Mooters who move to negotiation competitions usually lose their first one badly, for a specific reason. They argue.
Almost everything that wins a moot loses a negotiation. Authority, force, refusing to concede. Across a table those read as inflexibility, and the scoresheet has a column for it.
Nobody is deciding
In a moot there is a bench. Someone will rule, so your job is to persuade a third party that you are right.
In a negotiation there is no third party with power. There is the other side, and they can walk away. Being right is worth nothing if they get up from the table.
The judges are scoring how you reached a deal, not whether your legal position was stronger.
Your client has interests, not positions
The most useful move available to you is separating what your client is asking for from why they want it.
A client demanding an exclusivity clause may only want protection from one particular competitor. A client refusing to move on price may need to protect a headline number for a third party who will see the contract. Positions are fixed and they collide. Interests are flexible and often compatible.
Find the interest and you find the deal. This is straight out of Getting to Yes, it is decades old, and it still wins competitions because most teams never do it.
Know your walk-away before you sit down
Decide in advance what happens if there is no deal. If your client can litigate cheaply and would probably win, you can afford to be firm. If litigation would take six years, you cannot.
That is your BATNA, and it is the only honest leverage in the room. Teams who have not worked theirs out either concede too early or hold out for something they cannot afford to hold out for.
Work out the other side's too, from the facts you have been given. Their weakness is your room to move.
Client and Counsel are one team, and the split is scored
Most Indian negotiation competitions put two people on a team, one Client and one Counsel. The NUALS International Negotiation Competition running this October is set up exactly that way.
That split is marked. A Counsel who answers everything while the Client sits silent loses points, and so does a Client who negotiates their own deal while Counsel takes notes. Agree who handles what before you go in, and use the break to actually confer.
The break is not a formality. Teams who never call one look like teams with nothing to discuss.
You are being watched after the round too
Negotiation scoring usually includes a self-analysis or debrief where judges ask what you thought went wrong.
Answer honestly. A team that says "we anchored too high and spent twenty minutes recovering" scores better than one insisting everything went to plan. The competition is testing whether you can assess your own performance, which firms care about more than advocacy.
If you are choosing between circuits
Negotiation, mediation and client counselling make up a much smaller circuit than mooting. Fewer teams, shorter preparation, better odds of placing.
They also map more directly onto what most lawyers spend their working lives doing, which is settling things.
Written by