Legal Crisis Strategies : Crisis Communications Lawyer & Attorney : McDermott Will & Emery Law Firm : Risk Mitigation, Mass Litigation

McDermott Will & Emery’s Legal Crisis Strategies Blog provides advice on preventing, managing and ending a crisis while protecting a company’s reputation and limiting its legal liability. Our Legal Crisis Management group is unique in combining expertise in all three areas that are vitally necessary to solve any crisis or achieve strategic objectives: Legal, Political and Media. 

Our team has worked with clients in virtually every industry on every kind of legal crisis and high-stakes issue, involving allegations of accounting fraud, intellectual property claims, merger approvals, contract claims, immigration, asset-stripping, bankruptcy, tax claims and product liability disputes. Our lawyers have political and messaging expertise and contacts gained through years of working in or reporting on domestic and international political campaigns, as well as lobbying, regulatory and litigation expertise.

Crisis Management
Imagine being at the helm of a company faced with investigations by Congress and a U.S. Attorney. The plaintiff lawyers are threatening to file shareholder lawsuits and a Wall Street Journal reporter is on hold. At times of crisis like these, our lawyers mitigate damage and ongoing risk by organizing the necessary internal and external legal, business and communications teams to best manage the crisis, assisting in the fact-finding process that is part of every crisis response. Our depth of expertise in the legal, political and media arenas means McDermott is uniquely positioned to provide the best multi-disciplined approach that will save critical time and money. As lawyers, we also manage the coordination and delivery of substantive legal advice and information from in-house and outside counsel to the government and public relations teams and outside constituencies in order to maintain privilege. Our interdisciplinary experience enables us to analyze and resolve contradictory issues that arise between the legal experts and these constituencies, and devise strategic messaging and proactive responses that assist the legal team while addressing concerns of internal and external constituencies. We have assisted numerous clients in obtaining assistance through political and/or media support of their facts in order to obtain a favorable resolution or settlement to the case.

Public Policy and Issue Management
Before and during a crisis, we assist clients in working with legislators, regulators and grassroots organizations and other public activists to design, execute and achieve public policy and government relations goals. We build on our experiences in political campaigns, the government and in the media to develop and manage fact-based campaigns, messaging and legislative strategy. The bipartisan team of lawyers and legislative professionals in our Government Strategies Group assist and coordinate existing in-house and outside resources with decades of experience representing our clients' interests before U.S. Congress, the administration, federal regulatory agencies and departments, and state legislatures, as well as foreign jurisdictions and embassies. We helped a private equity firm avoid a Congressional hearing by devising a comprehensive narrative of their business practices in answer to critics falsely accusing them of callous disregard for customers.

Crisis Prevention
Our interdisciplinary approach provides clients with strategic counseling and crisis prevention, including the identification of areas for policy and procedural changes to reduce legal exposure. We also advise clients on how to establish information processing and news monitoring to identify issues and trends in their areas, as well as an internal system for preventing and managing a crisis. For example, we performed a crisis audit for a retail company, uncovering a potentially embarrassing tax practice. Our group also develops and conducts exercises to test and fine tune crisis prevention and management systems within companies or industry groups. 

We represent a wide range of small-to-medium-sized companies, Fortune 500 corporations, nonprofit organizations, municipal, state and foreign governments, foreign-based companies and organizations, foreign nationals, and U.S. and international coalitions and trade associations, including:

• Retailers
• Pharmaceutical Companies
• Global Telecom companies
• Movie studios
• Mining and oil companies
• Universities
• Hospitals and healthcare facilities
• Cruise lines
• Private Equity Investors
• Insurance Companies
• High Tech Computer and Biotech Companies

McDermott Will & Emery is a premier international law firm with a diversified business practice. Numbering more than 1,000 lawyers, we have offices in Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Düsseldorf, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Milan, Munich, New York, Orange County, Rome, San Diego, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. Extending our reach to Asia, we have a strategic alliance with MWE China Law Offices in Shanghai.