Advocacy & Alternative Dispute Resolution: Client Counseling

Introduction -- Solving problems and telling stories -- The lawyer persona and feelings it disguises -- Establishing a working relationship -- Getting the facts (interviewing) -- Theories and models for helping relationships -- Interventions and skills -- Place, space, and territory -- Sharing authority and collaborative decision-making -- The moral dimension -- Understanding ourselves -- On learning about people

The impact of the fact-gathering process on cost/benefit analysis in litigation -- Navigating litigation: guiding clients through the legal process -- A client's guide to the litigation process -- Client strategies for controlling costs in commercial litigation -- The foundation of litigation: establishing solid client bonds -- Preparing a client for litigation in today's electronic world -- A proactive approach to commercial litigation client strategies -- Breaking down the barriers: moving from litigation to resolution -- Harmonizing litigation strategies with a client's business goals

Provides a comprehensive descriptive and prescriptive treatment of legal counseling, interviewing, and negotiation (including mediation and plea-bargaining).

Three models of legal counseling -- The games lawyers play: how lawyers control clients -- Communication skills -- Beginning the legal interview -- Hearing the client's story -- Developing the client's story -- Decision making -- Client counseling -- Moral choices in the law office: who gets hurt? and who decides? -- To sue or settle?: counseling about dispute resolution -- Dealing with client-lawyer difference -- Lawyers, clients, and psychological type theory

Work of the Lawyer -- The Business of Lawyering -- Interviewing: What We Need From Our Clients
Counseling: What Clients Need From Us-- Planning the Transactions: The Other Side of Practice -- Planning for Dispute Resolution: What Are We to Do? -- Planning for Negotiation: What is it Your Client Wants -- Negotiations: Getting What Your Client Wants -- Mediation: Help!
Investigations: Obtaining Information From Those in the Know -- Asserting Claims and Defenses: The Right Way -- Disclosure and Discovery: What Do You Know? -- Depositions: Getting to Know You -- Discovery Methods: Is That All

PART I. Becoming a Lawyer
PART II. Interviewing
PART III. Persuasive Fact Analysis
PART IV. Counseling
PART V. Negotiation

Describes methods and techniques that lawyers can use to best serve their client's legitimate needs and wants during client interviewing, fact investigation, witness interviewing, and counseling.

Illustrates interviewing and active listening techniques appropriate for lawyer-client negotiations or for similar agent-principal negotiations. Mnookin provides negotiation advice and commentary interspersed with two simulated lawyer-client interviews.

Book includes 78 role-playing assignments in criminal and civil cases with accompanying CD and DVD that includes videos on how to take a deposition and used it in trial, new mediation videos, settlement documentary, tour of the crime scene, and computer animations.