Effective Legal Negotiation and Settlement

Charles B. Craver is the Freda H. Alverson Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School and a frequent contributor to The Negotiator Magazine. Professor Craver has taught courses in Legal Negotiating at several Law Schools over many years. Additionally, lawyers will know him for his continuing legal education courses on the negotiation process and alternative dispute resolution and well as for his many books and articles on labor relations, alternative dispute resolution and negotiation. He is, therefore, a true expert in negotiation. Effective Legal Negotiation and Settlement was first published in 1986 and with revised editions every four years or so it has been tested in over sixty law schools and by thousands of lawyers as a negotiation resource. In that time, it has been polished and updated repeatedly and this latest edition is no exception. It is as close to a "must" for every negotiator's reference shelf as you will find. Craver has an easy to read style, bereft of mysterious Latin terminology and legal mumbo-jumbo. It is a practitioner's book exploring the phases of the negotiation process and providing the "nuts and bolts" for moving successfully through any negotiation. It is also a comprehensive guide to the special areas of the field and focuses on them and integrates them into the negotiation spectrum. You will find clear and valuable discussions of negotiating with government agencies, international negotiations, assisted negotiation through mediation as well sections on ethics and a variety of negotiation issues. The book is truly a compendium of information, advice and carefully crafted illustrations. You will find the entire family of who, what, when, how, where and why always brilliantly represented no matter what the topic. Easy access to the material is through a carefully constructed index as well as through the table of contents. Want to know more about: how to ask questions, reading the meaning of non-verbal signals, opening a negotiation, or crafting and carrying-out a concession strategy in various stages? It is all here and I do mean all. Facial signals? Twenty-nine are described. Negotiating techniques? Twenty-nine separate techniques are described, their risks illuminated and defenses appropriate to each tactic are suggested. Negotiating via e-mail, telephone, letters? Advantages, disadvantages and risks of each method are clearly spelled-out. All that suggested, let me focus briefly on a single area in Professor Craver's work by way of illustration of what you will find in this book. Every negotiator and every sales manager, corporate executive, government or non-profit leader, every union leader needs to know: how to conduct a meaningful and instructive post-negotiation assessment. There is no single area of more importance to managing one's organization than improving its negotiation performance. Professor Craver is correct when he writes that "win or lose ... it is only through objective p

There are a lot of books which deals with the the subject of legal negotiation. Since I am currently writing the first book on this subject to be published in Norway, I have read basically all of the books available. Some books are not so good, some books are quite good. Professor Craver's "Effective Legal Negotiation and Settlement" (Fourth Edition) is simply excellent! In my view, both as a Supreme Court Attorney and partner in one of Norway's biggest law firms and as a scholar/author, this is by far the best book on the market. Why? I have three main reasons: 1) Contrary to many other books it does not loose itself in the world of academics or theories. This book is written for lawyers and others who are negotiating in the real world. As a former lawyer, professor Craver has been there himself. He knows what the lawyer is facing and how the lawyer should negotiate both to obtain the maximum result for the client and to be a value creator. 2) The book is backed by references to studies and examples which show that what the author is saying is correct and backed by real life studies. 3) The book is very well-written. It is clear, it is concise and it is easy to follow what the author means, why he means it and where he is going.I could not have competed with professor Craver's book even if my book had been written in English. I have read his book many times, and I will read it again. This is an outstanding book and superb reading. In my view no other book even comes close!!