Crisis Communications and Legal Strategy are Not the Same Thing. Because in a Crisis, Winning the Legal Argument While Losing Your Reputation is Not Much of a Victory.
Effective crisis communications requires more than legal expertise. During a corporate crisis, legal risk and reputational risk must be managed simultaneously. The strongest crisis management strategies pair experienced legal counsel with seasoned crisis communications professionals—working as co-pilots to manage litigation exposure, media scrutiny, stakeholder trust and reputation management through one coordinated strategy.
By Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications, a division of AKCG – Public Relations Counselors
Crisis communications is a specialized discipline. It isn’t simply another service for a law firm or PR firm to add to a website.
Yet in recent years, seemingly every PR firm has begun offering “crisis communications.” An agency may already provide marketing, branding, social media, product launches, employee engagement, investor relations and digital marketing—and then simply add crisis communications to the list, sometimes without experienced crisis professionals to back it up.
Now we are seeing the same thing happen at law firms.
That deserves attention because legal risk and reputational risk are not the same thing. And in a crisis, both must be managed – simultaneously.
Lawyers are indispensable during many crises. They understand legal exposure, regulatory requirements, litigation strategy and the consequences of what an organization says and does. They also frequently have the trust of the CEO, board and senior leadership.
But protecting an organization legally is not always the same as protecting its reputation.
Australian crisis expert Tony Jaques has documented numerous cases in which a legally defensible strategy created or intensified a reputational problem. One of the most memorable involved Mountain Dew. When a man claimed to have found a dead mouse in a can, company lawyers presented an expert who argued that the soda was so acidic the mouse would have deteriorated into a “jelly-like substance.”
Legally useful argument? Perhaps. Good crisis communications?
Imagine that headline.
The late crisis communications pioneer Richard Levick frequently offered a memorable warning:
“Don’t let the lawyers drive the bus.”
We think that metaphor needs updating.
Managing a serious crisis is more like flying a jet. You need two experienced co-pilots: legal counsel and crisis communications counsel.
Neither should be sitting in the back.
The lawyer evaluates legal exposure, liability and regulatory consequences. The crisis communications professional evaluates reputational risk, stakeholder reaction, news media scrutiny, employee concerns, community response and the court of public opinion.
And both must understand what the other is trying to accomplish.
The organizations that navigate crises best are rarely those in which legal and communications compete for control. They are the ones where experienced legal counsel and experienced crisis communications counsel work side by side, sharing information, challenging assumptions and executing one coordinated strategy.
Because in a crisis, winning the legal argument while losing your reputation is not much of a victory.
The objective should be the same for everyone at the table: make the crisis better, make it shorter—or make it go away.