Anchoring is a cognitive effect with utmost importance to legal professionals’ work. Its applicability ranges from mediation to negotiation to court trials. Almost every legal professional will discover its impact on his own daily work. Research shows, that especially legal professionals are not immune but rather prone to the anchoring effect. Hence, this article will…
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Long before starting to study brain behavior and beginning to understand a little bit about how we make certain decisions, I – as a litigation lawyer – had to try to convince judges to rule according to my client’s claim. To reach my objectives, of course I did my part of the job: I understood the case, went through the documents, made all the legal research, and tried to write the facts in a clear and coherent way. As much as I believed in the case, however, I could never know for sure what to expect from another human’s mind. That is why my lucky amulet and my special prayer for a “judge’s good mood” were always there before a hearing or the submission of an important motion.