The Pedagogical Value of the Canadian National Negotiation Competition

The skill set required of lawyers is evolving, and the ability to creatively and expeditiously resolve client concerns through effective negotiation is increasingly important. In this chapter, we argue that negotiation competitions are an excellent method to nurture the knowledge, skills, attitudes, judgment, and values—or competencies—that are vital to law students’ success in legal practice. Such competencies include knowing key negotiation concepts; managing information and process; communicating and relationship-building; advocating for client interests in a problem-solving environment; being aware of and managing one’s own biases; internalizing ethical decision-making in negotiation, and engaging in reflective practice. These competencies are not the focus of certain other kinds of law student competitions, such as appellate and trial moots, which are designed to sharpen legal analysis and rights-based advocacy in an adversarial model. The Canadian National Negotiation Competition (CNNC) departs from that model. It gives law students the opportunity to engage in negotiations like those that lawyers experience in practice and to receive feedback from experts, in either English or French streams. It also invites students to wrestle with complex scenarios that feature both business and broader social policy tensions and objectives. In this chapter, the authors recount their experience with developing, running and growing the CNNC for nine years and highlight some of the key pedagogical lessons learned.