Game Theory and Behavioral Sciences

3 units

Lawyers negotiate, litigate, and advise in environments shaped by strategic interaction and imperfect information. This course equips future lawyers with tools from game theory, behavioral sciences, and decision theory to reason more clearly about such situations and to make better decisions in negotiation, litigation, and advisory practice. Why do sophisticated parties settle cases they should try? Why do parties escalate conflicts against their interests? Why do well-designed regulations produce perverse results? The answers often lie not in doctrine but in the strategic and psychological structure of the decision itself. This course uses game theory, behavioral sciences, and decision theory as tools to understand such situations. Topics include behavioral biases affecting lawyers, clients, and decision-makers; risk, uncertainty, and judgment in legal advice and professional practice; cooperation, competition, signaling, and commitment in legal strategy; information asymmetries and incentives; and others. The goal is to equip students with a set of portable analytical habits. Through cases and structured exercises, students will practice applying these tools across a range of contexts in which lawyers work.