Symposium on Negotiations
A few days ago, the Program on Negotiation (PON) and the Harvard Negotiation Law Review (HNLR) co-sponsored “Deal-Making and Strategic Negotiation,” a day-long symposium featuring attorneys and scholars discussing corporate governance issues, negotiation techniques, and consequences arising from several major deals. As you may know, Harvard’s Program on Negotiation is an interdisciplinary institute joining together scholars, students, and practitioners from law, business, sociology, government, and a host of other areas across the university and beyond. The HNLR is a student-run journal linked with the PON.
One of the student organizers of the symposium sent me a recap after the event:
“Considering that much of the 1L curriculum focuses on litigation, the Harvard Negotiation Law Review’s symposium was a great opportunity to learn more about the (majority of) lawyers who don’t do their work in the courtroom. The symposium focused on two recent blockbuster business deals; Oracle’s hostile takeover of PeopleSoft and the initial public offering of MasterCard stock. Unlike the typical law school symposium, the program featured two business-school style cases, including one written by superstar negotiation professor Guhan Subramanian, who was amazing in helping the HNLR organize the event.
“Leading experts from across the country also participated in the debate, including University of Colorado Professor Scott Peppett (HLS ’96), a founding member of the HNLR, and David Millstone (HLS ’05), who collaborated with Prof. Subramanian on his case as a part of his 3L paper. The presentations from the experts were all very interesting, although, it was a bit disconcerting to see my Contracts professor, John Coates, mercilessly mocking a few large law firms for their ‘incompetence’ in handling the Oracle-PeopleSoft matter; especially since the legal tab for both sides ended up totaling $100,000,000!
“Afterwards, we celebrated the success of the symposium with a wine and dessert reception, where Prof. Peppet gave us some ‘unsolicited advice’ about the future of the journal, while marveling that it was still around 11 years later. Of course, we can’t celebrate too much; next year HNLR is publishing two issues for the first time, and we’ll need the spend the summer getting the working papers from Wednesday’s symposium into shape for a new slate of 1L editors in the fall.”
