Transcript
Speaker: This is the You Can Contract Show, sharing stories and advice about learning contracts in the real world.
Speaker: Your host is Laura Frederick, founder and CEO of How to Contract.
Speaker: How to Contract is a world leader in training in-house lawyers and professionals on contract drafting and negotiations through its training library, practical courses, and training events like ContractsCon.
Speaker: Hi, this is Laura Frederick.
Speaker: Welcome to the show.
Speaker: In this episode, Kwame Christian shares his story about how he learned contracts and negotiations.
Speaker: He talks about the importance of mentors and the different resources we all have available to us to become better at negotiating.
Speaker: Now let's tune in.
Speaker: Hey, I'm so excited to have you on the show.
Speaker: Yes, thanks for having me, Laura.
Speaker: It's great to be here.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's wonderful because we've gotten to become good friends over the last year as we've worked together on lots of different projects.
Speaker: And you were definitely an inspiration for me launching this podcast.
Speaker: So I appreciate that.
Speaker: That's great to hear.
Speaker: And listeners, just to tell you how close Laura and I are, she is probably one of maybe seven humans on the planet who could get me to wear a Sonny Bono costume and sing on the internet.
Speaker: In fosterity preserve forever.
Speaker: My wife was deeply concerned when she got that in the mail.
Speaker: She was like, do you have something to say, Kwame?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And what, so it was a video with, in the style of Sonny and Cher and the women singing had long black Cher wigs and you had a lovely Sonny toupee like hair wig.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: I got to put it on my website.
Speaker: I haven't done that yet.
Speaker: We'll put a link in the show notes so that you can see the video that you're talking about.
Speaker: So now you've triggered even more views of it.
Speaker: We are here to talk about contracts and learning contracts and how different people come to contracts.
Speaker: But before we kick into that, tell us a little bit about your background and what you're doing now.
Speaker: Yeah, so my name is Kwame Christian.
Speaker: I'm the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute.
Speaker: Came up in civil rights law, business law, and spent time as a mediator.
Speaker: And now with A&I, we create trainings and we actually write books.
Speaker: We have two books and we have three podcasts all geared towards helping to make difficult conversations easier.
Speaker: And if you haven't listened in to Quali's podcast, they're just really fantastic.
Speaker: And I said, it's the biggest podcast in the world on negotiations.
Speaker: So I think congratulations to you and your team and such a great business and so much that you're giving back to the community on learning such an important skill.
Speaker: Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker: And listeners, let's be clear on this.
Speaker: The only reason the podcast is so good is because I have guests like Laura coming on and sharing their wisdom.
Speaker: So now to contracts.
Speaker: So tell me about when you first saw contracts.
Speaker: For most lawyers, it's in law school.
Speaker: Was that for you as well?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We're fighting a little bit of PTSD here, Laura, because Kwame and contracts in law school, we did not get along.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And you know what's funny about it?
Speaker: To this day, I still don't understand what was so difficult about the class for me.
Speaker: I think it was just that learning curve of learning how to be a law student that was challenging.
Speaker: Because out in the real world, after I got a little bit of practical experience, it was a lot easier.
Speaker: But yes, my first experience was in law school and it was rough.
Speaker: I think it's just the nature of that contracts law class where it's so theoretical.
Speaker: There's so many bizarre rules, like mailbox rules, the last shot rules.
Speaker: There's so much to remember.
Speaker: It's just not great.
Speaker: And really so unrelated to what we do day to day with contracts.
Speaker: Agreed.
Speaker: So you go through law school and then graduated law school.
Speaker: And tell me about your work experience and when you first started seeing contracts in your work.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And so this goes to our earlier conversation about being overachievers.
Speaker: So I graduated in law school, but also I did a dual degree.
Speaker: So I have a master of public policy.
Speaker: So after I took the bar, my first job was more on the civil rights public policy side, doing policy analysis, analyses focused on healthcare inequity in the U.S. And so that was where I started.
Speaker: And then when I started the subsequent portion of my career, the legal portion a few years later when I opened my own firm.
Speaker: So you opened your own firm.
Speaker: What kind of practice did you focus on?
Speaker: Whatever would pay the bills.
Speaker: I know that field.
Speaker: But predominantly it was business law and some estate planning as well.
Speaker: And it was fun for me because I always was enamored by business.
Speaker: I started a business in law school.
Speaker: It went as well as you would have thought it would have gone with professional degrees at the same time.
Speaker: But I was just, I always knew I wanted to start my own business.
Speaker: And I recognized that the shortest distance between me and entrepreneurship was starting my own law firm.
Speaker: And then if I focused on business law, then I could learn from my clients on the business side for whatever that next endeavor was going to be.
Speaker: I think that's really insightful because that was my path.
Speaker: I worked for other people for 24 years and my first true entrepreneurship was opening my own law firm.
Speaker: And it was my first time I had to ask people to pay me money.
Speaker: I had to say what my rate was and defend that as what my time was worth.
Speaker: It's a whole mindset shift.
Speaker: I had to promote my services.
Speaker: I had to think about marketing and all those things.
Speaker: So I think that's a great analogy.
Speaker: I'm glad you said that, Laura, because it's not until this conversation that I realized the only the first time that I actually negotiated my own contracts was after I started my law firm with my clients because I was always negotiating on behalf of other people.
Speaker: So that's really interesting.
Speaker: I didn't put that together until right now.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm thinking that too, because I spent my whole career negotiating deals.
Speaker: And then I opened my own law firm and I'm starting to do that as well, whether it's contractors or whatever.
Speaker: And it's, I'm the one signing.
Speaker: I'm the one with the liability.
Speaker: It's a whole different mindset than when it's for somebody else.
Speaker: So you have your firm and you're getting your business clients.
Speaker: Now, how did you learn about
Speaker: contracts in that sense of you're representing clients and they're bringing you contracts.
Speaker: What was your process there?
Speaker: Yeah, I got lucky, Laura, I'll be honest, because there was an incubator program in the Columbus Bar Association.
Speaker: So I'm in Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker: And they really walked you through exactly what it would take for you to be successful as a starting lawyer.
Speaker: So with your own practice.
Speaker: So they gave you office space.
Speaker: You were able to collaborate with other lawyers who were at the same level.
Speaker: They would assign you with a mentor so you could bounce ideas off of them.
Speaker: So we weren't malpracticing.
Speaker: It's funny, especially when you start your own law firm, almost fresh out of law school.
Speaker: It's like, hey, help me, not only because it will help my clients, but I need you to make sure I don't get disbarred in this process.
Speaker: So it was really great to learn from experienced lawyers.
Speaker: And whenever I had a question, I could bounce ideas off them and they would just walk us through it.
Speaker: That's awesome that there's such a bar program.
Speaker: I don't know that I've heard about that in any other city.
Speaker: I wonder if those exist.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker: I personally haven't, but yeah, it's a great program and they do a great job there too.
Speaker: So you're learning from them.
Speaker: Now tell me about when you started doing more negotiations for these clients and figuring out negotiation.
Speaker: Did you have any early missteps in that or things where you had practices that you realized over time, maybe this wasn't the best approach to negotiations?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think, first of all, let me start with the beginning.
Speaker: So when did I start these negotiations?
Speaker: What's interesting is that the way that I got most of my clients in the business realm was by putting on free negotiation workshops around the city.
Speaker: Because I discovered negotiation in law school and I fell in love.
Speaker: And then I was like, oh yeah, let me put these seminars on for free just to get more clients.
Speaker: And so teaching was how I started to get that credibility as a negotiator.
Speaker: But what was interesting is that I'm realizing that a big mistake that I made was not communicating the value of negotiation to the client early because I assumed that they would come to me when they had a problem, but they would come to me
Speaker: After they recognized they had a problem, they tried to fix it themselves and they made it worse.
Speaker: And then they come to me.
Speaker: And so I was always negotiating from behind.
Speaker: They're like, hey, Kwame, can you fix the situation?
Speaker: I was like, I'm a lawyer, not a magician.
Speaker: Look what you've done.
Speaker: And so it was frustrating because for a lot of my clients, they weren't bringing me in at the beginning of the process.
Speaker: So I was just seeing the potential mistakes that were made and trying to salvage a tough situation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And which is also a really good practice pointer for all lawyers, especially newer lawyers, which is when you realize you screwed something up, whether you're the client or the lawyer, don't try and fix it yourself.
Speaker: I learned early on with all the mistakes I made, ask somebody first, even if it's not a huge mistake, a lot of times because it's mine, I don't see things clearly.
Speaker: And I bet your clients were like that too.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And I think there's also the confirmation bias for a lot of the clients where they say, oh yeah, I've been in business for 20, 30 years.
Speaker: I know how to negotiate.
Speaker: And a lot of times they do know how to negotiate, but it's a situation where again, they're too close.
Speaker: And it's that identity aspect, whereas I can handle this, I've solved every other problem.
Speaker: And then also they can't see the challenges that they're running into.
Speaker: They just don't have the perspective.
Speaker: The other part of that is the subject matter, because I see a lot of negotiation training that's general.
Speaker: This is how people act.
Speaker: This is how to engage in persuasion and things like that.
Speaker: But then there's also the, how do you negotiate an indemnity provision as a subset of the bigger negotiation concepts?
Speaker: And that's something I'm always thinking about, which is how is negotiation of what I do with contracts different from the bigger picture negotiation concepts?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I think it's important to even within ourselves start to have more of those philosophical discussions because then we start to see the nuances between the different types of negotiations that we're always having because they're going to be those subsets.
Speaker: Like you said, with indemnification, there is just general negotiation, but in this specific type of negotiation, this nuance really helps, but it doesn't help in other situations.
Speaker: And then also when you're negotiating different types of contracts, there are going to be cultural elements.
Speaker: If I'm helping somebody, for example,
Speaker: deal with a contract that was a trust, that's a family issue.
Speaker: And that's a different type of conflict from a business negotiation with all these different types of terms.
Speaker: And the observing of ourselves in these negotiations, and I know you've talked about that before, is that self-awareness, that emotional intelligence, where you learn how to see what you're doing
Speaker: And then you watch other people and see them do it different.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, that's an interesting approach.
Speaker: And you learn that.
Speaker: And also, I also pay attention to how things make me feel.
Speaker: When someone's acting or negotiating a contract provision this way, what does that trigger in me?
Speaker: What emotion does that trigger?
Speaker: And...
Speaker: paying attention to that is really effective.
Speaker: And at least that's how I think I learned to negotiate was really paying attention, not only to either side, but then also like, when did I feel like I had to concede?
Speaker: Even maybe I didn't want to, but I felt this compelling need to.
Speaker: And when did I refuse to concede anything, even when I could have?
Speaker: And so much of that is governed by that emotion.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And I think one of the elements of a great negotiator that people often miss is humility, too, because what you're demonstrating there is that you're saying, I'm now upon hindsight, I can recognize what worked on me and why.
Speaker: Now I can work to replicate that.
Speaker: And then again, going a little bit deeper on the humility side.
Speaker: When I was negotiating, when I had my firm, I was always the youngest person in the room.
Speaker: And for when I was up against somebody who had more experience, which was always, I would ask them questions.
Speaker: I was like, what do you think I'm missing here?
Speaker: Can you help me to get a better understanding of that maneuver that you just did?
Speaker: And a lot of times it's flattering for them.
Speaker: Yeah, I know this and they'll actually help me through the negotiation.
Speaker: And I considered it a borrowed experience.
Speaker: So I don't have many years of legal experience at that time, but I'm going to learn from my mentors and I'm going to borrow some years of experience.
Speaker: I'll learn from the people on the other side too.
Speaker: And I think just being a little bit more humble with your approach and asking for help when you need it, it's like a superpower.
Speaker: The other cool thing your comment made me think about, which is the opportunity to observe other people.
Speaker: Lawyers who are working with contracts, who are negotiating whatever we negotiate, we have these masterclasses every day, whether it's great examples or terrible examples.
Speaker: And so I remember even...
Speaker: I was in a job, I was probably 15 years out of law school, just doing commercial contract technology negotiations that whole time.
Speaker: And I remember sitting in an office with one of the VPs.
Speaker: We're at the end of the negotiation.
Speaker: It was a really long thing.
Speaker: And silence can be used effectively.
Speaker: And I'd used it and I'd seen it used on me.
Speaker: I'd never seen anyone use silence like this person did.
Speaker: And we're sitting there talking and he just, throughout the conversation, had totally uncomfortable feelings.
Speaker: long silences while he was trying to get them to concede.
Speaker: Because we were in a point of black and white, and it was just one or the other.
Speaker: And he would talk, and then they'd talk, and then he'd just sit for the longest time.
Speaker: And what I liked about it was by seeing the extreme use of it, I really appreciated the smaller uses of it that I do, because I got to see it in this extreme example.
Speaker: And so I think that
Speaker: Working with contracts, we have this luxury of watching negotiations all day, watching ourselves perform and really learn that way.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: That's so fascinating.
Speaker: It was really, I've had a couple of these where I had these really extreme negotiation experiences.
Speaker: My other favorite one is I was working for a company where the vice president was using emotion and anger because we had done something that the other side didn't like at all.
Speaker: And they were pissed at us because we had introduced this new concept at the end.
Speaker: This VP who I knew starts yelling at me and the person next to me.
Speaker: And I'm completely shocked because I'm sitting across from the table.
Speaker: We're in person in a conference room.
Speaker: And he starts yelling at us about how we had mismanaged this.
Speaker: And we were so uncomfortable.
Speaker: And the other side was so uncomfortable.
Speaker: And then it ended.
Speaker: And the thing that they were pissed about, they weren't really pissed about anymore.
Speaker: And we get out of the room.
Speaker: And the VP and the salesperson with me both knew each other.
Speaker: And he's, oh, my God.
Speaker: Did you see how their faces turned?
Speaker: And they were collaborating on it.
Speaker: I wasn't in on it because I wasn't usually their lawyer.
Speaker: But this was apparently a stick that they used all the time.
Speaker: To distract the other side was to have him yell at this guy.
Speaker: Not sure that I approve of this technique, but I got to see it in action and see the impact.
Speaker: So again, I would never do this, but the idea of emotion and the uncomfortable sense that people get sometimes with too much emotion in the room, it was definitely a masterclass of that for me.
Speaker: Wow, that's so fascinating.
Speaker: I still remember I was like coming out of the conference room and I'm thinking, do I still have a job?
Speaker: You know, I was just mortified, but I realized then I found out it was just a whole technique they used.
Speaker: Unreal.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's totally.
Speaker: Lawyers can get exposed to all this kind of craziness.
Speaker: Anyway, so many masterclasses we experienced.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's a good one.
Speaker: I know, especially I wasn't in on the joke with him.
Speaker: But yeah, I think that learning and seeing that and then seeing how I reacted to it in the moment.
Speaker: And I think one of the things I learned from it was that detachment to when people start getting emotional, even on my side, because I was getting sucked into it and as normal humans would.
Speaker: But I think I realized after that, I'm like, oh, people take
Speaker: positions that are sometimes extreme and that's okay.
Speaker: We just, it's all about how I respond and how I manage my emotions.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And again, I think that's something that's really important for us to remember as lawyers.
Speaker: If we are knowledge workers, our success depends on the
Speaker: functionality of our brain.
Speaker: But if we are not able to manage our emotions, it's not going to function very well.
Speaker: I think that's a critical element to remember.
Speaker: And even if we are completely justified in feeling the way that we feel, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have a negative impact on your ability to function as a lawyer.
Speaker: Yeah, and that emotional self-regulation.
Speaker: I think that for me, as I go look at how I went from an okay lawyer to a good lawyer to a great lawyer, it really was that emotional regulation that helped me get there because I learned how to have those conversations, the difficult conversations that you always talk about, learning how to have those without losing it inside every single time when you get upset or you get angry or somebody does something you don't like
Speaker: It's so easy to get worked up, but being able to not get worked up is so critical to being successful.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: So you train people around the world in negotiations.
Speaker: What advice do you have for lawyers who are in your situation?
Speaker: People who came out of law school, they're opening their own firm, they don't really have, even in your case, a lot of mentors available to show them the way, but they're trying to figure out how to get great at negotiations and great at contracts.
Speaker: But what advice would you have for those kind of folks to get better?
Speaker: I think it's really simple.
Speaker: What we have to do is we have to just get this learner's mentality and just recognize that everything that we do is some level of practice.
Speaker: So we should be more intentional with that practice.
Speaker: So as you're going through your negotiations and you're negotiating these contracts and drafting and things like that,
Speaker: You want to be able to look back and learn from this and improve through the process and coach yourself through it.
Speaker: These are organic learning opportunities.
Speaker: But even beyond that, you could listen to free resources, this podcast, my podcast, Negotiate Anything, those type of things.
Speaker: You should try to surround yourself with as much information about the topic as possible.
Speaker: And start to follow people on LinkedIn who talk about it regularly.
Speaker: Again, Laura, you're great at this.
Speaker: And your content is educational, but it's also very easy to understand.
Speaker: And it's fun and funny a lot of time.
Speaker: And so just the more you immerse yourself with contracts and negotiation, the better you'll be because you're constantly learning from the best.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: And finding ways to negotiate contracts because they're even at as a solo in a law firm, you could volunteer to help with a pro bono opportunity that involves some contracts and probably involves you working with more senior folks on those contracts.
Speaker: So partnering that way.
Speaker: And often the other thing I recommend is trying to get like a part time job.
Speaker: You have your law firm, but for a lot of lawyers, it takes a while.
Speaker: to get those clients and get a steady income.
Speaker: So you have an opportunity to work with others, offer to do first drafts, offer to do some of the legwork for contracts, because then you can start doing that.
Speaker: And the same for negotiations, go start working on some business things as a pro bono matter for your local associations or charities as a way to get experience.
Speaker: I'm so glad we're having this conversation, Laura, because I am remembering so many things that I did that I completely forgot about.
Speaker: Because I actually started a legal clinic at a nonprofit, obviously to help the community.
Speaker: That was the real purpose.
Speaker: But I think the surprising benefit was the fact that I got so many more reps, just lawyering skills of talking to clients, but also seeing their business challenges, learning from them and helping with those negotiations has been really helpful.
Speaker: And so you just get more and more reps every time you're doing it every single week.
Speaker: And it's a great way to gain rapid experience in a real world environment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anytime you have an opportunity to work and there's not an expectation of someone is paying me a lot of money per hour to be an expert.
Speaker: It's a learning opportunity.
Speaker: Because when someone's paying me a ton of money per hour to be an expert in something, it's uncomfortable to not know what you're doing at the value they're paying you.
Speaker: So being able to work for free or a low, a $25 an hour worker at a law firm, there's going to be so much learning that's going to offset the low pay that you might be getting.
Speaker: There's just so many opportunities like that.
Speaker: And I totally agree with you on the free resources.
Speaker: And there's just so much there.
Speaker: There's no shortcutting this.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: You have to invest the time in order to get better.
Speaker: And so the way I like to think about it is that there is some magical amount of repetitions that I need.
Speaker: I don't know what that is, but I'm going to try to figure it out.
Speaker: And so the longer you take to gather that experience, the longer it will take for you to get to that level of skill that you want to get to.
Speaker: That's the 10,000 hours is the traditional number, but I'm with you there too.
Speaker: I see it in my career and in others that there's just no way to be amazing when you're starting out.
Speaker: Nobody is.
Speaker: It takes practice.
Speaker: It takes wisdom.
Speaker: Those take time.
Speaker: Fantastic insights as always, Kwame.
Speaker: I love talking to you.
Speaker: We could talk all day long, every day, and still have things to talk about.
Speaker: So I really appreciate you being on.
Speaker: Yes, likewise.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks for tuning into this episode.
Speaker: If you'd like to learn more about How to Contract's training programs, check out our website at howtocontract.com.
Speaker: You can sign up for our weekly newsletter, which includes links to these episodes, as well as contract tips, upcoming events, and other offers.
Speaker: Happy contracting!
