Building Your Message... and the Credibility of Your Case

• Author: James F. Haggerty
• Profession: Lawyer
• Pages: 183-202

183

CHAPTER SEVEN

Building Your

Message . . . and

the Credibility of

Your Case

Preparing your message and conveying it effectively to media and other

audiences is the threshold challenge of effective public relations in litiga-

tion and other legal disputes. Yet it’s often the last thing lawyers and

their clients think of when attempting to communicate a message about

their lawsuit or other legal matter.

“Just get us in front of the New York Times,” they say. “We’ll know

what to say.”

In this chapter, we take a look at why this is such a bad idea. We show

how a litigant’s ability to win a case in the court of public opinion ows

directly from his or her ability to create a message that is compelling,

straightforward, and—above all—succinct. Do it right, and your story

line becomes the “mantra of the case.” But failure to work “from the

message out” will hurt not just the message itself, but also your ulti-

mate balance in what I call the Credibility Bank.

The media training, for a litigator at a major law rm, was going

according to plan. The lawyer, based in Los Angeles, had just lost

a case at the trial level and was now ling an appeal.

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In the Court of Public Opinion

184

The case involved a Los Angeles industrial agency that had

decided to expand their facilities without doing the required

environmental impact research to determine if the local commu-

nity would be hurt. These types of reviews are standard practice,

so it was a surprising loss.

On my way into the room with the attorney, I asked him what

had happened.

“The judge got it wrong,” he said. “He said the defendant

could build rst and ask questions later. But that’s not what the

law says, and we’re going to prove that on appeal.”

For those of you who have never been media trained, the

process works like this: Before the glare of the lights of a full

television-style video camera, we lead the subject through a series

of mock interviews, to sharpen skills and ensure that the inter-

view subject is comfortable and the message is getting through.

We watch the resulting interview tapes and critique the subject’s

performance. I generally take the role of reporter and grill the

subject far harder than most news reporters ever would. Be pre-

pared, I like to say.

Sometimes (as in this case) we focus on a specic issue that is

expected to come up in the coming weeks. Other times, the train-

ing is more generalized.

In the Los Angeles case, I sat the attorney down and began to

play reporter.

“So tell me,” I asked, “what is this appeal all about?”

“Well,” the attorney started, “in its ruling, the court allowed the

agency to go forward with an enormous expansion of the existing

facilities, without the requisite environmental impact statements

or any consideration as to the risks posed to the public, in terms

of both additional acreage the facility will use and the additional

diesel exhaust that will result . . .”

I interrupted and stopped the tape.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What happened to that simple expla-

nation you gave me in the hallway?”

“Well,” he said, “I felt I needed to explain it to the reporter in

all of the particulars so that he would understand . . .”

I cut him off again.

“But you’re not explaining anything to the reporter,” I said.

“You’re trying to get your message across to the audience. Just

like you did for me in the hallway.”

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