How To Deal With Your Opponent(s) [Tips For Law Students]
Whenever there is a situation where you have to compete against some legal body or authority, you should devise a competing strategy for winning the deal. Collect as much information about your opponent as you can. Knowing your opponent well will give you a strong edge and helps to compete better. In simple words, perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of your opponent. Identify and analyze its strength and weaknesses. Knowing the strengths will help you in creating effective strategy while knowledge about weaknesses will let you play better and grab the game. All in all, knowing your opponent will tell you about:
- Where the authority will be helpless?
- How to overcome strengths of the authority?
- What are your strong and weak points?
- How can you make use of your strong points to pave the path of your success?
- What you can do to overcome your weaknesses?
Identifying strengths:
Let’s talk about identifying the strengths of your opponent. Assume as if you are competing with a council against your school closure. As here the opponent is a legal body, it will certainly have some strong points which you need to take care of.
First of all, council has law on its side. It has authority of opening/closing schools and dealing with other educational issues in its area of command. Most of the time, the council has a school organization committee having influential personnel for making such decisions. They can compete without caring about money as these big organizations have adequate budget for dealing with legal matters. Moreover, the council has special teams of experienced lawyers and advocates which are very well aware of educational law and are adept in dealing educational matters.
After knowing these strengths, you may think that you will not be able to compete well. Don’t worry! The council also has a set of weaknesses which if exploited strategically can reverse the game.
Identifying weaknesses:
Let’s discuss the weaknesses that the councils may have. Most of the councils do not listen to the views of parents and guardians. They think whatever they are doing is best for the students and school. But the fact is contrary to it. Not giving importance to the views of parents can actually go against the council. Another major weakness can be over-confidence of the council. They think they always do great. This can actually cause them to come with an unprepared action plan. So if you have a well-planned action, you can shift the whole game towards you.
Usually, councils have set of policies that they have to follow strictly. Many of their policies conflict each other. Identify conflicting policies as this can make your case stronger. As council is a legal body, it has cumbersome procedures for making decisions. This gives you ample time to redefine your strategy. You can also identify a whistle blower among the council members that can provide you with the information that will help you in preparing a well-planned case. Remember that the decision of the council is not final. You can always appeal against the decision to the higher authorities.
Categorised as: Law Students