I started law school late. Much later than most people in the legal professions ever do. My family was mildly aghast. I was the first person — as far back as anyone could trace our lineage — to go to university at all. That earned me a strange mix of puzzled looks and reluctant admiration.
When they asked me what I wanted to become — a lawyer, a judge, a prosecutor — I disappointed them. I told them I wasn’t interested in titles. I wanted to understand systems. How rules shape behavior. How law intersects with human nature. And how all of that collides with the messy reality of small companies trying to survive.
Then I joined the corporate planet as a negotiator, and what I found there stunned me.
The level of unpreparedness was breathtaking. Instructions were clear: a walkout was not an option. Ever. The single most honest tool in a negotiator’s toolkit was explicitly forbidden. Not because anyone wanted to be nice. Not because they feared consequences. But because they were incapable of processing alternative scenarios.
A walkout means you have done your homework. It means you know your numbers. It means you understand your fallback position, your leverage, and the cost of saying no. If you cannot walk away, you are not negotiating — you are begging with paperwork.
And that, more than anything else, explained the panic.
