Negotiation jujitsu, a term associated with the interest-based bargaining literature, describes a technique for handling an opponent who attacks a position, asserts their own position stubbornly, or attacks the negotiator personally. Rather than defending the attacked position, counterattacking, or capitulating, the technique redirects, inviting criticism, asking open questions about the reasoning behind the other side's position, and reframing an attack on a person as an attack on a shared problem.

The core move is to avoid the two default responses that escalate positional bargaining: pushing back, which invites further escalation, or giving in, which rewards the tactic. Instead, the negotiator absorbs the force of the attack and channels it toward exploring interests, asking why the other side takes that view or what they would do in the negotiator's position, which tends to de-escalate without conceding ground.

Juricratic models negotiation jujitsu as a negotiation-style dial affecting the branch's escalation dynamics rather than its settlement-value dial directly: applying it in the simulation reduces the modeled probability that a hostile opening move drags the negotiation into an impasse branch, without itself changing the underlying case-merits assessment.

Negotiators use jujitsu tactics against a counterpart who opens with an extreme position, a threat, or a personal attack, specifically to keep the conversation on the merits and interests at stake rather than letting it collapse into a purely positional standoff that neither side benefits from.