Negotiation

The Negotiation Competition is a negotiation between two teams based on a fictional fact pattern. Each team contains two people, one who will act as the attorney, and one who will act as the client. The teams are given general information describing the problem, as well as confidential information that only one of the teams may know. Based on the information provided in the general and confidential facts, each team must negotiate on behalf of their respective client in an attempt to resolve the dispute in a manner favorable to their client. It is not a requirement that the teams come to a resolution, instead the competition focuses on the process of the negotiation and how each team handles the situation.

Each negotiation consists of one 40-minute negotiation session, as well as two 5-minute self-analyses, and a 5 to 10-minute judges’ feedback session. Before each teams’ self-analysis, they are give 5-minutes outside of the competition room to analyze their performance and prepare for the self-analysis. During the negotiation, each team may take one break of no more than 5-minutes to confer outside of the competition room. During this break the 40-minute time clock does not stop.