Hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of Negotiate Anything. Thanks for spending

time with us today. It's listeners like you in 181 different countries that have made Negotiate

Anything the most popular negotiation and conflict resolution podcast in the world. I'm your host,

Kwame Christian. I'm a business lawyer, mediator, professor, and the director

of the American Negotiation Institute. Before we get started, I have two quick questions for you.

Is negotiation a critical part of what you do? Do you need to resolve conflict and persuade at work?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, visit our website to learn more about our negotiation

workshops. We've traveled

the country working with professionals just like you, and we'd love to have the opportunity

to work with you too. Check out the link in the description to learn more. Jamie, thanks for joining

us today. Thanks for having me. It is my pleasure. I was very excited to have this conversation because when we met

a podcast movement, I was shocked to see another person presenting on negotiation. I was like, I have to

meet you. And so I'm glad we're able to make this happen. Me too. This is like my happy topic.

Perfect. Well, how would you start us off by telling the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do?

So I'm a lawyer, so don't hold that against me, please. I've been a lawyer for about 15 years.

The first half of my career I spent as a litigator in highly, highly contentious litigations.

So that's really where I got my start on negotiation. And through that time,

I worked in big law, which meant that I worked on very, very, very large high dollar value

lawsuits where everyone fought about every single detail. I pretty much got burnt out of that

and decided to switch. And then I worked for the federal government

and I worked for a judge for an amount of time. So I actually got to be in the position of neutral,

which was kind of interesting listening to everyone argue around me and then ultimately deciding

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