Above the Law's Elie Mystal -- Now on Video!

Post Date:

March 8, 2010

You read him every day—now see him on video. That’s right, we’re talking about Above the Law’s Elie Mystal, who ventured to DC with his ATL crewmates (headliner David Lat and Kashmir Hill) to host a holiday soiree, back before you needed snowshoes, a compass, and $1,000 worth of North Face gear just to get around DC. Not being the type to pass up a free drink, we cleared our schedule and brought along a camera.

As it turns out, the stairwell entrance to the party venue—the 201 Lounge on Capital Hill—provided ideal lighting conditions for capturing Elie’s thoughts on video. It also provided ideal conditions for his smoke break.

We took advantage and put the question to him: What’s the biggest PR mistake that law firms make?

Elie makes two related points that are well worth heeding.

First, he notes that when you’ve got some objectively bad news—say, a round of layoffs—firms should disabuse themselves of any notion that they are going to control the conversation. There are simply too many news (and, umm, gossip) outlets competing with your voice to effectively spin bad news into good.

Second, firms should be aware that any documents related to the event—say, a memo meant for internal distribution only—will find its way to the public sphere.

We couldn’t agree more, and the lessons we take away for law firms are: (i) when bad news happens to you, a degree of transparency, even if painful, will prove more effective than dissembling; and (ii) every document dealing with a sensitive matter (layoffs, salary changes, etc.) should be created with the anticipation that it will become public.