Digital Dealmakers: Suffolk Law's New AI Platform Challenges Student Negotiators

Suffolk University Law School has launched an innovative online platform that allows users to practice their negotiation skills with AI bots that talk back. The AI negotiators aren’t so much confrontational as well prepared and strategic. Such tools will potentially transform how attorneys and students prepare for and approach dispute resolution.

Unlike typical AI assistants that tend to be extremely accommodating, Suffolk's new tool presents users with AI negotiators that are programmed to employ a variety of tactics and strategies used by experienced lawyers. The free service, which can be used in text only or voice mode, is available at sites.suffolk.edu/ai-negotiation.

The tool offers students a great opportunity to practice negotiation skills outside the classroom and gain exposure to different bargaining styles and strategies, while preparing them for a legal marketplace that will increasingly use AI tools, said Suffolk Law Professor Dwight Golann, who led the project. It also raises important policy questions about the future role of AI in legal practice.

"We need AI bargainers that behave like seasoned lawyers," said Golann. "Basic bots are relentlessly cooperative, allowing competitive students easily to exploit them. Good lawyers, by contrast, change their approach depending on the situation, and AI negotiators must be able to do so too."

Among the negotiation scenarios available on the platform is a dispute between a quarry which purchased land for mining operations and a neighboring property owner who has filed suit to block the project. The scenario, in which the quarry seeks to buy out the owner, presents complex issues including legal alternatives, property rights and business interests, providing students with a realistic negotiation challenge that mirrors actual disputes between commercial and residential interests.

Another scenario features a negotiation to engage a marketing expert as a speaker in a university’s executive seminar series. The university’s priority is to ensure that the seminar is successful, while the prospective speaker’s interest is to enhance his public profile and future marketability as a speaker and author. In this setting money is less important than other factors, such as the speaker’s wish to take advantage of the university’s ability to generate favorable publicity and introductions to alumni.

A third bot offers users bargaining lessons in hypothetical situations (no legal advice is offered). The advice varies widely, ranging from competitive to collaborative depending on the scenarios presented by users.

Experts in the school’s nationally known Legal Innovation & Technology Lab played a crucial role in developing the platform. It is currently in an experimental phase; the team looks forward to making improvements as users engage with the system and report their results.

Passwords to access the different negotiation scenarios are available directly on the site.