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One of the quiet traps in litigation is assuming the other side knows your client the way you do. They almost never do. This trap appears most often with lawyers representing plaintiffs in personal injury litigation. A plaintiff’s lawyer spends months — sometimes years — with their client. Conferences, phone calls, review of medical records,

Morgan Housel once wrote: “Complexity gives the impression of control, while simplicity is hard to distinguish from cluelessness.” That line made me think about what goes wrong in negotiations. When a dispute escalates, complexity feels comforting. Long affidavits. Detailed chronologies. Spreadsheets with lots of calculations. Submissions footnoted into submission. It feels like progress. It feels

“It’s outrageous, egregious, preposterous.” As a lawyer in a mediation, this quote from Jackie Chiles, the fictional lawyer from Seinfeld, often entered my mind when I received an opening offer. Because here’s the thing about extreme opening positions: they don’t make you look strong. They make you look unserious. When a number is so far

Litigation reduces uncertainty slowly. Mediation does it immediately. The ability to know—today—what tomorrow looks like has enormous value. But certainty has no unit of measurement, so it gets routinely undervalued. Courts deliver outcomes. Mediation delivers closure. Closure allows people to make plans. Plans allow people to move on. Moving on is often worth more than

In the hundreds of mediations I’ve been a part of, it is my view that one technique I’ve observed has led to a better outcome for the lawyers that use it. I’m talking about humanising the client. “Alastair Onglingswan was living in the Philippines when, one evening in 2004, he hailed a taxi and settled

In mediation, we often focus on techniques, strategies, and outcomes. Yet beneath the surface of every successful negotiation lies something far more fundamental: trust. Warren Buffett wisely observed, “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody really notices. But when it’s absent, everybody notices.” This insight resonates deeply in my mediation practice,

In an Australian schoolyard, a group of 10-year-olds are engaged in the timeless ritual of one-upmanship. “I can jump off the highest part of the play equipment!” declares one. “I kicked a footy further than anyone else last weekend!” boasts another. “I am the quickest in the school,” claims a third with unwavering confidence. What

During my years as a litigator, I became intimately familiar with the standard risks we routinely discuss with clients: the possibility that witness A might be more credible than witness B or that one expert’s testimony might carry more weight than another’s. These assessments, while challenging, at least make their way into our formal advice.