The Art of War for Commercial Disputes

Sun Tzu said:

“A great general wins every battle he fights. The greatest general of all wins the war without fighting a single battle”.

Sun Tzu’s Art of War, a 2,500 year old military manual recording the strategies of a Chinese Warrior who lived around the time of Confucius, is a classic which is up there with the likes of Homer’s Iliad and the Old Testament.

I have been interested in this work as a fountain of ideas for fighting and winning modern day conflicts in the world of commerce.  I first picked up the work around 20 years ago.  It informed my approach to working as a commercial litigation lawyer.  It made me unusual in a very high percentage of the disputes I was instructed on settling on terms favourable to my clients.  That might have made me poorer in the short term (early settlements means less fees for lawyers!), but created long term loyal clients who value lower fees and favourable settlements.

I am going to be writing a regular blog on my website scavenging through Sun Tzu’s manual and explaining the lessons I learned and applied in my career as a commercial lawyer.

I am running MCS to offer businesses an a different approach from instructing a law firm to resolve disputes that have not yet gone legal.  It may seem odd to promote this service with a nod to a warrior whose thoughts were not even recorded in writing (the manual purportedly records the thoughts of Sun Tzu and were only committed to writing by a Chinese Warlord, one Cao Cao over a hundred years after Sun Tzu’s death).  However, I hope this blog helps those who read it sharpen their own negotiation skills and, if they help demonstrate why my own services might be useful in a tricky commercial dispute to deliver a solution which could save substantial legal fees, then so much the better.