Negotiating Win-Win Agreements
Situations where everybody can be better off is one of the easiest games there is. Yes, dear lawyer friend, despite what law schools teach you, sometimes people cooperate, get along, and everyone is happy and better off! Also, you don't negotiate in a vacuum like your hypothetical fellow criminal co-conspirator.
Finally, and most important, this is not a single-instance game. Therefore, reputation and the fear of tit-for-tat retaliation are real considerations.Let's take the context where two parties are setting up a business relationship. Since they will need to spend a lot of time together post investment, the continued relationship makes it important to look at the financing as just one negotiation in a very long, multiplay game. Doing anything that would give the other party an incentive to retaliate in the future is not a wise, or rational, move.
Further, this deal is but one of many you hope to complete as a lawyer. Therefore, you should be thinking about reputational factors that extend well beyond this particular interaction. Having a negative reputation is trouble in the long run.
Not all lawyers recognize that each negotiation isn't a single-round, winner-take-all game. The more experience lawyers have, the better their perspective is, but this lack of a longer-term view is not limited to junior lawyers. When we run across people like this, at a minimum we lose a lot of respect for them and occasionally decide not to do business with them.