I'm not disagreeing with you, but your example of using a real estate lawyer to straighten out a real estate issue is quite a bit different than hiring a "professional negotiator (PN)", to negotiate on our behalf, a pilot contract. There are too many differences between the two to try and justify one by the other. I'm not saying that we shouldn't use this type of service, but I wonder if there really are any "professional negotiators" who would have the ability to help craft a airline contract. Our business is very complex, and as such, I would think that you need someone whose been there and done that. After all, there are perhaps 20 airlines in the U.S., and for the vast majority of these, they negotiate a contract every 3 or 4 years, so it's not like many contracts are being negotiated all the time, and because of that, I'd think that there are not many airline knowledgeable PN's, if for no other reason than there's really not that much business to do.
I do agree, that if we could find a PN, with the right credentials, whose negotiated other airline contracts (it would be even better, if the pilots at those airlines are happy with their contracts) that we should consider hiring them to be PART OF OUR NEGOTIATING TEAM, because no one single person can possibly be knowledgeable enough to negotiate a complex contract like an airline contract. These are very complex issues, with subtlety and innuendo being always in the background.