Litigation public relations

Litigation public relations is the management of the communication process during the course of any legal dispute or adjudicatory processing so as to affect the outcome or its impact on the client’s overall reputation (Haggerty, 2003).

Plaintiffs and prosecutors have long used mass media to get their side of the story out to the public, but the formal practice of litigation PR, a sub-specialty of crisis communication, first emerged in the early 1980s with Alan Hilburg, a pioneer in litigation communications representation of U.S. Tobacco in the Marsee case. Since then, the need for litigation PR has grown tremendously as media coverage of court cases and the law has increased. Most parties to a lawsuit have important interests that expand beyond legal concerns. Negative publicity about a litigant can cause damage to an individuals reputation that a courtroom win years later may not salvage. Thus, parties to cases, whether civil or criminal, can not ignore the impact of negative publicity on public opinion (Reber, Gower, & Robinson, 2006).

Litigation PR is the management of the communication process prior to and during the course of any legal dispute or adjudicatory processing so as to affect the outcome or its impact on the client’s overall reputation (Haggerty, 2003).

Basic Concepts of Litigation Public Relations—

'The First Concept—'Litigation PR is to influence the outcome of the court case by encouraging early or favorable settlement or by pressuring the prosecution into bringing lesser or no charges (Haggerty, 2003).

'The Second Concept—'Litigation PR is to protect the client’s reputation before and during the trial. In this regard, litigation PR is akin to reputation management. Reputation management is about managing public perception of an organization or individual. It is about attitude toward the individual and not knowledge itself. An essential aspect of reputation management is influencing attitude about the individual and corporation, which can encourage positive activation to the benefit of the organization (Haywood, 2002).

Litigation PR on the part of defendants is needed, especially in high-profile cases because the media have an inherent bias in favor of plaintiffs and prosecutors. When allegations are made public, the media tend to cast the lawsuit in terms of victim versus villain. News stories frequently lead with the plaintiff or prosecutors’ allegations. If the defendant’s responses are included at all, they appear well into the story. Thus, the defendant is forced on the defensive from the outset. In such situation, “working with the media to create more balanced, accurate, and less sensational coverage of a lawsuit is necessary element in defending high profile defendants" (Hantler, Schwartz, & Goldberg, 2004, p. 8).

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