Conflict is inevitable, in both deals and disputes. Yet when clients call in the lawyers to haggle over who gets how much of the pie, traditional hard-bargaining tactics can lead to ruin. Too often, deals blow up, cases don't settle, relationships fall apart, justice is delayed. "Beyond Winning" charts a way out of our current crisis of confidence in the legal system. It offers a fresh look at negotiation, aimed at helping lawyers turn disputes into deals, and deals into better deals, through practical, tough-minded problem-solving techniques.

In this step-by-step guide to conflict resolution, the authors describe the many obstacles that can derail a legal negotiation, both behind the bargaining table with one's own client and across the table with the other side. They offer clear, candid advice about ways lawyers can search for beneficial trades, enlarge the scope of interests, improve communication, minimize transaction costs, and leave both sides better off than before. But lawyers cannot do the job alone. People who hire lawyers must help change the game from conflict to collaboration. The entrepreneur structuring a joint venture, the plaintiff embroiled in a civil suit, the CEO negotiating an employment contract, the real estate developer concerned with environmental hazards, the parent considering a custody battle--clients who understand the pressures and incentives a lawyer faces can work more effectively within the legal system to promote their own best interests. Attorneys exhausted by the trench warfare of cases that drag on for years will find here a positive, proven approach to revitalizing their profession.

Drawing on such diverse but related disciplines as economics, cognitive psychology, statistics, and game and decision-making theory, the book considers the barriers to successful negotiation in such areas as civil litigation, family law, arms control, labor management disputes, environmental treaty making, and politics. When does it pay for parties to a dispute to cooperate, and when to compete? How can third-party negotiators further resolutions and avoid the pitfalls that deepen the division between antagonists? Offering answers to these and related questions, this book is a comprehensive guide to the latest understanding of ways to resolve human conflict.

Questions about how children fare in divided families have become as perplexing and urgent as they are common. In this landmark work on custody arrangements, the developmental psychologist Eleanor Maccoby and the legal scholar Robert Mnookin examine the social and legal realities of how divorcing parents make arrangements for their children.