The next day in San Diego, we headed to the TJSL for the competition. It worked out such that the two teams of two would sit across from each other and try to negotiate a deal, knowing certain facts and having certain interests and the judges would score them based on criteria like listening to the other side, teamwork, advancing your client's interest, etc.
My teammate and I each chose a round to really research and try to have the most information on, and then take the lead in the negotiating. This worked well since we didn't have time to do much prep, but in the future we should probably both prepare more. The first round was an endorsement deal for an athlete, with our team representing FRS, an energy drink company. I have heard of this company thanks to the Tim Tebow ad that I plan to write a later blog post on (edit: this never happened). I did some research, thinking if the Q score (a number representing the name recognition plus likeability of certain athletes) of their endorsers went up after the endorser, we could basically prove the deal was good for the athlete we were courting. I found an increase in Tebow's score, but the other team did not find it too convincing. I think we did fairly well in this round, due to be fairly well prepared and not caving on our required minimum time range for the contract (I nearly abbreviated this K, as I did in my law school notes, but I'll spare the shorthand here). We did quabble about minor details a little too much early on, but in real life we would have had more than an hour, so we just need to learn how to work a negotiation in the time we have allotted.
The second round was a little more complicated, as we were representing the city of Los Angeles trying to get a stadium deal set and the numbers were much more plentiful. The deal had to do with revenue sharing and cost sharing and city politics, and I should have known the numbers a little better going in, but as anyone who knows me understands, numbers are not my forte. The team we were against was a well-organized ADR (alternative dispute resolution) team, complete with negotiation outline and a coach from their school with them. We ended up with a deal without caving on our requirements, but we probably could have negotiated a little more out of them.
All in all, we went 3-3, as 2 judges in the first round declared us the "winner" (a contrived concept, since the whole point of negotiation is that everyone wins) and 1 judge in the second round said we won. Our overall scores were not impressive, but for having no training and little prep time, I'd say batting .500 was a good consolation prize.
That night, the school organized a mixer for all the competitors at Double Deuce, a half top-40 bar, half country bar, complete with mechanical bull. When we got there, they were showing a UFC fight, which meant typical UFC fans (not my usual crowd) filled the bar, and I was only one of a handful of women who didn't work at the bar. There was also some sort of charity bar crawl there, with all these people in ridiculous wigs and flannel. The bar wasn't all that fun, so my teammate and I went back to the hotel bar to watch more college football after a short time.
