Negotiating A-101

After surviving what had promised to be an awkward discussion with the Judge, I now have nothing left to do but look forward to the start of my A-100 class later this month. I say it was a difficult discussion, but in truth, I got the sense that the news wasn’t all that hard for the Judge to take. He just wanted to make sure my replacement was all lined up, and beyond that, it was very much a “best of luck, don’t get shot” sort of attitude. Much better than expected! The worst part was figuring out my leave-date, particularly as my Judge is a shrewd negotiator with a reputation for getting his way without looking like he wanted anything in the first place.

Now, my clerkship involves participating in settlement talks and mediations, so I’ve watched a fair few negotiations over the last eight months. I like to think that during those countless hours listening to securities fraud cases and employment discrimination disputes, that I’ve learned a few things about how to negotiate. The two most important appear to be:

1) Never, ever, open the bidding anywhere near your final position. That kind of efficiency may be desirable when Mrs. Chadha and I are trying to decide where to sit in a restaurant, but it is deadly to the art of negotiation in most other contexts.

2) Talk constantly about how you “can’t bid against yourself.” Legal custom apparently requires that lawyers mention, at least once, but maybe as many as three-dozen times, “how I can’t be expected to bid against myself, your honor!” In New York, this is usually (and most effectively) done in an obnoxious, mid-Atlantic accent. It also doesn’t matter that the phrase doesn’t actually mean anything at all, or that I can’t stand hearing it. It’s just understood that it’s going to be used in every negotiation context, by every lawyer, until the end of time.

When I finally got my chance to put what I've learned to the test, I'm sorry to say that I failed to follow either rule.

My opening offer to the Judge was that I would continue to work until Friday, March 25th. Since FSO training starts on Monday, March 28th, I basically said that the only thing I wasn’t willing to do was work both jobs simultaneously. Unsurprisingly, the Judge accepted my proposal, so I now have only half-a-weekend to relocate from New York to Washington - hopefully in time to attend a Sunday afternoon welcome party with my new colleagues. What this means in practice is that poor Mrs. Chadha will probably have to shoulder more of the pack-out burden than is probably fair, but I suppose that’s just a consequence of her own cosmic negotiating blunder - agreeing to marry me. I guess law schools in New Zealand don’t prohibit bidding against oneself the same way we do - and thank God for that.