Men’s Health has an excellent article on negotiating the best deal for a wide variety of goods. One of the broader lessons in the article is that good negotiation requires both sides to feel some pain whether its buying food in bulk with a short shelf life or spending 45 minutes chatting up a salesperson to get a discount on luggage.

Yet, when Four Pillars writes about negotiations, the comments to the posts often take a tone of a zero sum game: negotiations are only won if you have the other side completely defeated, ethics and context be damned. I find in most contexts this is a limiting strategy for several reasons.

Good things don’t come cheap

Certainly, in an one-off transaction or in industries where ethics are rather loose (see buying a new car), going into negotiations with your guard up is recommended but, as a white-haired lawyer once said to me when I began practicing the law, “a good deal is a deal where both sides are unhappy.”

In other words, every good thing in life comes with a price. If you really place a value on something but you have finite resources, you are willing to give up a little more than you want but, given you have finite resources, the seller probably thinks you are giving her less than she wants for it. Something that is of intrinsic of value to you means you may end up paying a little more than you want for it. If you live in your dream home, you probably know what I mean.

Clearly, my analysis has no application where the subject of negotiations is some commodity. But where the negotiations are for something more personal  it is important to distinguish between paying for value and being cheap. As Buffet once said about investing: “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”

Take the long-term perspective

An often voiced complaint about the legal industry is that the lawyers seem so chummy with one another.  At the end of the day, and to be blunt, clients come and go but the legal bar is community based and small so you have to maintain your reputation for being a good advocate without engaging in all those “dirty lawyer tricks” you see on television.

Some lawyers do certainly engage in a win at all cost mentality but they get such bad reputations that their clients are being done a disservice by retaining them. The other side has its back up so much that they tend not to yield an inch on anything whereas more reasonable lawyers may be granted indulgences from the other side (see below for an example). If you are reasonable, it helps you in the long run.

For example, I was once involved in a file that went into the silly season. But I actually ended up being referred files from opposing counsel subsequently since he thought I managed to maintain some reasonableness and practicality through the entire back and forth.

Payback- its a bitch

An unreasonable lawyer once scheduled a motion during opposing counsel’s parental leave and refused to change dates. The lawyer on leave attended. Stored it in memory banks. Waited 5 years and got the lawyer back. Poor client got rail-roaded that had nothing to do with him.

Bears Stearns was the only major investment bank that did not participate in the Long Term Capital Managment bail out in 1998 in which everyone lost money. When Bear Stearns began to implode in 2007, no one lifted a finger to help it initially. Some  conspiracy theorist believe the stock was universally shorted- its ultimate downfall- as the street’s delayed payback (no one quite knowing what this would start).

The morale of the story being it is a small world and people end up being in weird places at weird times. Just be careful that your scorched earth negotiating tactics doesn’t end up costing you down the road.