Eighteenth Annual Negotiation Competition encourages students to excel

Fourteen teams of 3^rd-year Robson Hall students competed in the eighteenth annual Robson Hall Negotiation Competition on the evening of October 11^th, 2023.  The competitors were selected for having excelled in their Legal Negotiation course in their second year of law school.  The main purpose of the competition is to provide Robson Hall students with the opportunity to develop superb negotiating skills. All legal training and professional expertise is directed toward one key objective—solving a client’s problems. Negotiation is a primary tool for accomplishing precisely that.

In this competition, two teams of two students, each representing opposing parties to a fictitious dispute, met in an attempt to reach a resolution or deal, with each team possessing confidential details about client circumstances and settlement preferences.  This year the law students negotiated an employment dispute between a fictious articling student and their fictitious law firm.  All of this took place under the scrutiny of the judges, who scored each team’s negotiation skills.  At the end of each session, the judges provided detailed feedback to each team about what they did well, and potential areas for improvement. 

The event was generously sponsored by Fillmore Riley, which has been supporting the competition for over a decade.  In addition to covering the competition costs and supplying prizes, lawyers from the firm volunteered to judge the students.  These lawyers were: Alexandra Broggy, Aaron Challis, Annika Friesen, Ari Hanson, Amber Harms, Sven Hombach, Rachel Loewen, Nick Noonan, Meghan Payment, Andrea Signorelli, Alexa Smith, and Davie Thiessen.

These judges were tremendously impressed with the caliber of the students’ negotiations, and were faced with the unenviable task of selecting a winner.  Due to their stellar performance, the negotiating team of Nicolas Nudler and Ryan Hall were awarded first place. The runners up, who also did a tremendous job, were Jamie Robertson and Rebecca Penner. Both teams will have the opportunity to represent Robson Hall and compete in the Canadian National Negotiation Competition in the new year.

Robson Hall students have a long history of success in inter-school competitions: the winner of the 2014 Robson Hall competition even went on to win the 2015 International Negotiation Competition in Dublin, Ireland.

A sincere thanks to Fillmore Riley for its generous sponsorship of the competition.

Congratulations Nicholas and Ryan, Jamie and Rebecca!

Story submitted by Yvan Larocque, Clinical Instructor.