Evaluating a Change to Seminar-style Teaching

Abstract

[Extract] Astor and Chinkin define negotiation as “where two or more people together attempt to reach agreement on some matter”. It follows that negotiation is central to daily life, be it in the supermarket, at school, in traffic, at home, or in the work-place. Even though negotiation is common place and practised widely (and often unwittingly) by lay people, over the last two decades negotiation has been professionalised. “Negotiation” has developed into a term of art; it is now a “process” with discrete areas of theory and practice. Although negotiation is widely practised in traditional forms of dispute resolution, such as the court system, it also forms the cornerstone of the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) movement. As lawyers are the main players in both traditional and alternate dispute resolution processes, focused and skilled negotiation, as never before, constitutes an indispensable part of legal practice.