About Robert Algie at Edge Mediations

The $100 Note Nobody Could Stop Bidding On: A Lesson in Negotiation Psychology

A Harvard economist named Martin Shubik used to run a game in his classes. He’d pull out a $100 bill and auction it off, with one rule bolted on: the highest bidder wins the $100, but the second-highest bidder also has to pay their bid — and gets nothing for it.

The Lowest Bar

For the longest time, I have been interested in the world of investing. That interest led me to a book written by one of the most successful investors in history, Ray Dalio. In his book “Principles”, there is a line that stayed with me, which had nothing to do with markets: “Remind yourself that it’s never harmful to at least

Herbert Simon won the Nobel Prize in Economics. He wasn’t an Economist.

He also won the Turing Award — computer science’s highest honour. He wasn’t really a computer scientist either. Simon collected the prestigious prizes across three separate fields because he was always working on the same problem. He just kept finding it in different places. Born in Milwaukee in 1916, Simon trained as a political scientist.

Is Your Client a Satisficer?

Some mediations don’t fail because the money wasn’t there. They fail because one party was determined to get the best possible deal — and walked away with nothing. Psychologist Barry Schwartz drew a distinction between maximisers and satisficers. A maximiser needs to know they achieved the best possible outcome. They compare, second-guess, and keep searching

The Familiarity Trap in Litigation

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,

Complexity feels like control. It usually isn’t.

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

The Cost of Starting Somewhere That Isn’t Real

“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

Certainty Is Underrated Because It Is Hard to Measure

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

What Lawyers in Mediation Can Learn from Hostage Negotiators

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

Building Bridges of Trust: The Silent Cornerstone of Effective Negotiation

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,

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