Udpated: Syracuse Speech

A video of the speech discussed below is now available here, for your viewing pleasure.

Original post follows.

JFH
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Syracuse Speech

On April 6, I spoke at Syracuse University College of Law, as part of their "Law, Politics and the Media Lecture Series," which is jointly sponsored by the law school and the Newhouse School of Communications. I was quite pleased to present "on a field that exists somewhere between the practice of law and traditional public relations: Litigation Communications..."

For the full text of my remarks, visit the PRCG website.

Here's a snappy little excerpt:

I’ll give you just one example, and this comes courtesy of a friend of mine who is a top lawyer and has been involved in many high-profile cases. He put it like this:

If your teenage daughter comes home one night, late, on a school night, and you ask “Where have you been?” and she says “No comment”… well, you're going to make some assumptions about what's going on.

And if she walks in and says: “Well, let me get back to you. What's your deadline?” you’re going to form a different set of assumptions.

But if her response is: “Look, I made a mistake, I'm sorry. I think I know how to prevent it from happening again.” Those two sentences are going to change the whole tenor of the conflict.

It sounds simple, and it is. But doing it well in the course of a billion-dollar lawsuit – well that’s where the art and science of litigation communications comes in. It’s like Willie Mays playing the outfield: a lot of hard work goes into making it look so easy.