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As movement lawyers, we are negotiating all the time. From behind-the-scenes conversations with local policymakers to multi-day legal settlement discussions to working with community organizers on complex campaign negotiations, our movements need us to be skilled and artful negotiators. Yet, most of us in the movement have not had many opportunities to be formally trained in the art of negotiation. Here at Movement Law Lab, we’ve been studying the negotiation tactics of our opposition and have designed a new course to help you level up your negotiation skills.
THERE ARE LOTS OF NEGOTIATION COURSES OUT THERE! WHAT MAKES THIS COURSE SO SPECIAL?
Tailored to movement lawyers.
Traditional negotiations courses are designed to help business people and lawyers advance the interests of the rich. We’ve gone to the best of these trainings, sifted through the noise, and created a negotiations approach for lawyers that works in the context of community-led campaigns and movement-based litigation.
Focused on building power.
You will learn negotiation principles that are useful in negotiating with both adversaries and comrades with an eye toward larger collective goals. We understand that the primary role of movement lawyers is to build community power.
Rooted in the current moment.
Increasingly, many of us are working in hostile conditions, with opposition that is more resourced and more connected to the levers of power. This training will teach you how to maintain your moral compass and stay true to your radical politics even when you’re up against a formidable opposition. We’ll cover not just what you need to do, but who you need to be.
Teach you how to feel powerful, when negotiating with power.
When the deck is stacked against you, it’s normal to feel small. That’s why we often shrink, begging our targets for scraps or staking big, loud demands that we know are out of our reach. You’ll learn to move out of this mindset with step-by-step methods to build power through negotiations in a systematic, principled way.
Opportunity to learn in the community.
Negotiations is just one crucial set of skills needed to build the power of directly impacted folks inside a broader liberatory policy campaign or organizing fight. Our objective with this course is to scale up our capacities to negotiate across sectors. If you’re looking to grow alongside other social movement thinkers in a collaborative, rigorous learning container, this course is for you!
ABOUT THIS TRAINING
This training is designed to teach negotiation skills to experienced negotiators, those totally new to the bargaining table, and everyone in between. We’ve designed this course knowing that movement lawyers work in a variety of practice settings, so you should find it useful whether you’re moving litigation, a campaign, or just hopinging to better leverage smaller, more everyday moments. Our course faculty utilizes diverse teaching methods including simulations, peer coaching, lecture, large and small group discussion, and somatic grounding skills to center, face and engage. You’ll learn to recognize when something is (and is not) a negotiation, different theories and ways to approach a negotiation, how to prepare for a negotiation, and how to build and maximize your negotiating power.
COURSE FACULTY
This training is being organized by Movement Law Lab and taught by Nikki Thanos, MLL's Director of Training and Praxis, and Kung Li, a longtime litigator, campaigner and movement strategist. As staff attorney and then Executive Director at the Southern Center for Human Rights, Kung Li acted as lead or co-counsel in class action litigation regarding prisons, jails, detention centers, and other components of the criminal-legal system throughout the South. They have been involved in campaigns to close prisons and jails, minimize the detention of migrants, change sentencing laws, and reallocate municipal and state budgets away from punishment to invest in community-centered services. They have negotiated with wardens, sheriffs, police officers, police chiefs, Department of Corrections Commissioners, ICE officials, mayors, legislators, and journalists, as well as friends, co-workers, allies, bill collectors, and used car salesmen. Kung Li believes (almost) everything is negotiable, and that believing otherwise limits our agency and power.
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