Need a Raise? Hire Someone Who’s Proven Best at Negotiating Her Own Compensation

Not that long ago, the social scientists who research these things concluded that lawyers negotiate raises better than other professionals do. As work-life balance expert Jen Hubley Luckwaldt explained in Negotiate Like a Lawyer if You Want a Raise,

It might surprise you to learn that level of educational attainment doesn't make a huge difference, in terms of who asks for a raise. Holders of bachelor's, master's, MBAs, and JDs all have the same rate of negotiating salary: 43 percent. The difference comes in when we look at who actually gets what they ask for -- and in that category, the lawyers have it over everyone else, with a whopping 59 percent saying they got the raise they wanted. 

Luckwaldt says lawyers do it better because they do their research, support their arguments and confidently make their case, all principles with which I agree. But I'd say the defining characteristic of a lawyer negotiator is her ability to justify anything.

We Rationalize Desired Results in the Face of Opposition Every Business Day

Lawyers are good at rationalizing numbers like raises because it's something we do pretty much all day every day. That's what makes us confident. It's not our JD degree, our affiliation with a powerful law firm, or our law school experiences. It's practice, practice, practice.

Our best arguments get shot down on a daily basis. When that happens, we craft a better one, shift the ground under our opponents' feet, re-characterize the problem or change the conversation. If we argue personal experience and are met with statistics, we find different statistics to support our position. If we're relying on experts and you're relying on folk wisdom, we find the old country lawyer somewhere inside us to trump that card as well.

We don't always win. But we never, ever give up, even after the highest court in the land turns us away. We find new plaintiffs to file new lawsuits arguing a different reason why Amazon is violating antitrust laws or wedding planners can’t use the excuse of religious beliefs to refuse to provide their services to gay couples.

So when raise time rolls around, we take our practiced justification experience and apply it directly to the wound of our below-market pay. And we don't stop negotiating when someone says "no." Someone says "no" to us on a daily basis, sometimes on multiple occasions. Our opponents say "no" to our settlement proposals. Trial judges say "no" to our requests for relief before trial. Juries say "no" to our pleas for a favorable verdict. Appellate judges say "no" when we ask them to reverse the rulings of the lower court.

"No" is catnip to lawyers. It’s the fuel that starts our every working day. 

With all due modesty, if you feel uncertain, unpracticed and unprepared to ask for and get a 10-20% raise this year, particularly if you're a woman suffering from the wage gap, you couldn't do better than to hire a lawyer turned negotiation consultant with 25-years of experience justifying her clients' desired results to skilled opponents, bored judges and confused juries.

Book a $200 hour to see how I can help. I guarantee you won’t regret it.