if we went to trial. However, we want to save time, resources, et cetera, et cetera, and then maybe point out some other weaknesses in the other side's case and say, I believe your case is weak for A, B, C, and D, and this is maybe our final offer. But anytime you move your offer down, whether you're pointing out weaknesses in the case or giving your own reasoning, you need to give reasons for what you're asking for. This is true even outside of negotiations. Anytime you ask someone for something, you should give a reason for it. It makes that ask more compelling. Little kids know this. Use it. Do it. All right. Number three, be the middleman. What I mean by this is, and I hinted towards it before, is that sometimes you need to take the onus off of you and put it onto somebody else. So for instance, when I'm dealing with insurance companies do this a lot because they hire attorneys, I'll talk to attorneys on the other side and they'll say, look, it's up to the insurer. Listen, they'll say to me, Joe, I can't give you any more money. It's up to the insurer. That may be total BS, but I don't know. And it pushes the onus off of that, off of the negotiator, makes the negotiator still seem like they're good intentioned, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know one way or another if that's true or not, and oftentimes it is true. But I do the same thing with my clients because I generally represent individuals, plaintiffs, people charged with crimes. And a prosecutor may come to me and may say, look, Joe, we want your client on house arrest for a year. And I say, look, my client's not going to accept house arrest for a year. He has to take care of his grandmother. And then the onus is off of me. And this is another thing I'll say to the prosecutor, I'll say, look, that may look like that. I've seen deals like this before. It's maybe an objectively reasonable deal, but in this situation, I can't get it done. My client's not going to agree to it. So I'm pushing that onus. I'm pushing the power, the authority off onto the client, keeping it from getting personal or keeping me from insulting the offer that they made, but giving me room to try to create and get a better deal. And oftentimes this is all perfectly true. So I'll say to them, look, my client, you know, I talk to my client, they're just, listen, I'll say, you know, Steve, whoever the prosecutor is, I'll say, look, I understand you've given me a deal like this in the past. It's objectively reasonable given the crime, et cetera, et cetera. But my client just won't let me make this kind of deal. They want to proceed to trial. And oftentimes once I push the onus off on them, it may, they may then come back with a better deal at that point. So those are just, these are just three general tips that I use in my negotiations. There's so much more to it than what I have touched on here. But this is something that was floating around in my brain. And these are three principles that I believe anybody can use, any negotiator, attorney, non-attorney, anytime you're negotiating for something. Say you're buying a new car and the car dealer says, oh, I can't go below 20,000. You say, look, I'm borrowing the money off my grandma. She's only got 17 five. That's all I have. Okay. It may not be true. All right. But they don't necessarily know that. And, and, and, and look, I, I, I, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say, you know, to lie, but a certain degree of puffery and, and I want to say puffery and bluffing, okay, is expected in any type of negotiation. Okay. It's expected. So both sides, if both sides use these tactics, you're actually maybe going to end up with the most fair result that you can get. Okay. But you want to be a shrewd negotiator. All right. And these are three principles that you can use. Open high, anchor them, shoot for the stars. Okay. You can always come back down. You may end up with a really good deal. Number two, give a reason for everything that you do in the negotiation. And number three, I apologize, I see myself in these videos and I'm trying to look right at the camera right here, but I also ended up looking at myself. Number three, be the middleman. Push the authority off onto someone else on to the client. These three tips are going to help you in any negotiation. This is straight from a lawyer, straight from the professionals. Lawyers are professional negotiators. So I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope you find it worth your time. These are tips that can help you in every area of life, including the practice of law. This is Joe the Lawyer. I'm Joe Pometo, a criminal defense attorney. I practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I also do some civil work, but I love doing criminal trials. If you like this video, please subscribe, like, comment, and share. Subscribe, like, comment, and share. It's a free way to support my content, to incentivize me, and to tell YouTube that I'm awesome so that they will give me higher ranks, get me more viewers, etc. I love doing these videos. I want to do more. My time is limited. Joe Pometo, Joe the Lawyer out.