The Red Velvet Lawyer

The Beloved Bug Which brings me to the mindset limitations I've had to face about cars.   My parents started married life driving a new VW bug.  It may have been one of the first imports to the U.S., which seem to have started in about 1956, two years after my birth.  It was beige with a beige interior.    I drove it as a teenager.  The battery sat on the back floor on the driver's side. Eventually, the floor rusted out. One day, as I was driving the bug to high school, the battery fell out on the street. Undaunted, my Dad cut a piece of shelving board long and wide enough to cover the hole in the floor, and I continued to drive the car until I left for college.   I earned a reputation for two things while driving that car.  I learned to back up long distances. (Perhaps this is one reason I find the rear-collision inducing design of the cross-over styling so irksome. It makes me a less proficient back-up driver!)   And, being eve...

Bargaining Between  Sophisticated Negotiators I've decided to replace my 2005 Nissan Murano with a newer model, used car.  I applied all the rules of interest-based and distributive bargaining that I teach in my course.  I plan to blog about the experience over the next several days.  Background: People hate shopping for cars.  We are not a "haggle" culture.  It's the reason that Saturn's "no-dicker-sticker" proved to be such a popular selling technique.   Studies show that U.S. buyers tolerate about 3 or 4 rounds of bargaining.  In contrast, people living in haggling cultures will engage in 10 to 15 rounds of bargaining.  Guess who typically gets the better deal? Because we lack experience in bargaining for small things like food and clothing, bargaining for an expensive car brings great anxiety to most people in the U.S. But, I teach negotiation.  In fact, I am one of the very few law professors in the U...