Recently, I was present at a meeting between clinical students for the Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program and a client representing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The representative assumed that we had plenty of opportunity to work in teams at the law school, since that’s what most of us will have to do after we graduate. The law students and faculty in the room chuckled at how far off her assumption was from reality.
What are the skills we need after we leave law school? Surely, a nuanced understanding of constitutional law isn’t all there is to legal practice. Perhaps this is my own bias stemming from how I’ve spent my time here, but I would add team work, project development, project management and client development to that non-exhaustive list. And in Harvard Negotiators, I found all that.
Harvard Negotiators (HN) is the student oganization here at the law school focused on negotiation and dispute resolution. Through HN, I was able to take negotiation theory from the classroom into the real world. HN members and I have created value for clients by providing them substantive work in negotiation and dispute resolution. And as students, we have benefitted from the opportunity to engage the real world, develop actual work experience in a low-risk setting, engage our passions and bring ideas to reality.
To give you an idea of what all that means, in the past year HN has…
· Developed negotiation curriculum for the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP), a Houston-based non-profit that provides educational and mentorship programs for enterprising incarcerees.
· Developed difficult conversations curriculum for at-risk youths affiliated with FAIR Fund, an international NGO working in anti-human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault prevention.
· Created best practices manual for renegotiating child support agreements for the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers
· Trained outside organizations in negotiation skills, including Firemen and the Town Administrator of Nantucket, elected officials of the Mississippi NAACP, and graduate students at the Harvard School of Public Health.
· Put our skills to test at the American Bar Association Negotiation Competition, St. John’s Dispute Resolution Triathlon, and the International Negotiation Challenge in Leipzig, Germany.
· Simulated multi-party bankruptcy negotiation with other law students in light of the economic crisis
Be the first to comment on this article!