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Public and Media Relations In managing legal issues and exposures, it is often necessary to deal with public and media relations considerations. Our firm, with its experience in dealing with very highly-publicized matters, and often environmental cases with high public interest and scrutiny, is uniquely situated to not only deal with public and media relations issues as they unfold, but also to prepare our clients to deal with same. We advise and train our clients to integrate public and media relations into the broader framework of managing the full range of anticipated issues to avoid legal exposure, and if liability does appear likely, to mitigate potential damage to our clients by providing a complete context for the media and the public to truly understand the issues involved Public relations includes dealing with government relations, although we are not in the business of lobbying. Rather, our work in government relations involves understanding which agencies to approach, and the best ways to approach them, to ensure a full and adequate consideration of our client’s needs, plans, and if a potential problem has occurred, the circumstances and outcome of issues based on facts rather than sound-bites or preconceptions. For general public relations, the firm offers a variety of services. Our work in this area would in most cases be done in conjunction with a retained public relations consultant, thus facilitating a comprehensive approach to these issues while retaining a level of confidentiality. It is critical that as public relations campaigns, or even simple statements made by client personnel, are presented through the media, that statements or positions taken by the client independently, or through its public relations consultants, are consistent with legal positions taken by the client. Particularly where technical issues are involved, it is often necessary for a legal review of statements to be made to ensure that the technical issues are presented both accurately and in a format and language that lay persons can understand. The experience of our personnel with technical matters, not only in the environmental area, but also in engineering, industry and manufacturing, allows us to help our consultants prepare and then our clients clearly deliver their messages accurately and through the best channels available. We also recognize that sometimes there is little time to develop messages, as a client may often be responding to rapidly-unfolding events. For this reason, we provide our clients with training and preplanning, including training for dealing with the media and proper risk communications, so that our clients can best respond to media, public and government enquiries, even when circumstances are stressful and fast moving. |
