“Pay extra attention to the minutiae and ensure you fully understand every term and condition,” this senior partner told me when I was a junior associate. “Some lawyers will try to bury critical provisions in the least obvious places. It’s your job to catch and...
Without Founding Father Benjamin Franklin’s extraordinary negotiation skills, the United States of America may not even exist. It was Franklin, after all, that successfully negotiated with France for sufficient financial and military resources to fight the British in...
I have always been intensely competitive – in sports, business and in negotiations. It’s a strength and weakness. I remember losing a particular high school tennis match that really motivated me to hit the practice court even more. And to this day, I still feel...
It appears some powerful momentum is currently being generated in the hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The first several hostages were released October 23. Then last week more were released each day of the 4-day negotiated “pause.” (For a good summary of...
Republican Members of Congress Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Tim Burchett (R-TN) were two of the eight Republican Members of Congress who ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week. One of their chief stated complaints, if not the primary one, was their inability to...
My wife sometimes reminds me to avoid shaking hands with people I meet if they exhibit signs of being sick, like sniffling or coughing. But this is tough for me, as it’s just an ingrained habit I’ve had for 40 years. It turns out that this habit can actually...
I met my wife over 20 years ago when one of my former law students introduced us. When I learned she grew up in Wisconsin, I immediately felt a connection. After all, I grew up in Minnesota and sensed a “Midwestern” thing going on. She felt it, too. This feeling was...
“The buyer paid 8x my client’s EBITDA [a revenue-related financial calculation often used to help evaluate a company’s market value]. He didn’t have to pay this, as he had extremely strong leverage because he was my client’s largest retail outlet and one without...
“Usury” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the lending of money at exorbitant interest rates” and can also be used “in a moral sense,” according to Wikipedia, as “condemning taking advantage of others’ misfortunes.” We as a society have even passed laws prohibiting...