Law Firm Unveils Crisis Management Specialty

My friends at The Wall Street Journal Law Blog put together a fascinating post last week, here, that further highlights the growing intersection of law and public perception.

Covington & Burling, one of the most prominent law firms in Washington, D.C., has launched a "Strategic Risk and Crisis Management Practice." Senior members of the group include (according to the Covington press release) former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat; former DC Attorney General Peter Nickles; former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue; and Thomas Williamson, former U.S. Solicitor of Labor.

Mr. Nickles, identified as leader of the Covington team, said: "Covington has scores of lawyers with deep experience in government and internal investigations, contested transactions, and with other issues that pose significant financial, reputational and legal risk."

And significantly for our purposes is a quote from Mr. Williamson: "Managing the media, litigation and investor issues arising out of class action claims and even employment controversies surrounding individual senior executives will continue to be an important boardroom concern in the coming years.” (a link to the Covington press release is here).

This integration of legal practice and crisis management is something I have been preaching for years, including in my book, In The Court of Public Opinion, which is now in its second edition. In the media age, services traditionally offered by public relations firms (like my firm, PRCG) are now increasingly integrated with the practice of law.

The Covington announcement comes on the heels of other legal practitioners -- usually in Washington, D.C. -- who have endeavored to specialize in the management of reputation and other elements of corporate risk during legal crises. These have included Lanny Davis, who was at Orrick and McDermott Will and now has his own firm, offering "Law, Media and Legislative/Political Strategies." And for years, Washington Superlawyer Robert Bennett has practiced a unique brand of legal/public relations for high-profile clients, first at Skadden, now at Hogans Lovell (consider a blog post of mine from 2008, here, with a link to Mr. Bennett's appearance on the Today Show to promote his book, In The Ring: The Trials of A Washington Lawyer).

Ashby Jones at the Law Blog calls the recent law firm interest in crisis management a "boomlet," and with the magnitude of recent legally-tinged reputational crises befalling the likes of Toyota, BP, Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, Goldman Sachs and others, it's no wonder. The Law Blog makes the following excellent point:

The move by Covington (and other firms) strikes us as more a marketing move than a substantive one. But we don’t mean that in a negative way. To the contrary, actually.

We can’t imagine that as “litigation partners,” (as they used to be called), lawyers of Craig and Chertoff’s stature would decline to help a client-in-crisis come up with a media or investor strategy, for example. No, they were likely performing those tasks as well as a host of others that went beyond drafting briefs and taking depositions. All the firms are doing now is recasting (likely in a more accurate light) what their most star-studded lawyers actually do.

In our mind, this is the rare law firm “branding” move that actually makes sense. We can envision a company that suddenly gets blamed for, say, an oil spill, wanting to turn to to a law firm that can offer not only the litigation firepower to handle the flood of lawsuits that arise, but can offer guidance on agency and congressional inquiries, work behind the scenes to manage the political fallout, and the like.

Well put. But I have to wonder at the absence of any mention of strategic communications expertise among this highly talented group of high profile lawyers. It is a rare combination of skills, to be sure, but vital to the success of such a venture. Hopefully, they know where to find me...