One of my partners is about to make final argument in a hospital malpractice case he has been trying for several weeks.We discussed the question of final argument and how it should be concluded because the opening and concluding of a final argument is, in my view, very important. While one can be spontaneous in argument the beginning and the end merit careful thought and preparation. It is a matter of first impression and a matter of what they hear last from…
Drawings in ancient caves show us how long we have used and relied upon stories as part of our existence. Aesop lived in the 500s B.C., but his stories were remembered for hundreds of years without a single shred of paper or other printed material. Oral storytelling was so powerful and people remembered Aesop’s tales so well that even 300 years later the stories were revered enough for mass production. Native American culture was rich in story telling. Stories were the…
This Sunday’s New York Times had a few thoughts I want to share with you. The first deals with negotiation. In an article about President Obama’s attempts to negotiate with Speaker Boehner, Richard Thaler was noting that Boehner just wasn’t in a position of sufficient power to deliver promises and wrote: “A valuable principle of negotiation is to ‘never bargain with someone who does not have the powerto say yes’” How true that is. Think of the mediations you may have…