by Lindsay Wilcox
Thanks to a $5 million gift from the I.J. & Jeanné Wagner Foundation, the S.J. Quinney College of Law is establishing the Wagner/Holbrook Presidential Chair in Negotiation, which will support recruitment and retention of tenured or tenure-track faculty in the field of negotiation.
“We are excited to announce the establishment of this chair, which honors both the late businessman I.J. (Izzi) Wagner and Emeritus Clinical Professor James (Jim) Holbrook. Though I did not know Izzi personally, I have learned about his extraordinary negotiation skills from Jim—and I am thrilled to recognize Jim for the nearly 30 years he taught negotiation at the College of Law,” says Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner. “This gift will allow us to hire new faculty members who can instruct current and future students in this invaluable skill.”
An unexpected mentorship
Holbrook recalls that he and Wagner had offices in the same building downtown and occasionally saw each other on the elevator. However, it wasn’t until 1996, when Wagner was subpoenaed to testify as a witness in a Salt Lake County grand jury investigation, that he and Holbrook became close friends.
“I had done a lot of grand jury work when I was an assistant U.S. attorney. I told him I would represent him for free (because I hoped to get to know him). Thereafter, he took me to lunch once a week until he died in 2005,” Holbrook says. “He told stories about growing and selling his family’s burlap bag business and using the proceeds to begin investing in real estate in Salt Lake City. Also, he was in the second wave ashore in the invasion of Guadalcanal in World War II, and I had served in combat in Vietnam, so we both understood the life-changing nature of wartime military service. He had no children, and I became like a son.”
Creating a new endowed professorship
Wagner provided millions of dollars for the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center and the I.J. and Jeanné Wagner Jewish Community Center. Before he died, Wagner asked Holbrook to be one of three trustees of his charitable foundation.
Because the current trustees knew Wagner personally and understood his charitable objectives, they were concerned that a new generation of trustees who didn’t know Wagner may not support his commitment to education and the arts. They decided to wind up the foundation and distribute its principal now.
“The other trustees felt strongly that an endowed professorship in negotiation at the law school should be named jointly after Izzi and me,” Holbrook explains. “Izzi wanted to graduate from the law school here, but that dream was interrupted by the Great Depression, so he instead became an amazing businessman without ever going to college. And I graduated from law school here 50 years ago and taught negotiation here for nearly 30 years, first as an adjunct professor for 12 years and then as a member of the full-time faculty for 17 years.”
Wagner Foundation trustees Meghan Holbrook, who serves as secretary of the Natural History Museum of Utah Board of Advisors, and Jesselie Anderson, a member of the University of Utah National Advisory Committee, said the following:
“Izzi Wagner was a legend in Utah’s business community. He was the rare soul who was smart, witty, and a strategic thinker in negotiating his objectives. Most importantly, he was always respectful of his negotiation counterparts so they felt fairly treated. These are invaluable and needed qualities in business and the law, too often ignored and not emphasized enough. Izzi and Jim were born negotiators and great friends. Jim has carried on Izzi’s negotiation legacy in Jim’s law school teaching and legal career. This Presidential Chair in Negotiation is a value-added piece of the S.J. Quinney College of Law, which will benefit law students for generations to come. We are honored to have this Presidential Chair named after them both.”
Leaving a legacy of negotiation
Teaching negotiation in ways that were fun and useful for both personal and business relationships was Holbrook’s priority as a professor at Utah Law.
“I used small-group discussion exercises so that every student in every class was engaged in understanding and practicing negotiation theories, concepts, and skills. Instead of final exams, I had students write papers analyzing their use of negotiation principles they learned in the course,” he says.
And Wagner’s skills as a negotiator made him a successful businessman who shaped downtown Salt Lake City.
“Izzi instinctively understood that what is now called ‘interest-based’ or ‘win-win’ negotiation motivated others to want to do business with him. He and Roy Simmons (the now-deceased CEO of Zions Bank) did dozens of real estate deals together as partners who never had a written agreement between them. Their longstanding trust was based on genuine friendship and consistent mutual self-interest,” Holbrook says. “They looked for properties to buy that they believed would increase in value in a few years, and they were invariably successful. When they sold, they ‘left something on the table’ for the buyers to enhance their reputation as honest businessmen. And Izzi understood that using his humor in negotiations could disarm strangers and make new friends.”
Now that Holbrook is no longer teaching negotiation at Utah Law, he is excited to see new leaders teaching negotiation and following in both his and Wagner’s footsteps.
“Negotiation is a crucial skill used by most lawyers every day both in the practice of law and in their personal lives. It will soon become tested as part of the new Utah Bar Exam, so all law students will need to be proficient in the use of negotiation,” he says. “I hope the Wagner/Holbrook Presidential Chair in Negotiation will help grow negotiation teaching and research at the S.J. Quinney College of Law.”