legal sanity

I recently cited an article questioning the power of conventional apology in legal negotiations. Here’s a response piece asserting that sincere apology can be a vital and powerful recourse of “catalytic” proportion “in litigated or non-litigated cases where there is emotional or physical injury, or where there is a desire to continue a relationship.” One of the central issues, the writer claims, is that there’s no consensus on what constitutes a “full apology.” And “we each have different needs that must be met before we can accept the apology and move on with our lives.” The writer then depicts the continuum of apologies that people might find acceptable. These range from simple confessions (the “lowest level of apology”) to open-ended offers to make things right (the “strongest level of apology”).