Rebuilding Negotiation Talent: Why This Skill Is Missing and How to Fix It

Negotiation determines the outcome of nearly every litigated claim in our industry, yet it remains one of the least systematically developed skills inside many claims and defense organizations.

After decades in claims handling and leadership roles, I’ve seen firsthand how profoundly negotiation quality shapes indemnity spend, resolution timing, and partner alignment. And I’ve also seen how far we still have to go.

As the plaintiff bar continues to modernize its negotiation capabilities by investing in analytics, offer scripting, message testing, and AI-driven demand tools, the defense industry is confronting a widening skills gap.

“For decades, the industry has not treated negotiation as a discipline to be taught, strengthened and measured,” writes Westfield Specialty’s Krista Glenn. “Fixing the negotiation talent void is not a matter of personal improvement. It is a leadership responsibility,” she asserts, going on to offer a leadership blueprint to rebuild negotiating skills as a core competency across insurance organizations.

This article is the third installment of a multipart educational series, “Negotiation Reclaimed,” conceived by Guest Editor Taylor Smith, founder and president of Suite 200 Solutions. Smith introduced the idea in his recent CM article, Taking Back Negotiation: Why Claim Professionals Must Lead the Next Chapter

Read Part 1: Negotiation Is the Job: Reframing Defense Work in an AI-Enhanced Era

Read Part 2: The Power of the First Offer: Anchoring, Evidence and the Battle for Perception

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This gap is not a reflection of the talent or commitment of our professionals. On the contrary, it is a reflection of the fact that, for decades, the industry has not treated negotiation as a discipline to be taught, strengthened and measured. And without the willingness or ability to measure our results, we have lost the ability to accomplish our mutual goals of managing the risk for our insureds by paying only what we owe while providing our employees with the opportunity to improve their negotiation skill set in a controlled setting.

If we are serious about improving file outcomes, controlling indemnity volatility, and operating with strategic foresight, we must rebuild negotiation talent with intention—not as an individual competency, but as one of our organization’s core competencies and capabilities.

The Capability Gap Hiding in Plain Sight

As Ron Morrison emphasized in the first article of this series, 98–99 percent of litigated matters resolve through negotiation, not trial. That statistic should reshape how every carrier views the work of litigation. Negotiation is not a phase of a claim file; it is the central event that determines outcomes.

Related article: Negotiation Is the Job: Reframing Defense Work in an AI-Enhanced Era

Yet, negotiation still receives less training, less structure, and less leadership attention than nearly any other component of the claim lifecycle. Unlike trial strategy, reserving, or coverage evaluation, negotiation remains largely self-taught. Professionals rely on instincts, individual style, or whatever experience they accumulate over years of handling files.

The result is predictable: wide variability, inconsistent quality, and missed opportunities.

Why Experience Alone Isn’t Enough

The defense ecosystem was not built to develop negotiation competency at scale. Law schools provide no meaningful training in negotiation. Even when law schools offer negotiation training it is typically an elective course that is part of a dispute resolution or certificate program, not a mandatory offering.

And Claims onboarding at companies rarely goes beyond communication of the basics. As caseloads have increased, the apprenticeship model that once allowed adjusters and counsel to learn by observation has largely disappeared. Carriers are faced with either throwing an inexperienced adjuster in the deep end or doubling down on the problem by handing the authority to counsel to negotiate when counsel hasn’t been trained either.

Meanwhile, negotiation itself has become more complex. Mediators expect structured written framing. Plaintiff counsel bring narrative cohesion, psychological anchoring, and increasingly sophisticated analytics. Opening demands now often resemble fully articulated trial themes.

Succeeding in this environment requires more than experience. It requires a disciplined skill set.

The Plaintiff Bar’s Advantage—and What It Means for Carriers

Plaintiff firms have long recognized a simple truth: Improved negotiation capability directly increases revenue.

They have invested in structured training, messaging, valuation exercises, and AI-generated demand narratives because the financial impact is immediate. Every dollar added to a settlement is a dollar earned.

For carriers, the equation is equally simple—just inverted: What is revenue-generating for plaintiffs is expense-magnifying for insurers.

If plaintiff negotiation capabilities add 5–10 percent to a settlement value, carriers absorb that cost. And as these capabilities scale through training and technology, the asymmetry grows.

We cannot afford to treat negotiation as an informal competency when our adversaries view it as a revenue engine.

The Economics of Negotiation Capability: A High-ROI Opportunity

Across the industry, a typical claim professional often manages $5 million or more in negotiated indemnity annually. Even modest improvements in negotiation skill can yield meaningful results.

• 5 percent excess payout = $250,000 per adjuster, per year
• 10 percent excess payout = $500,000 per adjuster, per year

These are not abstract figures. They reflect real dollars leaving the system unnecessarily because our negotiation capabilities have not kept pace with the plaintiff bar’s evolution.

Compared against training costs, coaching programs, or technology investments, the return on investment is unmistakably high. Negotiation capability is one of the most financially leveraged skills inside a claims organization.

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Anchoring, Framing, and the Power of the Written Word

Ken Carter’s contribution to this series underscored the foundational role of the first offer when he detailed how anchoring shapes the range of negotiation and influences both sides, even when fully recognized as a tactic.

Related article: The Power of the First Offer: Anchoring, Evidence and the Battle for Perception

Defense teams frequently under-anchor because they lack the frameworks, training, or written tools to position offers persuasively. In verbal-only negotiations, messages are diluted, misremembered, or stripped of context. Written offers—structured, evidence-backed, and narrative-driven—shape expectations, guide mediators, and reframe the plaintiff’s story.

Without training or tools, even highly talented professionals can struggle to match the coherence and sophistication of modern plaintiff narratives.

Rebuilding Negotiation Capability: A Leadership Blueprint

Fixing the negotiation talent void is not a matter of personal improvement. It is a leadership responsibility. Organizations must create the conditions in which negotiation excellence is possible, repeatable, and measurable.

Claims and defense counsel must co-lead negotiation—not delegate to one another. Claims bring business judgment, value, authority, and institutional risk perspective. Counsel brings legal strategy, credibility, and tactical execution. Both perspectives are essential.

BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement—a critical concept for understanding your fallback position if negotiations fail) and ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement—the range within which an agreement is possible) are terms from a book all negotiators should read, “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In” by Roger Fisher and William Ury, first published in 1981.

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2. Build a Layered Skill-Development Model

This deficit cannot be solved with a single workshop. Effective programs must include all of these elements over time:

• Core skills modules (understanding key concepts like anchoring, narrative framing, exposure positioning, BATNA, ZOPA)
• Simulations and negotiation labs
• Pre-mediation strategy sessions
• Post-negotiation debriefs
• Continuous coaching and feedback

Offer packages, comparative data summaries, mediator-ready narratives, and AI-assisted evidence framings reduce variability and elevate quality across all files—not just the ones handled by seasoned professionals.

Metrics must evolve beyond closure ratios and cycle time. Organizations should track:

• Timing of first offers
• Written vs. verbal offer mix
• Movement relative to anchors
• Authority variance
• Resolution efficiency

AI tools can accelerate evidence review, surface attorney patterns, and produce consistent risk framing—all of which free negotiators to focus on judgment, strategy, and persuasion.

Technology is not a replacement for negotiation skill. It is an amplifier.

Leading the Cultural Shift

Rebuilding negotiation capability is both a strategic imperative and a cultural transformation. Leaders must signal that negotiation is no longer an improvisational act but a cornerstone competency—worthy of investment, training, measurement, and executive attention.

About the Series

This is the third article in a series titled “Negotiation Reclaimed,” conceived by Taylor Smith, founder and president of Suite 200 Solutions.

Smith introduced the idea that negotiation has become an overlooked skill for claims professionals—and one that is often delegated to outside defense counsel instead—in his recent CM article, Taking Back Negotiation: Why Claim Professionals Must Lead the Next Chapter

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At Westfield Specialty, and across the industry, we have an opportunity to elevate negotiation to the same level of rigor we apply to underwriting discipline, reserving practices, and actuarial modeling. When negotiation becomes a structured capability rather than an individual style, we gain predictability, fairness, and alignment across the entire claims ecosystem.

The plaintiff bar is advancing rapidly. The defense can and must close that gap. But doing so requires leadership clarity, organizational commitment, and a willingness to rethink how we develop our most essential talent’s core competencies.

I am concerned that the lack of training and therefore the lack of understanding of fundamental negotiation tactics has caused carriers and counsel to undervalue the time they should be devoting to plan how they will be negotiating the resolution of their cases. I’m also concerned that in a world where pendings are high and people are increasingly busy, that carriers are not taking the time they should to learn important lessons that post-negotiation debriefs can teach both the involved claim professional and counsel and other members of their teams. I can assure you that the plaintiff bar is not making this mistake.

The path forward is clear: treat negotiation not as an afterthought, but as one of the most strategically consequential skills we can and should invest in.