In this jam-packed episode, Alex Carter, Professor and Director of the Mediation Center at Columbia Law School, mediator, and author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book, “Ask for More,” shares her insights on negotiation and how to succeed in mediation. She emphasizes the importance of doing your homework and identifying the problem you’re trying to solve before entering the room.

She offers suggestions on finding the right mediator to resolve your case, preparing for mediation, and the magic that can occur from joint sessions.

As a law professor, Alex has a passion for helping people grow in their careers. In this episode, she also offers advice on thinking broadly about your career and shares personal stories about why it’s important to “ask for more” at work.

Her beautifully written book, Ask for More, is a must-read. With 10 simple questions, Alex shows us how we can find the “more” in business, law, and life.

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Listen to the episode here

Level Up Your Negotiation Skills And Ask for More With Alex Carter Professor, Columbia Law School And Author Ask For More

My name is Alex Carter. I am a professor at Columbia Law School and the author of the Wall Street Journal Business bestselling book, Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything. I am married to a law school classmate who I met on the first day of Columbia Law School. Together, we are the parents of a thirteen-year-old competitive swimmer. On meets, you can find me screaming my head off at local pools in my home state of New Jersey.

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On today’s episode, I’m excited to welcome Alex Carter. She is the director of the mediation clinic and a professor at Columbia Law School. She’s a mediator. She works with the United Nations and is the author of the bestselling book, Ask for More. Alex, welcome. 

Thanks so much, Stacy. I’m looking forward to this. 

I thought I got your book back in 2020 when it was released. I have a friend that we trade and we send each other books in the mail. I was excited to get this and I didn’t know what to expect as a lawyer. I think as lawyers, we’re trained in negotiation. A big part of what is perceived in a legal job is negotiating and mediating. I was like, “What am I going to learn here?” One of my biggest takeaways is that your work zooms out from the typical way that we think about negotiation. It’s not a tug of war and it’s not ping pong or tennis. It’s thinking about things in a broader sense. 

Thank you, and that’s exactly what I was trying to do. I was trained in negotiation during law school, like many of us. I think negotiation courses are now nearly ubiquitous at law schools. I was taught this definition that it’s this haggling process to get to a written agreement. Over time, I started to think that that felt narrow and limited and frankly, reactive as though we only negotiate a couple times a year when the circumstances rusted upon us. 

I then went on my honeymoon where I married another lawyer. I always tell people this is where I learned to negotiate. They think it’s because two litigators went on a honeymoon together but no, it was because we took this kayak tour in Kauai and our guide said to us, “Folks, let’s negotiate these things to the left because we’re going to hit that beach up ahead.” I have to tell you, Stacy, of all the words I expected to come out of a river guide in Hawaii’s mouth, negotiate might have been lowest on the list.

It got me thinking that what we do as attorneys is we are constantly negotiating relationships. We’re negotiating relationships with our colleagues in the office, with opposing counsel even, with clients, and with potential clients. For those of us who are in-house, negotiating with our outside counsel. When you think about it that way, it helps you to be prepared, focused, and intentional for all of those negotiations that you’re having across a 365-day span. 

The Mirror And The Window Framework

I like that it is more steering, as you’ve talked about it before. We’ll talk about the book a little bit. The framework around the subtitle is ten questions to negotiate anything. I love it because it’s simple elegance. It’s boiled down to seem very simple, but they’re very complex the way you’ve thought through it. Let’s talk a little bit about the two frameworks, the mirror and the window. 

This came out of my work as a mediator. It’s a pleasure to talk to a legal audience that will understand mediation because I can say here that this is very much a mediator’s take on negotiation. I was trained the traditional way, and then I spent a decade and a half helping people mediate through some of the thorniest legal and business disputes out there. What I found is that even brilliant and apparently prepared inside and outside counsel weren’t getting the most out of these negotiations that I was helping them with. 

Part of that was they had skipped a step. They hadn’t started by negotiating with themselves first, which is what I call the mirror. Maybe they did, but they didn’t know quite the right questions to ask themselves so they arrived at the table fully prepared to get the most out of that situation, whether from a legal perspective, a financial perspective, or a relationship perspective. 

I was spending the first portion of my mediation work, I do this all the time, holding up a mirror to each one of these parties using my questions, helping them to probe what their biggest needs were, what their needs were beyond the money, what the barriers were or the concerns were for a possible deal. All of those things I helped people do and then I built a bridge between the sides. 

That’s where I came up with the mirror and the window. It always starts with us first. When we negotiate in the mirror, we can avoid what I call a one-car accident. We enter a negotiation difficulty, but it’s within the four walls of our brain before anyone else gives us the chance to crash into us. We need that mirror work first. It doesn’t have to take a long time. We then need to know the right questions we can ask of anyone to get the most information and therefore be able to create the best deals. 

Sounds simple, but it’s hard work to take the time. You talk about spending time to save time. It is surprising. I have to tell you, the number of times that I am getting the team together with our outside counsel to prepare for a mediation. Sometimes I think people are just like, “What’s our number?” There’s a lot of impatience around the whole process. 

Very much so. People try to be very polite with me because I’m the mediator, they’ve contracted with me, and they’ve seen my credentials. Inevitably we’ll start out and they give me their patience for a little bit, and then I can see as we started at around 9:45 or 10:00, the outside counsel in particular starts shifting in their chairs a little bit, especially as I’m exploring with their client a bit more about the business, their path, and their priorities.

I’ve had a couple of very polite outside counsels say, “Professor, I want to jump in here. I’m sure you’re very experienced, but could we get to solving this?” I said, “Yeah, solving what? That’s the phase we’re in now. I’m working to figure out what the problem is that we are solving for your client. It is going to also go down to your benefit. Right now I am spending your time so that I can save you a lot of time and headaches on the back end.”

Inevitably people are a little skeptical and then around 3:34 in the afternoon, they start to become believers because I know that I haven’t earned the right to reality test their client, to probe about risks and benefits of going forward, and to ask some of those harder questions. I haven’t earned that right until I have spent time getting to know them, getting to know their business and their priorities, and seeing for myself the way that they like information packaged and the way that they like to be communicated with. All of that. My goal is to not only set the client up for success but also to set the outside counsel up for success because a happy client then means successful outside counsel. 

Importance Of Joint Sessions In Mediation

I can see myself in the room and being led down toward that magic moment where we all feel like, “Now I know why she was asking me these questions.” I think it is hard to fight that urge to get down to it like, “What’s our number? Are we going to start ping pong now?”

I do like to be pretty transparent. I find that the more I can explain what I’m doing as I’m doing it, and even more than that, why I’m doing it and why it might be in your service that I’m doing that and invite you in right to that thought process, the more people then drop their guard and trust. Transparency breeds trust. A lot of times both inside and outside counsel don’t have a strong sense of how much they can trust a mediator. 

I’m sure a lot of your listeners have dealt with what I’m going to call trash and bash style, where a mediator gets into the room. I’ll try to use some appropriate language here. I was born in Brooklyn. Your case stinks and here’s why, and you have this litany of problems, so get ready to make a big move. They then go to the other side and they may say something directly contradictory like, “Here’s why your case stinks,” for reasons opposite to what I said in the other room. That may work for some, but I see more and more savvy inside counsel saying, “I’m not going to play this game.”

Stacy, I know I’m married to one. My husband of the kayak fame ended up going in-house. I’ve also been living with the in-house counsel perspective now for a very blissful eighteen years of marriage. We recovered from our early kayak adventures. Those of you who read the book will know how my marriage almost ended right after it started due to that kayak. I hear mediators who come in and instantly pretend like they know better, they are the smartest people in the room, and they’re there to educate the inside counsel rather than be educated. They are not going to be successful most of the time in the market now. 

As you said, going back to the idea of avoiding that one car accident. For either in-house or outside counsel, doing that homework with the client and trying to figure out what is it that they want. What is the problem we’re trying to solve? Before, we were spending whatever per hour to help us in our negotiation. We should do some homework before we get there. 

Yes, exactly right. If I could give a story that’s not in the litigation context. Where I grew up, I was a coaching partner and she was a patent law person. She stepped onto a new client relationship. The firm put her in a relationship that wasn’t doing so well. She saw all these associates running around at breakneck speed in opposite directions and asked them, “What are we doing for the client?” The senior associate said, “We’re trying to file the patent paperwork on time.” 

She thought, “Really, that’s the problem? What are we, LegalZoom?” She instead sat down, fought to herself, zoomed out and called the client, asked for a meeting, and then got in and said, “What are you looking to do in the market? What are you looking to prevent your competitors from doing in the market?” That is a compelling problem that the client needs to solve. Part of what I do from the very beginning of the book and the very beginning of the mirror section, and this is something I don’t get into on a lot of podcasts, but this is a unique audience, especially for lawyers inside or outside. 

Sometimes we tend to gravitate toward the microscopic problem first or the symptom. We’re having this issue. We want to solve the thing that’s right in front of our faces. I walk you through a step-by-step process that takes a couple of minutes to help you zoom out and ask yourself, “I have this small problem in front of me, what happens if I solve that? What happens if I achieve that?” Zoom out, maybe you zoom out even for another level. What happens if we file the patent paperwork? The client may get this protection. What happens if they get this protection? 

Maybe they can start to use these assets strategically to do X, Y, and Z. We have to train our brains to zoom out more, and this is of benefit for lawyers because our work is deeply strategic at its core. It certainly can be. Part of the value that we need to communicate, since a lot of times we are a “cost center,” is how that work is strategic. How does it intersect and necessary to propel the business forward, thinking about that question, what’s the big, necessary, meaty problem, strategic problem that I am helping that client solve? My client is the business and I’m the inside counsel.

Not just the tactic that is being proposed. You’re exactly right. The secret sauce of the best in-house counsel is the folks who can step back from what’s being told or believed to be the goal and be able to pull back and ask the questions, “What are we trying to do here?” instead of being wedded to that getting the patent filed on time.

This is something that I try to train my students at Columbia to do. The B student, I tell them, “Here’s what we’re doing.” They execute it with a bit of help. Maybe the B plus A minus, I tell them what we’re doing and they execute it with no help and well. The A plus, I tell them what they’re doing. They say, “Professor, I’m not sure we’re solving the right problem.”

That must light you up. 

I love it. I find it exciting when a student can say to me, “I’m not sure we’re pursuing the right goal,” and talk to me about that because I know that student is then prepared to be an impactful lawyer wherever they’re going to go.

Going back to the book, what I think is so powerful in it is that you focus on the power of questions and how you ask questions. I want to talk a little bit about that. I know in other shows you’ve talked about, and I think it’s in the book also about the fishing with the net from your time in Brazil. It was hard for me to prepare for this conversation because I was giving myself bad marks if I thought of a question that wasn’t an open-ended question.

It’s funny, I little inside baseball. After I landed an agent, I had a number of publishers call me because they wanted to publish the book. We had these interviews and every single one of them started out by saying, “Alex, do you, I’m sorry, tell me about your hopes for this book.” It was hilarious. 

Let’s talk about the power of open questions. 

It’s interesting because it goes back to when I was studying meditation. My mentor, Carol Liebman, told me that every situation is like a puzzle. The question you ask determines how many pieces of the puzzle each party throws out for you on each round. If you ask a small question, you’re going to get a piece, maybe two pieces. Think about how long it’s going to take you to fill out that thousand-piece puzzle so that they can see the bigger picture. When I zoom out and ask a bigger question, what are those? Let’s go into that. 

I think a lot of times for lawyers, we’re trying to control the situation. We’re thinking deposition style. I want to ask a question only if I know the answer to it and the narrowest version so you don’t squirrel out. I want to zoom out, and if I’m asking a question starting with what, how, or tell me, I know I’m going to get much more information. “Tell me about your business. Tell me what’s brought you here today. What are your hopes for this process or your business? How was this contractual relationship different from the contractual relationships you entered into before?”

These are what are known as diagnostic questions. After doing this work for years, I went back and saw a study by Professor Lee Thompson out of Northwestern from a couple of decades ago where she set people up to negotiate, and 7% of people got the optimal outcome. It was a monetary dispute with some additional elements. The 7% of people came in and did not lead with their points. They asked diagnostic questions first. Those folks are the ones who not only did the best at the table but also created the best relationships so that the other side felt positive about negotiating with them again. 

Building Relationships In Mediation

You have several examples in the book that talk about how this process of negotiating can help you develop a deeper relationship than just that transaction that you’re working on. I got to pause on that because it’s such a different way of looking at it. I want to think about when you’re in that mediation context and you’re trying to understand what is the bigger picture, and you do have the pressure. Maybe it’s your outside counsel, maybe you don’t have an Alex Carter-style mediator. Maybe you have the trash and bash kind of person. How can the lawyers in the room, the in-house or outside counsel help the larger conversation pull up?

Great question. More and more I think in part because more law schools have mediation clinics. People who are going to go be outside counsel are being trained as mediators or at least trained in what that could look like. I think the power of a good inside or outside counsel cannot be understated. I have seen rooms where I didn’t have to do much. It wasn’t the Alex Carter magic. 

I convened people, and then I had a super-skilled lawyer team turn to the other side and ask some open-ended questions. Maybe they even came in and they made a statement up top. Something like, “I want to set the frame for this discussion. I know we disagree on the legal frame. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here, but we’re here because regardless of whether we agree or not, we think your beliefs are sincerely held and we want to find a way forward out of this mess. That’s why we’re here today.”

The power of framing like that is substantial, and then start by saying, “Talk to us a bit about the situation as it started to develop.” I’ve seen very skilled counsel ask open-ended questions that went to the past, which is where you should always start. You never want to start a mediation by coming in and saying, “How much are you willing to pay? How much are you willing to accept?” Instinctually, you recoil from that. People want to talk about what came before. 

They want to be heard. It’s a lot of that. 

They do. A colleague and scholar, Nancy Welch, talks about how parties and mediation want voice and choice. They want to be able to speak their piece to talk about what’s happened to them. That’s also something I have to counsel lawyers on, sometimes in advance that if you’re defense side, the plaintiff may need to come in and let some emotional steam off the kettle. How you receive and handle that can make it critical.

I’ve done a lot of mediations and I feel like it’s the rare situation where they bring both parties together. I feel like that’s a real disservice to the process.

I couldn’t agree more and it’s interesting because I find that on the West Coast in particular, commercial mediators are attached to shuttle mediation, like entirely in caucus. Parties are separated from the get-go. I can recall one time that my husband was with such a mediator. He works for a very large Fortune 100 company. The defense side will be very familiar with this. You have a plaintiff who says, “I want X amount.” You then offer that and the goalposts move. 

Maybe they’re moving all over the place. My husband comes to me and he’s frustrated. I said, “This is an emotional barrier to settlement. This plaintiff is seeing big bad company X.” She’s not seeing the friendly face of Greg. You need to insist that the mediator put you two together so that you can have a face-to-face conversation.” What do you think? They settled the case. I think a lot of mediators may not be trained to handle a joint session. I think even more than that, a lot of outside counsel are very nervous about a joint session. 

They’re nervous that somehow I’m going to get their client to make an admission. Everything in the house is going to come crashing down. If you do the prep work, what I tell counsel is it is enormously powerful for the other side to hear from you and see you however briefly. Even if we come together and talk about our hopes for the process, we meet each other. We have coffee. Sometimes I have engineered folks to have a coffee and snack break together. Just the act of breaking bread and making some small talk across the table. 

Warms it up a little. 

I have to tell you one story. Employment dispute. This was somebody who was currently employed at the institution. In the public sector and federal agency context, this happens all the time. You’ve got the employer and the lawyer on one side and the person on the other, the current employee, very unhappy. We’re having a snack together and I notice that the plaintiff keeps touching a necklace she’s wearing and the necklace has a golden dog on it. I look at her and I take a chance and say, “I can’t help but notice your beautiful necklace.”

The plaintiff brightens up immediately. She says, “This is my show dog, Commander. Do you know the attorney on the other side?” I said, “No. I have a show dog also.” We settled in twenty minutes because we found a connection. Immediately they had something to talk about. You can’t make this up. That connection paved the way for a mutually beneficial settlement. There is no small talk in mediation. There is no small thing to notice. Same thing in negotiation. It can be those little connections that can break something wide open. 

It’s frustrating because you’re training the next generation and maybe other law schools are doing this as well, but I’ve been around for a little bit at a time. I have to say, very few of my experiences either preparing or attending mediation have afforded a joint meeting. Also, that nervousness, apprehension, and the tight control that both the mediator and counsel put on the process have worked against finding those magic connection points. It feels like a little bit of swimming upstream to make things different and better. It’s a lot to think about in terms of your role as the in-house counsel guiding a case or outside counsel and thinking more strategically about handling those situations. 

I would say for inside counsel, be discerning. Ask for a lot of opinions and don’t be afraid to ask for the kind of mediator or the kind of process that you know is going to be the most successful. I think that the more you can get a sense of a mediator style, and matchmake. There are going to be some situations where maybe you need somebody who is going to be pretty directive and heavily evaluative.

I know that there are situations that can call for that. There are a lot of situations where a mediator can handle and facilitate a joint session or you can break the ice with the other side, especially if you have any kind of an individual on the other side. Institutions have feelings too. I’ve seen it over and over again. It can help you later on to break down some of those barriers. 

I would think especially in those employment cases where it’s about money, but ultimately, it’s about what happened to that employee or what they perceive happened to them. Being heard, being seen, being considered could go a long way to softening things up.

We had talked a little bit on our prep call about advice for in-house counsel, like when people get focused on the number and focused on feeling like they’re losing. Again, I find all the relationship-building work that I do helps me then to get to the point where I say, “Look, I’m a former litigator. We both know legal decisions are different from business decisions or stewardship decisions.” You could litigate this all the way to the end. 

Without evaluating the case, we both know there are probably issues that carry you past summary judgment. We both know what that costs. Sometimes the hard work we have to do is the work of saying, “I could make a decision strictly based on the law and the rectitude of my position, or I could think about from a business decision and a stewardship decision what’s going to get me and my client out of this in a reasonable way so that we can focus on the mission and the important work we have to do, and helping to separate those two things.”

I feel like that is the role certainly that in-house counsel should play. As you were talking about asking for the process that you wanted, the way a lot of times mediators are selected is you have X, Y, and Z cases, and so you cast the net out. Who would be good? Who have you worked with? You get some names back and that’s how it works.

“This person has been plaintiff’s side before. We don’t want to work with them because they’re going to be too cozy with the other side. These people haven’t worked in healthcare before. They’re not going to understand.” In my experience, it hasn’t been as qualitative as you’re talking about. It’s been much more like, “They know this case or I know them or I’m friends with them and they go to the same country club or whatever.”

100% or “I know somebody who used them and said they were great,” or “They’ve done stuff for our firm 5 or 6 times and I hear nothing but great things.” If you ask who you know, people are going to default usually to subject matter expertise or prior, what kinds of cases, as you said, plaintiff or defense side. I would encourage people to send out an RFI or Request For Information, and an RFI with a little bit more meat on it. For this client relationship, I’m looking for somebody who is able to establish a relationship with the client.

I need somebody who’s got a lot of emotional intelligence and is going to help us get in the head of the other side so we can bring this to a close. That type of request is going to get you a little bit more thoughtful information. If you can’t get that, then you have to interview a few mediators and ask them about their approach and how much flexibility they have. Do they do things one way? I have to tell you, even though I’m a huge proponent of a joint session, there’s a lot of flexibility to how I might think about that with you. I prefer to partner with my parties. 

If it’s going to work or not, or we’re comfortable or we’re not. 

Exactly. Talk to me about the personalities in the room. Talk to me about what people need, and then we work together to craft the process that’s going to meet them where they are. 

That’s another way to build that relationship, having worked through something in a more collaborative way than in the tug of war. I love seeing behind the curtain of mediation because as I said, it’s a core function of the legal role as you know. The book and your work are broader than that. In this show also, one of my goals is to help lawyers level up in their careers. It is framed in negotiation, but there are other ways to use and think about this framework in terms of one’s own career growth. I want to ask a nice open-ended question, which is what advice do you have for lawyers to ask for more in their careers?

Starting Early And Asking For More

First of all, asking for more can start right away. Even as a summer associate, I came in as a summer associate to my firm during a down market. It was after 9-11, a much smaller class, and with very few women in the class. I looked around and I thought I could be discouraged by that or I could think to myself, “They probably want to keep me.” I asked for the mentors I wanted. I asked people to lunch. I asked for a whole lot of advice. 

I occasionally asked to be taken along on calls or different things where I thought I could learn something. There’s a lot you can ask for. Even if you’re at a lockstep firm where there’s not a thing, you negotiate on money for a very long time, there’s so much more you can negotiate for. You can do that right from the beginning of your career. The first thing is you can start early. The second thing is related to this. There’s a lot more than money in general. 

I find that there are categories of things that people can ask for like access to people, information, and rooms where you’re going to learn a lot. Sometimes people have to negotiate boundaries. Make no mistake, I worked extremely hard as a new attorney. My advice to my students is, “You are going to work hard. That doesn’t mean that you can’t set some boundaries.” I’m going to obscure this story a little bit, but I’m going to say that one woman I know, an attorney, around the same time as me, was asked to babysit for her partner’s children. This is where my mouth dropped open.

My mouth is agape. “Are we going to charge my hourly rate for that?” 

It’s that type of humor, “Who should I bill this to? I don’t know. When I send my bills to the head of litigation, I’m not sure what they’re going to say about that partner. Maybe you want to ask somebody who bills out a little lower than I do.” That type of thing, and by the way, humor is how I have dealt with a lot of that stuff over the course of my career, but negotiating boundaries. The last thing I would say is negotiating support. What kinds of training might be useful for you? That’s a win for your firm or your company as well.

In-house lawyers support in terms of resources for your department. It all goes back to what’s in it for them. What’s in it for your internal client, showing them, and being able to communicate how strategic the work is will either going to help them gain a lot. It’s going to help them prevent loss and make that feel real and immediate for them in a way that helps get you the resources. The second thing I would say is there’s a lot more you can ask for besides money. 

Broaden out. 

I would say on the money, I speak to all levels of groups, and I speak to a ton of AM Law 1 and 200 law firms, I speak to a ton of in-house departments, and I have to tell you that I’ve seen so many people avoid a conversation on money. These are people who negotiate junkyard dogs with their clients. They can’t seem to do it for themselves. Here’s what I want you to know. You can be collaborative and still ask for more.

You can come into a situation and say, “Here’s what I’ve contributed. Here’s the band that corresponds to my contributions. How can I help you make the case this year?” That’s what the conversation can look like and you can get great results. The last thing I want to say is when you negotiate, it benefits other people. Why? I was taught that early on. The first time I ever negotiated money for myself, I almost didn’t. A senior woman, I called her and she said, “Do not be the woman who does not negotiate. You’re going to get back in there and you’re going to ask for more and here’s why. When you teach someone how to value you, you are teaching him or them how to value all of us. If you’re not going to do it for yourself, do it for the woman who’s coming after you. Do it for the sisterhood.” 

I remember thinking, “Now I have to negotiate.” I’ve also learned that when I negotiate and I get my full worth, I show up in the way that I want to show up and I show up in the way that benefits everyone around me, my colleagues, and my clients. Everyone deserves the 110% Alex that shows up when she is fully valued. Anybody listening to this knows what it feels like when you have undersold yourself. You can feel bitter. You can feel resentment. People don’t deserve that version of you. They deserve the version that shows up when you are fully and completely valued. 

It sounds like these are good ways to get yourself pumped up to do a hard thing. As you said, we’re negotiators. I like the junkyard dog metaphor. It is like the case of the cobbler’s children have no shoes. It does feel uncomfortable. Especially as a woman, you can be a hard ass for other people, but it does feel hard to do it for yourself. That framing around doing it to help others is helpful. It was sort of the same idea you gave that we talked about, and I threw this as I appreciate the softball about asking for resources because that’s something I have difficulty doing. It seems like there’s a consistent thread about figuring out how to show that this is something that helps others as well.

The secret to successful negotiation is helping the other side write their victory speech. That’s how you do it. If you can show them how it’s going to redound to their benefit, you are much more likely to get what you want. I often teach people a formula that I call the I-we, “Here’s what I’m asking for. Here’s how we all benefit from it.” It also has the effect, especially for women, if you’re negotiating with somebody where you feel like there might be some sexism or some fragility there.

It’s been shown that even if the person might have some bias about a woman negotiating, if she’s like, “Here’s how it benefits the community,” you take down a lot of that resistance to the negotiating. It’s also good practice for everyone. What I would say for clients is if you’re talking about a client relationship, I would avoid using I at all. 

Research shows that the more we use the words I, “Stacy, I can do, I want, I demand,” the more we come across as not only insecure but junior, believe it or not. Self-focus comes across as junior. Whereas if I say to you, “Stacy, your company does an excellent job of this, and here’s what we could do together.” You and we. I’ve shown the intelligence and the gravitas to understand who you are and what you do, and then weave us together into a common story. It’s much better for business development. 

As you say that, it’s like if you use I, you have something to prove. I’ve been in conversations with folks like that, and you feel like a little turned off. 

You’ve put your finger on it exactly. 

Building A Multifaceted Career

We’re wrapping up here. I know you have a lot going on. We talked before we got on Zoom that you have a career that I think none of us would have imagined when we were starting out that you could be both a professor and a mediator. It sounds like you do some speaking for law firms, etc., and the UN. How did this come together? It’s amazing. 

Thank you. It is the result of relationships. I ended up taking the mediation clinic at Columbia, the course I now teach, only because my best friend in law school was like, “I took this thing. It involves a lot of talking. You’d be great at it.” She meant the shot she took at me. She was right. I enrolled in the course. The first time I mediated a case in this dingy, unused jury room in a New York civil court downtown on Center Street, it was like I heard Morgan Freeman’s voice telling me, “This is what you should do for the rest of your life.” 

When I look back at the things I enjoyed most in law school, it was mediating and then also TA-ing. I got a chance to be a teaching assistant for a couple of professors, including one who needed substantial help. I ended up teaching a review section every week and I loved it. The professor who taught the mediation clinic saw something special in me. She invited me out to breakfast every few months while I was still a litigator at my firm. One time we were out to breakfast and she said, “Have you ever thought about teaching? You were one of the most talented students I ever had.” I said, “Yeah.” 

I’ve also thought about winning the Powerball, but not seriously. I almost didn’t apply because I didn’t think I was adequately qualified. I didn’t have teaching experience in a law school, but I focused on what I did have, which was a lot of energy. I had been where those students were more recently, and I had worked in the context where a lot of them going to graduate and work, and they hired me. Once I was at Columbia, I started every so often getting calls from companies or firms wanting me to come in and teach them about negotiation or mediation. 

I think they went through the phone book. Every time I did it, I would get three more jobs by referrals. Without any effort or marketing or anything, I started gradually building this up. One day I realized that I was getting off stage and people were asking me, “This was wonderful. Where can we go to read more about your work?” I was recommending the same few books, all written by men from Harvard. I had this moment where I thought, “That’s it. That is the last time I’m recommending somebody else’s book. Next time, it’s going to be my book.”

I decided to take a leap of faith, even though I felt too young, too green. I didn’t have FBI experience. Part of me thought, “Are people going to buy a negotiation book from a woman? A woman who colors her gray hair. She’s still looking like maybe she’s clinging to her middle age.” They did. The book was desired by a lot of publishers. It came out and became a bestseller. 

Now, because I took that chance on myself, I get the opportunity to serve hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe, lawyers and laypeople. It has been the most fulfilling and rewarding thing possible. This is what I want for my students. I want them to feel like I do, waking up every day, knowing that they are doing what they were meant to do. I love the career counseling piece of that too because that’s my wish for every lawyer. 

For all of us. Thank you for sharing that. Last question before we find out where we can find more about you. This is my standard closer for all episodes. I have used music my whole life to change my mood, get me pumped up, and get me primed for those tough junkyard negotiations. What is your pump-up song? 

My pump-up song is Woman by Kesha. I have been in male-dominated environments my whole life. I think early on in my career, I thought I had to be super hard, to be authoritative, to be effective, or to be respected. Now, I know that I can do things my way. That includes sometimes some softness. It includes collaboration. It includes being who I am, which is a lawyer, a mom, and a wife. I bring all of those things to everything I do. It reminds me that sometimes what you think is your disadvantage is actually your market differentiator. I still step onto a lot of stages where I’m the first woman and that isn’t a disadvantage. That’s what makes me great. I love to embrace that. 

Where can people find out more about you? I know you have a TED talk coming out at some point this fall. You’ve got the book. You’re all over LinkedIn. Where can people find you? 

People can find me on my website, AlexCarterAsks.com. That’s where you can find out more about the book, more about the services that my team and I provide, and a little background information on me generally. I also want to speak to folks who may not have the resources for that type of speaking and training. It’s important to me to be able to provide free or low-cost resources. 

I also have a substantive newsletter and blogs that you can find on that website. I give free advice every day on LinkedIn and also on Instagram as Alexandra B. Carter. Just a warning, if you sign up for Instagram, you’re also signing up for Crazy Swim Mom. My daughter is a competitive swimmer. She’s thirteen. You’re signing up for lots of negotiation advice, and you’re also signing up to hear me scream like a banshee at her meets every weekend. Enjoy it all.

I love it. Bring your whole self to Instagram. That’s amazing. Alex, thanks so much for being here. I’m going to listen to this over and over again and probably share it with my outside counsel so we do better in those mediations. 

Thank you because this was a different conversation than I often get to have on a podcast. I’d love to stay in touch and hear what resonated for your audience from this. 

Thanks so much.

Important Links:

• Ask for More: 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything
• Alex Carter 
• Alexandra B. Carter – Instagram

About Alex Carter

Alexandra Carter is a Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of the Mediation Clinic at Columbia Law School. In 2019, Professor Carter was awarded the Columbia University Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, Columbia’s highest teaching honor. Her first book, Ask for More: Ten Questions to Negotiate Anything, was published by Simon & Schuster on May 5, 2020 and became an instant Wall Street Journal Business bestseller.