The Book of Real-World Negotiations

26Gold Ink, Presidential Letterhead, and Agenda Framing in Contract Negotiations

Based on an interview with Noam Ebner

Contracts are a very familiar realm to most people when thinking about negotiation. At one point or another in the course of people's careers they must negotiate a contract related to a job or services to be rendered. Too often many people fail to really read the contract carefully or to negotiate the terms. This is the case because those people don't think that it is possible to negotiate or don't realize the underlying dimensions involved that are swaying them in a certain direction.

Many of the clauses in contracts are far from innocuous when you read them carefully and think through the implications. Further, the way a contract is written subtly frames issues in a certain manner. That was the reality in the example below, where the person involved initially did not think to negotiate the terms of the contract in front of him. As time and the relationship progressed, he came to see how the contract was delineated in specific ways and how he could assert for his interests in a way that was reasonable to him and not off-putting for his negotiating partner.

Background and the Negotiation Challenge

About twenty years ago, a colleague we will call Meyer was working as an attorney, a mediator, and an adjunct professor of mediation and negotiation in Israel. Given the somewhat limited market for mediation and mediation teaching in Israel at the time, Meyer was ...