Welcome back to Communication Breakdown, a weekly podcast from the Observatory on Corporate
Reputation.
Thanks for joining us.
I'm Steve Dowling in Silicon Valley.
And I'm Craig Carroll in New York City.
Each week, Steve and I take a look at strategies, companies are using to shape headlines, and
sometimes save their skins.
It's a post-game show for PR Pros.
This week, the legal community splits over Trump's attacks.
And the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
With apologies to the Royal Shakespeare Company, that's Henry VI, part two, a mob of commoners
railing against the ruling class.
Or what today some might call the deep state.
Five and a half centuries after the wars of the roses, lawyers are still in the crosshairs,
at least when it comes to this Trump White House.
The president has been swiping his black sharpie marker against white shoe law firms for
evoking security clearances and threatening their federal contracts through a series of executive
orders.
And in a broader memo, Trump directs the Justice Department to seek sanctions against firms
if I would he calls frivolous and vexatious litigation against the government.
Vaxatious, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.
Trump's broadside against the bar is widely seen as an effort to undermine the legal
profession and bully prominent law firms who might challenge his populist agenda.
And of course, some of the executive orders are straight up retribution against firms who
have hired critics of the president.
What's remarkable about this campaign, and I think most relevant to our podcast today,
is how the targeted law firms have responded.
Of the eight we know about right now, four of them, Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, Willkie Farr
and Milbank, some with lengthy memos have capitulated rather than face sanctions, pledging
tens of millions of dollars in pro bono work on behalf of initiatives aligned with Trump.
And that has not gone over well with the legal community, including some partners at those
firms.
The other four, Perkins Coie, Wilmer Hale, Jenner & Block, and Covington & Burling, they've
chosen to fight in federal court, which is kind of their home turf.
And perhaps not surprisingly, judges so far have been siding with the lawyers, calling Trump's
directives disturbing and reprehensible and most importantly, unconstitutional.
Steve, like so many of the fights that Trump is picking right now, we know this one is probably
going to end up with a supreme court.
But what are we learning from the initial responses?
I think what stands out to me is how similar the communications we've seen from these capitulating
firms are to the communications we've seen from some of the companies surrendering on diversity
over the past several months.
And in fact, diversity has been one of the things the White House has been using to push
around these law firms.
Let's look at how this played out.
I think the most important episode was the Paul Weiss firm and they were the first to
give in.
And their concessions to Trump, I think really hit like an earthquake.
It came out on a Thursday.
Trump announced he was rescinding his executive order because Paul Weiss had agreed to change
their hiring practices and do $40 million in pro bono work, who causes in line with Trump's
priorities.
And they were immediately criticized by many in the legal community.
Then it wasn't until Sunday that the CEO of Paul Weiss sent this 1600 word memo trying
to explain how they had to do this.
It was an existential threat.
They know people aren't happy with it.
But you know, of course some of these changes were already in the works.
Others have said that as well.
They're still committed to diversity, they say.
So they didn't get ahead of it.
They gave the White House the PR win, which I'm sure was the main part of the calculus there.
They let Trump make the announcement for them.
You know, that's a peep of mine.
And the other three firms who have since given in also, they largely followed this pattern.
Milbanks CEO said they only made commitments.
They were happy to make.
But the criticism has been really strong.
Firms have already lost a few partners.
I've got to believe that's going to continue.
And as we've seen, it's no guarantee that they won't be targeted again by this protection
racket approach.
You can just ask Disney and Harvard and others are learning that lesson the hard way.
Yeah, what striking here is just that firms like Paul Weiss and Mill bank cut deals.
It's how they communicated or more accurately didn't communicate.
They let the White House announce the deal.
They responded slowly.
And when they did speak, it was a long defensive message.
It was designed to manage internal backlash and not manage external perceptions.
And I would say that response pattern mirrors exactly what we've seen from companies back
peddling on DEI delay, denial, damage control and always a promise that these changes were
already in motion as if that is going to neutralize the reputational impact.
But it doesn't because when you're when you're surrendering narrative control like this,
especially to a White House that's using policies of pressure campaign, you know, just
lose the story.
You set the president and I don't know that's that's what Paul Weiss exactly did.
They made it easier for you know, for other law firms to follow suit quite cautiously and
harder to stand up without looking confrontational.
Yeah.
And it's hard to read the Paul Weiss memo from the Sunday.
Three days after the announcement had been made.
It's harder to read as anything other than, you know, reactive.
They clearly did not have this planned out and you have to wonder like what did you
think was going to happen that you think that it was just you were just going to be able
to do this and let the White House announce it.
These huge questions that come out of what Trump has been calling settlements and not
settlements, but he's been referring to them that way.
Like that just that alone makes it feel like you know, these are like these are lawyers,
right?
Yeah.
These are lawyers and you're using you're losing lawyers language in incorrectly.
I wonder what the calculation was there that they could just sort of let it go and people
wouldn't ask, well, what is this pro bono work you're going to be doing this 40 million dollars
worth of pro bono?
Right.
Which by the way, now pales in comparison because three other firms have pledged a hundred
million dollars.
So, but back to your point, I read the Paul Weiss memo really has like defeatist.
Yeah.
It was, yeah.
And certainly the government's out to get us.
Other lawyers aren't coming to our aid.
They kind of set it up like they are an island.
And the best spin that they had is I read it was.
They lived to compromise another day and that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, I think.
And they talked about values, but they didn't really stand up for them.
The pattern here is now familiar, a hundred million dollars in pro bono pledges, a public
rejection of DEI and a performative alignment statement.
And this time posted by Trump himself.
Now, why does this matter for us?
Well, as communicators, well, partly because Trump isn't just targeting legal arguments.
He's targeting affiliations, clients, even hiring practices.
And that's a reputational risk vector.
It's not just a legal one.
So you know, if you're a CCO or general counsel, you know, the question is, do you know how your
law firm is positioning itself right now?
And are you prepared to communicate if your firm becomes part of the story?
And do you have alignment between legal and communications on how you respond?
Because when legal independence becomes a political flashpoint, your silence is no longer
neutral.
Your affiliation then becomes the narrative.
The opposite of that, I thought was gender and block.
Yeah.
And I think they have been the strongest communicators in this episode.
They filed their lawsuit the day after Trump's executive order and they had a website going
live at the same time.
It's called, "Gener stands firm."
I think it encouraged people to check it out at jeneraffirm.com.
It's got their statement, their filings, links to supportive editorials, a couple of one
pages, which I really like.
These are resources that are really handy for reporters.
You look at the website, they draw attention, you know, the editorial board from the Wall Street
Journal, the Chicago Bar Association.
You know, so even with the Wall Street Journal editorial board weighing in, that's not a
group known for pearl clutching, right?
They said, "Using power to punish firms for representing clients breaks the cornerstone
principle of American justice going back to John Adams and the founders."
That's not legal commentary.
That's constitutional history.
And when they're saying this has gone too far, it tells you this isn't about the left or
right, it's about the rule of law versus the rule of power.
This is the kind of legal communication that meets the moment.
They're not just litigating in court, they're narrating in public.
They're doing it in a way that's accessible.
You know, you don't need to have a JD to follow the logic.
That matters because right now, the government is going to have a JD.
Now, the clarity of your position is your positioning.
It's not written in legal ease.
And that's a really, you know, critical part of communicating this because, and maybe this
was a calculation that Paul Weiss is making.
I don't know, but if you think that something like this is going to remain sort of contained
within your community, at this scale, I think you're really making a miscalculation.
So hats off to a general block for being prepared to go public and doing a good job at it.
Yeah, Jinner moved fast.
Not just legally, you know, they showed what it looks like when your comms team and legal
team are rowing in the same direction, you know, that the lawsuit and the narrative launched
together, that's rare and it's powerful.
You know, honestly, you know, if you're a chief comms officer or general counsel watching
this play out, I think Jinner just gave you a master class in how to frame a principled
stand, fast, clean, and media ready.
They had some time to prepare, which I think is good.
Clearly they were gearing up for this during whatever negotiations they had with the White
House.
And yeah, I think this is a really critical part of doing PR for legal, making it understandable
to every day, humans, which reporters generally are.
And yeah, the comms department needs a really healthy relationship with the legal department
to do it.
Yeah.
Most of our listeners have experienced this dynamic between legal and PR.
PR needs to be consistent with the legal argument and of course everything when you're in a
legal action, everything gets, you know, reviewed with a fine tooth comb, but you tend to pull
the quotable quotes from the filings, the relevant bits that you want to get in front of the
reporters, the pertin parts and then help frame it.
And one thing that I like to advise is that legal can help in partnership by making
its filings, at least parts of them as readable as possible, right?
They're not going to change the whole filing into some press-friendly, conversational document,
but I always suggest like try to partner with legal if you can, like on say the first page,
the introductory part.
That's where, first of all, it's easy to find.
And it's okay to be a little more general and that you can broadly set up the arguments,
you know, ideally in the same language that you would use in a public, like a press statement
and then make it pithy and understandable at least and then the lawyers can go on to do
all their loitering with the lawyer language after that.
Yeah.
And I think that General and Block did a really good job in, now they're lawyers and obviously
their comms team is, you know, doing comms for legal every day, but you go to that web page
and it feels very accessible, again, as we said, the firms that are fighting this, they're
making it about a bigger issue, they're making it about the way the system ought to work
and that they are coming to defense, to the defense of constitutional principles, to defense
of the rule of law.
So I think it's a much more effective approach.
One of the things that is most surprising to me is that we haven't seen as many other
firms sign on.
Winter lose.
And I mean, these are the top law firms in the country fighting for their lives.
I assume they're going to give it their best, but winter lose, you're standing on principle
and reputationally, that's where I would much rather be.
And I think whatever the reasons business or otherwise, I think it's a real mess that the
legal profession, the legal community doesn't seem more unified in its response.
That it's where at this 50/50 split is really surprising to me.
I don't know where, if that trend is going to continue, but the firms who have given
in more recently, but we said that we upped that pro bono pledge.
So it seems from the outside, like the two sides could be moving apart or at least the
ones who are capitulating don't seem to have drawn any strength from the resolve that their
peers are showing.
And I'm sure there is a lot of industry politics and history and other goings on that we
are not familiar with.
And it's pretty clear a lot of there's a lot of negotiation going on behind the scenes
between these firms and we have to assume that there are others sort of in the pipeline.
What's troubling about these law firms giving in a Trump isn't just that they folded under
pressure.
It's that they seated very ground the legal profession is supposed to defend.
And that's independence, access and equal protection under the law.
So if law firms are supposed to be the firewall, they're the ones who take the heat so that
the clients, even on popular ones, still get representation.
But when you start cutting deals to void executive retaliation, when you rewrite hiring practices
and pledge pro bono work to political causes to stay in the administration's good graces,
you're not defending the law, you're conforming to power.
And let's be honest, this was at a level playing field.
These weren't routine policy disagreements.
These were firms being targeted for past affiliations or DEI programs for who they hired
and who they represented.
That's not oversight.
That's retribution.
So yeah, it's troubling.
People training teaches you how to win arguments with their tight reasoning, but reputation isn't
one that way.
Yeah, it's shaped by how you show up in the uncertainty.
And in today's environment, people aren't judging you based on your footnotes.
They're judging you based on your values or voice and your visibility.
Yeah, and I think that this is why the strategy that these, the firms who are resisting,
their strategy of zooming out to the impact on the rule of law, getting people to focus
on the broader issues and not necessarily making it about themselves in the first instance,
which is I think, think what Paul Weiss was doing in this long memo that was sort of
doubled back on itself logically a couple times, where they're really like, we can't operate
if we don't give in.
That narrows it, not broadens it.
And I think it's less relatable to people and it makes it harder to get people to pick
up your case.
You know, risk isn't always something to minimize.
Sometimes you have to manage, right?
Lawyers are trying to reduce exposure, but in chaotic environments like this, visibility
is often the strategic move that they're making.
The public doesn't trust silence anymore.
You know, it's red is weakness, guilt or detachment.
So the shift here's got to be from control to credibility, from not saying anything, to
saying something worth believing.
I think that's the communications mindset is how you turn legal risk into risk.
Reputational authority.
Yeah, it's beyond me that anybody thinks in this dynamic that we're in the middle of right
now with the Trump White House that anybody thinks saying nothing is an effective way to
get through a reputational crisis like this.
I can't think of an example where it has worked.
I don't understand why people keep trying that playbook except paralysis, that it is scary
and we don't like what we've just had to do, but you've done it and now you've got to
own it and saying nothing is not a viable option.
Communication moves fast, the law moves cautiously and I think that's where a little bit of the
friction is.
But friction doesn't mean conflict.
It means you need fluency.
And when you know what might trigger litigation, regulatory scrutiny or discovery exposure,
you can help legal stay out of trouble without losing the message.
So it's a little bit about timing, a little bit about trust knowing when to speak and either
way you got to be able to get the buy-in first.
Yeah, and I mean, I think that's a really good point that things are moving fast these
days, but the law, the court process is still a lot slower.
And what the firms who are resisting these executive orders and these other threats, they're
using that to their advantage.
Again, I don't understand why this wasn't part of the calculus for the firms who capitulated
because they're basically buying time.
I don't think it's super surprising, but or that there was any luck involved.
These are skilled lawyers.
I think in each case, when they went to federal judges, the federal judges, their immediate
response was inclined to support their position that these are unconstitutional orders.
And so now you enter this period, well, well, it's in the courts and we're encouraged
by the initial comments by the court.
And it didn't necessarily have to move as quickly as it did for some of these firms.
I think the first target of the executive orders was coming to an emberling.
That was at the end of February.
They just sued this week.
So that was hanging out there and it's really also about the ability to live in the uncertainty.
What skills they brought to bear there, I'm not sure, but they certainly were able then
to get their ducks in a row.
And now it's in the courts and that gets them some more time.
I will say there's something about that, that for us as communicators that we have to in
this moment of chaos, we have to be able to pause long enough and not move too fast.
I mean, the fact that their lawsuit took so long, sometimes you can have a knee jerk response
and needed to find out and be aware and touch with how, you know, in this case, other
law firms, but how other companies are dealing with these issues so that you know the degree
that you're in sync, you certainly don't want to be out there.
But if you are out there by yourself and you're speaking from a position of authority and
you're doubling down, that's totally okay.
But I think right now there's just so much uncertainty, the more aware, the more calibrated
that you can be in your response and your ability to keep your feet grounded, right?
While you're pulled in so many different directions is is important.
Yeah.
And we've seen, we've seen some firms use their time wisely.
I think Cuffington and Burling, General and Block, probably in that category because where
the communications needs to move quickly is once you've made a decision and taken an action,
right?
We didn't see that with, with Paul Weiss.
They let Trump make the announcement and then everybody sort of scratch their heads about
why and what it really meant and it wasn't until the weekend that their CEO came out.
But the others are making their decision and obviously in parallel, they're getting their
communications ready.
So when they file, they're there with a statement and the public positioning so that everybody
knows where they stands and it amplifies their actions and puts them in context.
Yeah.
I'm actually curious for our audience how much their background affects the way they're
thinking about matters right now because look, we've got several CCOs who actually have
law degrees.
They not only have a communications background, but they also have a law degree as well.
Yeah.
I think that's one issue.
One is their own exposure, their own training in terms of the law and two, how is their
company set up in terms of the relationship between communications and their legal department
here?
Yeah, I mean, there's a fair number of companies where communications reports into legal just
structurally organizational.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's also that too, right?
Yeah.
So you would like to think that there's two way education going on there that you have
comms, people who are more versed in legal and you have importantly lawyers who are more
versed in how the comms works.
And I think if you get that balance right, you can be really, really effective.
That is said earlier, it really depends on partnership here where comms can have some input, legal
can set the boundaries, maybe stretch them just a little bit where they understand that
it's going to be effective outside the court, outside the legal filing.
So long as it doesn't harm what they're trying to do within the four walls of that legal
filing.
One of the biggest questions here for me is, and one we don't have full visibility to
us whether communicators at these firms are actually part of the decision making process
or if they're just getting handed the consequences.
You know, from the outside, it looks like the latter, right?
You know, these statements don't always read like their proactive positioning.
They read like internal memos that reluctantly got sent to the public.
They're vague, reactive, and late in some cases.
And they're letting the story be told by the very person who put them in the cross-airs.
If communicators were in the room early, if legal and comms were functioning as a joint unit,
you would expect sharper framing, faster response, and a clear articulation of values and principles.
Instead, we're getting the language you write when you're trying to keep the peace and not
lead the conversation.
So yeah, I think many of these cases, we've got situations where communicators are on the
sidelines.
And that's a missed opportunity.
It's a strategic failure if that makes sense.
However you want to term it, I'll boil it down to four words.
Get ahead of it.
It's a golden rule and it's something that everybody's got to keep in mind.
I think everybody listening to this podcast knows that it's just that sometimes when you
get into these situations, again, paralysis, fear, we're in uncharted territory in some
ways, but in some ways, we are not.
These things are going to play out to the same audience that we had six months ago.
And so a lot of what we've known, a lot of the rules that we've sort of grown up on,
still apply, even though we have some of the characters operating outside of the norms.
It's just have to remember what works and what principles are going to help us stay ahead
of things so that we can still be controlling our own narrative, even if we're in a situation
that we don't like.
The truth is in organizations, Pierre doesn't have the authority to shape legal decisions.
When a firm is facing an executive order, a sanctions threat or pressure from the White House,
those decisions are happening at the top between managing partners, general counsel, sometimes
the board and communications is often brought in after the fact, often tasked with crafting
a message around a decision that's already been made.
That's the structural reality.
But it's also a strategic vulnerability because when legal decisions have public consequences
and they increasingly do, leaving comms out of the conversation early means you're reacting
and not shaping it.
And that delay is going to cost you in terms of public trust, employee confidence, investor
perception, and even a court.
So this isn't about comms trying to steer legal reasoning.
It's about recognizing that legal strategy has become a reputational flashpoint.
And if you don't have alignment across the functions early enough, you end up with filings
that are airtight and court, but they're not readable in the media.
And statements that will sound detached or defensive or even hollow.
So no communicators so often have the power to insert themselves, but smart organizations
are starting to shift that somewhat because comms is not nice to have.
It's a necessity and in a moment where public opinion can influence legal risk and legal
posture can shape your brand's identity, the alignment between legal and comms is an luxury.
It's risk management.
So here's some of the things this episode tells me.
One legal credibility is now a reputational asset, but it's also reputation or liability.
Native orders are increasingly becoming tools of narrative warfare and law firms once
behind the scenes advisors are now big dragged out front and center.
So you know, if you're in comms, I think part of the job now is mapping what your exposure
is knowing which firms you're tied to and how they're responding.
You got to align your legal and communications playbooks now before the pressure hits.
And I think you have to decide in advance, where do we stand on this?
What's the guesible?
Not because the question isn't if this climate affects your organization, it's win and in
that moment, you know, reputation or resilience is going to start with clarity.
Yeah.
And again, these decisions, these statements are playing out in front of a much broader
audience.
You're dealing with legal stuff.
It's usually you're talking to a judge and now you are talking to the whole world and
that's something that comms can have a really important point of view to share on.
So giving them a seat at the table for these things.
Yeah, they're not going to decide or veto your legal strategy, but they're going to have
very important feedback on how it might play out.
And we are going to see, I think more of this, it will be really interesting to see if
this divide in the legal community somehow narrows or if we end up with two very distinct
camps.
And I think the next several weeks will be very telling and we of course will stay on
top of it.
That's our show for this week.
We want to thank Sean P. Niel and the people forward network for making our podcast possible.
If you have comments or suggestions for the podcast, we'd love to hear from you.
Our email address is podcast@ocrnetwork.com.
Communication breakdown is a production of the Observatory on corporate reputation.
I'm Steve Dowling.
And I'm Craig Carroll.
Thanks for listening.
We'll be back next week.
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