Sixteen teams of University of Manitoba law students competed in the nineteenth annual Robson Hall Negotiation Competition on the evening of October 17th, 2024. These upper-year students were selected for having excelled in the Legal Negotiation course they took in their second year of law school. The main purpose of the competition is to develop superb negotiating skills in Manitoba law students for use in their legal career. All legal training and professional expertise is directed toward one key objective—solving a client’s problems. Negotiation is the primary tool for accomplishing precisely that.

In teams of two, the students met with another team representing the other side, each team possessing confidential details about their client’s circumstances and settlement preferences. This year’s negotiation involved an innovation think-tank commissioning a renowned artist to create a large multimedia art installation to be the centrepiece at its planned new facilities. The students negotiated an agreement on important points such as the design approval process; artistic freedom; copyright and the artist’s moral rights; the purchase price; and payment schedule.

All this took place under the close 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 LLP, which has a very long history of supporting the competition. In addition to covering all competition costs and supplying cash prizes, lawyers from the firm volunteered to judge the students. These lawyers were: Aaron Challis [JD/12], Amber Harms [BComm(Hons)/18, JD/21], Sven Hombach [MSc/02], Nick Noonan [BComm(HonsD)/18, JD/21], Meghan Payment [BA(Adv)/17, JD/20], Emily Rempel [JD/21], Andrea Signorelli [JD/19, LLM/10], Alexa Smith [BA/18, JD/21], David Thiessen [JD/20], Kirk Vilks, Kelsey Yakimoski [JD/17], and Michael Zacharias [JD/18].

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 Larissa Einarson and Kirsten Nynych were awarded first place. The runners up, who also did a tremendous job, were Erin Kyriakopoulos and Heather Peterson. Both teams will now represent the University of Manitoba and compete in the Canadian National Negotiation Competition, which will be held at the University of Windsor in March of 2025.