What Can Structured Negotiation Offer the Business Attorney? A Lot!

Have you ever paid an expert bill and cringed? Have you ever dreamed of brushing aside the procedures that bog down litigation, and instead quickly get to the real issues that brought your client to court? Have you ever represented a party who had a legal claim and wanted to preserve its relationship with the party it was forced to sue?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, Structured Negotiation is a dispute-resolution process that might be able to help.
What Is Structured Negotiation?
Structured Negotiation is a dispute-resolution method that happens without a lawsuit on file. It is a strategy to resolve legal claims that focuses on solution and encourages relationships between parties—and their counsel. Structured Negotiation trades the stress, conflict, and expense of litigation for direct and cost-effective communication and problem solving.
Structured Negotiation avoids the negative publicity that can accompany litigation and replaces expert battles with respected joint experts. It substitutes round-table discussions for contentious depositions, and it gives clients a seat at the table and a meaningful role in resolving claims.
With roots in the disability-rights movement, Structured Negotiation has potential application to many types of civil claims handled daily by business lawyers.
How Did Structured Negotiation Develop?
Structured Negotiation grew out of the blind community’s quest for financial privacy and access to financial technology. In 1995 my co-counsel and I wrote letters to Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo on behalf of three groups of blind clients and an advocacy organization. The issue was ATMs: not a single one in the United States talked, which meant that not a single blind person could use one.
We wrote those letters as an alternative to filing lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act. We offered to negotiate with each financial institution about the development of “talking ATMs” and other services and technology for blind customers. Four years later we had negotiated comprehensive settlement agreements with each bank that produced some of the earliest talking ATMs in the world, compensated our clients, and provided for our attorney’s fees as allowed by civil rights laws. No lawsuit needed.
Joint press releases, beginning in the fall of 1999, heaped praise on each institution and resulted in an avalanche of positive press. Strong monitoring language and a commitment by our negotiating partners resulted in smooth implementation of each agreement.
Buried in the Bank of America 2000 press release was reference to the bank’s agreement to develop and design its online banking platform so that blind people could bank independently on the web. It was the first settlement in the country to address the disability community’s need for