Negotiation

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A law firm recently reached out to me to conduct a CLE on Mental Health Challenges in the Age of AI. It was an interesting request. I’ve spoken about AI issues on panels, as a keynote speaker, and in the classroom, and I wrote about it for Tennessee Journal of Business Law. I also conduct workshops and CLEs on mental health in the profession. But I’ve never been asked to combine the topics. 

Before I discussed issues related to anxiety about job disruption and how cognitive overload affects the brain, I spent time talking about the various tools that are out there and how much our profession will transform in the very near future.

If you’re like many lawyers I know, you think that AI is more hype than substance. So I’ll share the information I shared with the law firm.

According to a  2024 Bloomberg survey on AI and the legal profession, 69% of Bloomberg survey respondents believe generative AI can be used ethically in legal practice. But they harbor “extreme” or “moderate” concerns about deep fakes (e.g., human impersonations, hallucinations and accuracy of AI-generated text,  privacy, algorithmic bias, IP, and of course, job displacement.

Those are…

I’m super excited to attend and moderate a panel on How to Improve Your Contract Skills with Gen AI Tools and Products at the ContractsCon in Las Vegas from January 22-23, 2025. As the GC for a startup and a nonprofit, and someone who directs the Transactional Skills Program for a law school, I have to stay up to date on the future of contracts for my clients and to prepare our students for a world that will be completely different from the one they expected.

This is not the typical boring CLE. How to Contract Founder, Laura Frederick describes it as “practical training for the work you do all the time.For every mega M&A transaction or financing, there are thousands of regular contracts that companies handle day-in and day-out. This training helps you learn how to do those BETTER with strategies based on best practices used by top lawyers with solid real-world in-house experience. Have a ton of experience already? This event is perfect for lawyers and professionals with 10+ years of contract experience too. We’ve added a whole day of training built to teach advanced contract skills. Plus you can connect with your peers and help out…

It's the holidays and it's time to treat yourself and members of your team to practical training and fantastic networking in sunny Miami in February. We don't have bomb cyclones down here. The Transactional Skills Program at the University of Miami School of Law couldn't be more excited to host the How to Contract Conference from February 15-17, 2023. 

Thumbnail_ContractsCon Flyer - 1 page (12-23-2022)

  • ContractsCon is a training and networking EXTRAVAGANZA focused on the practical contract drafting and negotiating skills that in-house counsel and contracts professionals need to know. 
  • This event is a zero-fluff, to-the-point training on the nitty-gritty details. ContractsCon includes:
    • speakers who get the in-house experience and can explain why we draft the way we do
    • training centered around provision-level playbooks for you and your company to use when you return to work
    • workshops that provide a deeper dive into more nuanced topics and include interactive group activities
    • ContractsCon Playbook, featuring the advice and drafting approaches discussed at ContractsCon
    • access to How to Contract’s SaaS Contracts Training Library, with 20+ hours of training videos, the Cloud Services Agreement Playbook, and lots more (through March 31, 2023)
    • CLE pending in 26 states for up to 7 hours for virtual ticket holders and up to 13 hours for in-person attendees
  • ContractsCon is an annual

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I had originally planned to post Pt. 2 of the blog post I did a couple of weeks ago, but this announcement is time sensitive.

I'm thrilled to announce that the Transactional Skills Program at the University of Miami School of Law is partnering with Laura Frederick for the second How to Contract conference. It's time sensitive because we are considering holding a side event with a contract drafting and negotiation competition for law students if there's enough interest. If you think you would be interested, please email me at mweldon@law.miami.edu.

For lawyers, there are virtual and live options for the contract conference. I've cut and pasted from the website so you can see why you should come to sunny Miami (and it won't be hurricane season):

It is not about the mega deals.

ContractsCon is about the contracts you work on EVERY DAY. We want to help you learn how to draft and negotiate the deals you see all the time.

Because for every 100-page specialized contract sent to outside counsel, there are thousands of smaller but important ones that in-house counsel and professionals do day in and day out.

ContractsCon focuses on how we manage risk and make the tough decisions with less …

I’m finishing my second semester of teaching Legal Environment of Business, an introductory undergraduate business law course, asynchronously.  One of the challenges of an asynchronous course is creating a sense of community among students.  I’ve previously blogged about using negotiation exercises in my business law courses (here and here).  In this post, I want to share with readers how I’ve continued to use such materials in my asynchronous courses to promote experiential learning and to create a sense of community.

Canvas is the learning management system for my courses.  My asynchronous courses are organized into weekly modules.  Students can find all materials for a specific week (assigned readings, videos, assignments etc.) in that week’s module.  The feedback I’ve received indicates that students find this an easy to follow format.  So, for any week in which there is a negotiation exercise, the students’ role assignments, the negotiation materials, and the assignment itself will be posted in that week’s module.  For each exercise, I use Canvas groups to randomly organize students into negotiation teams.  Use of Canvas groups also facilitate students’ ability to contact each other, coordinate their negotiation, and complete their assignment.  I group students into a different…

In a past post (here), I mentioned stumbling (thankfully!!) into teaching in the area of Negotiation and Dispute Resolution while a PhD student focused on financial regulation.  For so many reasons, the opportunity to pursue doctoral studies in the Ethics & Legal Studies Program at the Wharton Business School was truly a great blessing!  So, I’m delighted to share with BLPB readers that applications for the Program’s incoming class of 2021 are now being accepted.  If you – or someone you know – might be interested in learning more, an quick overview is provided below and an informational flyer here: Download Ethics&LegalStudiesDoctoralProgram

The Ethics & Legal Studies Doctoral Program at Wharton focuses on the study of ethics and law in business. It is designed to prepare graduates for tenure-track careers in university teaching and research at leading business schools, and law schools.

Our curriculum crosses many disciplinary boundaries. Students take a core set of courses in the area of ethics and law in business, along with courses in an additional disciplinary concentration such as law, management, philosophy/ethical theory, finance, marketing, or accounting. Students can take courses in other Penn departments and can pursue joint degrees. Additionally, our program…

I promised to check back in after negotiating The House on Elm Street (here).  I’m checking in!  We negotiated this exercise – which contains both legal and ethical issues – in my MBA Business Ethics/Legal course this evening.  It proved to be a great learning experience.  My previous post mentioned that Professor Siedel had made its use easy by creating thorough teaching notes.  And as I suspected, while it might be ideal to have students read a negotiation text or have a full 75 minutes to debrief the exercise, neither proved essential to a valuable learning experience.  It also provided a great segue into agency law, another of tonight’s topics.

During our discussion of ethical issues, I mentioned Professor Clayton M. Christensen's How Will You Measure Your Life?  This past week, this question became particularly poignant.  Christensen, one of Harvard Business School’s leading lights, passed away at the age of 67.  Several years ago, BYU Law School Dean Professor Gordon Smith and I started “The Business Ethics Book Club for Law Professors.”  The wonders of technology enabled several of us business law professors from all over the country to gather virtually about once a semester…

I’ve previously blogged about using negotiation exercises in my undergraduate and graduate Business Law/Legal Environment courses (here).  I’ve also mentioned that, having taught both business law and negotiation courses in a law school, I know that such exercises would also work well in a law school business law course.   

Last August, at the Annual Conference of the Academy of Legal Studies in Business, I had the good fortune of catching up with Professor Susan Marsnik from the University of St Thomas Business School.  Eventually, our conversation turned to one of my favorite topics: negotiation!  Marsnik mentioned that Professor George Siedel, the Williamson Family Professor of Business Administration Emeritus and the Thurnau Professor of Business Law Emeritus at the University of Michigan, had written some great negotiation materials (here), and they were free!  Obviously, I couldn’t wait to learn more!  And now that I have, via Marsnik’s help, I wanted to pay it forward!  

Siedel’s comprehensive negotiation materials center on the sale of a house, and include Seller/Buyer roles.  He shares that “Over the years, I have developed and tested “The House on Elm Street” exercise in undergraduate and MBA courses and in executive seminars…

Later today, the students in my nine-week online Transactional Lawyering: Drafting and Negotiating Contracts Course will breathe a sigh of relief. They will submit their final contracts, and their work will be done. They can now start reading for their Fall classes knowing that they have completed the work for their required writing credit. My work, on the other hand, won’t end for quite a while. Although this post will discuss teaching an online course, much of my advice would work for a live, in person class as well.

If you’ve ever taught a transactional drafting course, you know that’s a lot of work. You are in a seemingly never ending cycle of developing engaging content, teaching the material, answering questions, reviewing drafts, and grading the final product. Like any writing course, you’re in constant editing and feedback mode with the students.

If you’ve ever taught an online course, you know how much work it can be. I taught asynchronously, meaning I uploaded materials and the students had a specific time within which to complete assignments, typically one week or more. Fortunately, I had help from the University of Miami’s instructional design team, otherwise, I would likely have been a …

I blogged two weeks ago about whether we were teaching law students the wrong things, the wrong way, or both. I’ve been thinking about that as I design my asynchronous summer course on transactional lawyering while grading asset and stock purchase agreements drafted by the students in my spring advanced transactional course. I taught the spring students face to face, had them work in groups, required them to do a a negotiation either in person or online, and am grading them on both individual and group work as well as class participation. When I looked at drafts of their APAs and SPAs last week, I often reminded the students to go back to old PowerPoints or the reading because it seemed as though they missed certain concepts or maybe I went through them too quickly— I’m sure they did all of the reading (ha!).  Now, while designing my online course, I’m trying to marry the best of the in person processes with some of the flipped classroom techniques that worked (and tweaking what didn’t).

Unlike many naysayers, I have no doubt that students and lawyers can learn and work remotely. For the past nine years, I have participated as a…