Joel Hesch coached a law school negotiation team that was selected to represent the United States of America in an International Negotiation Competition (INC) held at the University of Lucerne in Switzerland. The Liberty Law team captured a fifth-place finish out of 24 countries invited to compete in this annual world competition held in 2016.
The competition is similar to the Olympics in which only the top team from a country is invited to compete. To be eligible to represent the U.S.A., law students must win their country’s national negotiation competition. Hesch coached the Liberty Law team in the American Bar Association’s (ABA) national negotiation event in which 199 teams from law schools in the United States competed. His team placed second. Because the first place team was unable to attend the world competition, Liberty Law was selected to represent the U.S.A., with Hesch as the coach.
Hesch developed his own negotiation strategy, style and skills while working for more than 15 years with the U.S. Department of Justice in the Fraud Section. While at DOJ, Hesch worked on a myriad of cases of fraud against the government that settled for over a billion dollars. Hesch now represents whistleblowers file for rewards for reporting fraud against the government, and has successfully helped whistleblowers recover millions of dollars in rewards.
Joel Hesch enjoys teaching law students how to negotiate and coaching students in national and international negotiation competitions. Eight Liberty Law teams coached by Hesch have been invited to the ABA National Tournament and have been ranked in the top 20 teams in the country. His teams have also won other national negotiation competitions, including the National Basketball Negotiation Competition hosted by Fordham Law School in New York (2014 and 2016), the National Entertainment Negotiation Competition hosted by Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles (2010 and 2011), and the National Environmental Law Competition hosted by Richmond School of Law (2007).
Hesch plans to keep giving back to the community and developing top-notched lawyers through coaching law students. He also plans to keep using his negotiation skills to represent whistleblowers claim rewards for reporting fraud against the government.