Driver’s ed for hard bargainers

By Brendan Buhler

Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008 | 2 a.m.

UNLV’s law school has made an astonishing run in its young life — 10 years old and it has cracked U.S. News and World Report’s top 100 — but in one specialized area it has done even better, cracking the top 10.

One of the reasons is Peter Reilly, a young professor with a passion for negotiating, bargaining and wheedling.

And if you want to know how Peter Reilly ended up in Las Vegas, it helps to know about Topeka.

Las Vegas does not seem like a natural destination for someone who went to Princeton (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and Harvard Law and worked as a government civil rights lawyer until he was awarded a fellowship at Georgetown. After that, Reilly took a job teaching law at Washburn University, in Topeka, Kan. Population 226,000.

Very quickly, Reilly decided he wanted to live in a city bigger than Topeka.

“Have you ever been to Topeka? If you had, you would know what I mean.”

As luck would have it, UNLV was hiring. Reilly got a job as a professor in its Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution, teaching alternative dispute resolution.

Reilly doesn’t like that name, that “alternative.” It drives students away, makes them think what he teaches isn’t real law. Think of alternative medicine, think of alternative rock. You see his problem.

But what he and the two other professors at the Saltman Center teach is an alternative; it’s an alternative to time-consuming and bank-breaking lawsuits. They teach mediation and arbitration, ways of settling disputes without courts.

And Reilly’s particular specialty is useful for anyone. He teaches negotiation.

He has a few tips.

Never make the first offer. Never accept the first offer. Only negotiate in person. Never negotiate with someone who doesn’t have the authority to negotiate (this is the rule that says don’t let the car salesman go ask his manager).

And, from his latest research paper, “Was Machiavelli Right?” — don’t let people lie to you. And the way to keep people from lying to is to ask questions, lots of them, so that it’s harder to lie to you because there’s too much to keep track of.

Well, gee, is that it?

“That’s like asking, ‘So, Tiger, golf is just hitting the ball, what else is there to it?’ Well, a lifetime of pain.”

In other words, theory is one thing, but you need to practice.

(Reilly practices by, when he buys shoes at Nordstrom, negotiating to get a free shoe tree. Of course, he doesn’t actually take the shoe tree. It’s only research.)

And these skills, Reilly hopes, will, in the hands of students, make the world a better place.

But will teaching lawyers a better way to cut a deal make them cut deals that are, morally speaking, better? Isn’t that a little like Alfred Nobel thinking his invention of dynamite would put a stop to war?

Reilly pauses.

“Well, very, very occasionally, one or two students a year, maybe, I say to myself, ‘I’ve armed the wrong person,’ ” Reilly says.

“But you never know.”