Business News/Analysis

-Kate Alexander, co-founder, Crisis and Legal PR, Alexander PR

 The intersection between law and public perception can be a blind spot for lawyers. Yet today’s digital reality is that damage in the court of public opinion can outstrip that in a court of law.

It usually happens much faster, and its potential to impact lawyers’ clients is growing. Now, with the additional layer of large language models (LLMs), AI engines such as GPT-4.5, Claude 3.7, Grok-3 and DeepSeek R1 are becoming the arbiters of truth about you and your organisation.

At least in the court of public opinion, it’s not business as usual.

Organisations and HNWI increasingly expect joined-up legal and reputational thinking. Law firms that deliver on this will benefit through more work, less case stress, higher fees and bigger reputations. Ignore reputation management, and lawyers leave money on the table.

Reputational issues and crises can take an astonishing variety of forms, and serious ones inevitably involve some legal oversight or (increasingly) they relate directly to a court or regulatory process which involves protracted risks.

Typically, our trigger for action as Legal PRs is a phone call from a CEO client or their lawyer due to sudden interest from a journalist, a regulator, a consumer representative, special interest groups and the like.

Legal or litigation PR has been emerging in various jurisdictions to support legal strategy with reputational risks in the 24-hour news cycle era. It matters not just during a legal case but ahead of its possible occurrence and long after as a dispute simmers and boils.

Controversy can hit the bottom line instantly – remember the DGL Group debacle around Nadia Lim?

Legal PR involves managing the public narrative across legal disputes and complex business issues (many of the crises we deal with emerge and snowball from regulatory changes or other interactions with regulators).

The size of a nation’s ‘court of public opinion’ will vary according to a country’s publicity restrictions, privacy laws, scale of the media market, and cultural sensitivities. In media permissive contexts like the United States where legal cases and public opinion are more intertwined, litigation PR is well developed.

The complex landscape of PR in the legal sector

Legal professions everywhere are entering more transparent and porous operating terrain as instant news reporting, digital and social media, and AI enable public scrutiny to influence legal processes and reputation.

In New Zealand, we recently saw Google’s AI breaching name suppression orders.

The rise of ESG, greater business complexity and oversight, artificial intelligence and the fast-evolving media landscape have made reputation a factor for every risk manager, including lawyers who need to think forward beyond the immediate case.

As the chair of one of Australia’s largest companies told The Australian: “Reputation goes down using the elevator but up by taking the stairs.”

It is often said, when people or institutions are dealing with adversity, that “the only way out is through.”

From our experience, the lessons in short are a) in many cases, proper planning and issues management can prevent the crisis in the first place, and b) when a crisis is truly unavoidable, following some key rules and taking proactive steps, both in preparation and response, can help the client emerge quickly and with reputation unscathed.

An integrated legal and PR approach

Time is the biggest threat (and ally) in preventing issues from becoming fully fledged crises – and there is less time than ever.

Our agency is seeing a cohort of the legal profession recognise the importance of having a joined-up legal and PR approach to reputational risk as early as possible.

A growing minority of lawyers understand that smart collaboration with communication strategists increases their control – control the narrative (avoid the public distorting the story), control the case (avoid new pressures on proceedings, and more stress) and control the fees pipeline (protect / attract clients and revenue).

There is greater appreciation that the constructive tension in the typical perspectives of lawyers (avoid legal risk) and PRs (build reputational capital) benefits the long-term interests of mutual clients.

For example, while the legal strategy should be paramount, saying ‘no comment’ – which may seem safe, legally – will increasingly open up reasonable doubt among stakeholders and the public.

Platforms like X, TikTok and Reddit make this risker and more ill-advised than ever. Context was never more important, and it’s important leaders say why a more fulsome comment is not yet possible.

The approach for legal PR issues will vary by client, sector, issue, proceedings, stage of the case, disclosure restrictions, media and public interest and more. To test statements intended for the public space, clients will look for reputational advice from independent PR advisers.

We work directly with business executives and their legal teams as early as possible to support the legal strategy, which is always the paramount consideration.

This typically involves mapping out a plan for scenarios / messaging for potential crises or issues as well as managing immediate crises (what you can say to stakeholders right now) along with planning for future eventualities given that some cases can go for years.

The plan should deal with everything that might find its way into the public domain.

 Solving the single biggest problem  

George Bernard Shaw said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Law firms and clients generally lack the time and know-how around day-to-day media engagement, including how to manage perception. Good Legal PR frames the story strategically and distils legal complexity with succinct, reassuring plain English messaging that builds support and doesn’t compromise the case.

It’s vital that PRs protect clients from being pushed to litigate a case through the media, and critical to navigate leaks. Legal PR understands that reporting can happen whether you want it to or not, and there are strategies to manage this.  

Businesses in the new operating environments will do better when their legal and public relations strategists take a coordinated approach upfront. Clients now expect more, and lawyers that miss this will fall behind.

High value clients and in-house counsel have worked out that legal and reputational risk have become two sides of the same coin. They want professional advisers who manage legal and reputational risk together.

Kate Alexander is the Co-Founder and Director of Alexander PR and a Crisis and Legal PR expert.