Neither law schools nor any state laws mandate any sort of practical experience as part of the law school curriculum.

What's up with that? Further, it pains us that law schools don't mandate a class on negotiations. Seriously? Is there a lawyer (or a person, really) on Earth who doesn't negotiate on some level? If nothing else, taking a course on negotiations will make life easier if you have a child or a poodle someday.

It will only be to your benefit should you decide to load up on simulation experiences like mock trial or negotiations. Take practical clinics and get a start on representing actual civil clients. Do anything you can to practice before you practice. Better to learn to shave on your own face before you take the razor to your employer's, or worse, your client's. Our view is that people don't regret it in the future. Employers, knowing the gap we are trying to partially solve in this book, don't really care what classes you take because they know you probably didn't learn anything immediately useful. So—take something useful.

Back to negotiations. It is indefensible that law schools do not make this a core class taught by their best professors. You will negotiate something every day of life, whether at work or on the used car lot in attempts to secure that low-mileage and clean Subaru Outback. Below are our thoughts on negotiations. A bit of this is plagiarized from Jason's book Venture Deals: How to Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, but Wiley is the publisher of both books so let’s do that.

If you had a great negotiations class, then this chapter serves as a good summary and place for you to learn some new tricks. If you weren't so lucky, then consider this your Cliff Notes version of what we wish we had known a long time ago. What follows is about finding a job, and we can guarantee that a job interview is as much of a negotiation as anything else.