Ralph Pais

Q: When did you first get interested in alternative dispute resolution?
Pais: I don’t think of this work in the context of ADR, because I’m not a litigator. Negotiating transactions, and dealing with conflicting interests and goals in that context has been the core of my practice for my whole career. I’ve been negotiating and thinking about negotiation since I first taught with Maude in the early 1980s, but until now always in law firm settings.

Q: How did you first pursue teaching negotiation in the law firm context?
Pais: When I was Managing Partner of a law firm, one of my partners came to me with a proposal that we teach negotiation skills to lawyers. He proposed hiring Maude to conduct this training as an outside consultant. Maude was already a well-known teacher, and she and I had both worked at Legal Aid in the early 1970s, so the opportunity to work together again was intriguing to me. Part of what appealed to me was the substantive training that was involved. In addition, I was interested in the institutional benefits that I could derive from training people to communicate better with each other, which is ultimately what negotiation training is about, so that people could learn to address and resolve conflicts in a constructive way. I thought, that goes further than just what you do for your clients in deals or litigation, it also cuts through how you work together in the organization.

Q: You’ve negotiated both with and for companies from dozens of different countries, including Japan, Israel, and India. Have you found that you need to conduct your negotiations in very different ways with clients from such different countries?
Pais: I have represented clients from many different parts of the world, and have also represented US companies doing transactions with people and companies in other parts of the world. What makes international transactions so interesting and enjoyable is the opportunity to get to know people from different places, backgrounds, experiences and points of view. As long as you are interested in learning about the people you’re dealing with and their “culture”, negotiations will go very well. This means that you need to do additional preparation so that you will have some general familiarity of what is likely to matter to your counterparts and how they might approach things differently than we might be accustomed to doing. You must allow more time for the parties to get to know each other and develop trust and confidence in each other and the process.

Q: What other aspects of your professional life helped you develop your negotiation skills?
Pais: I would say it was both the trainings and my daily practice. I was a litigator early in my career, but even there I saw that you needed to negotiate about all sorts of things. Some people get passionately committed to a certain substantive area of law where they just love the subject, and they want to read every case or every article on it. I realized that the part that I was drawn to was the process of attempting to negotiate resolutions to conflicts. What does it take for people to resolve problems and to make good deals? What skills are involved in that? This was what I found most enjoyable and interesting about practicing law. I am more interested in those process skills than in some of the substantive legal skills.

Q: What led you to take a job at the Gould Center?
Pais: Maude had asked me some time ago if I would be interested in being involved in this program, but the timing wasn’t right. When Maude told me that she needed someone new to the team during the summer of 2001, the timing was perfect and I jumped at the opportunity to be considered for membership on the teaching team. Having worked with Maude in the firm context and having a good sense for the program and its approach to teaching negotiation were real draws, and I was eager to study more of the theory and research on negotiation and problem solving that underlie all of the teaching at Gould.

Q: I understand that you're fluent in Dutch as well as English and have represented the Dutch government in the Bay Area. Can you say more about that?
Pais: I'm the Consul of the Netherlands in Northern California. Unlike the United States, the Government of the Netherlands has representatives that are not career diplomats. I lived in the Netherlands as a kid, my parents were both Dutch, I still have quite a few relatives in the Netherlands, and I grew up speaking Dutch, so I have strong ties to the Netherlands.

In my role as Consul, I support Dutch people that live in Northern California, representing the government at various social organizations, helping them vote in the Netherlands, helping people obtain visas, and supporting Dutch dignitaries that come to the Bay Area. On one occasion, the future king was here with security people and an entourage, and I spent the week with him, organizing events and traveling with him.

Q: What inspires you about teaching?
Pais: Actually, it’s the most fun thing I do. It’s inspiring because I get a chance to learn something every day that I come over here. I feel like teaching makes me think about negotiation in a different way than when I just do it as an integral part of my practice. Teaching makes me really reflect on my experience and organize my thinking. I am still anxious that one or more of the 20 people in the room are going to ask me something that I have no clue what the answer is, and I find the challenge of that invigorating. I always feel incredibly privileged to come over here and do this, because I learn as much as I teach.