PR crisis specialists – the self-anointed Merlins of our business – and their too often antagonists – lawyers advising clients in trouble – have had a few exceptionally busy years attempting to protect their clients.

The PR side has often blamed lawyers for watering down good crisis strategy.

But if ever a company needed law advice it is GM, which despite its PR efforts to position it self as “the new GM,” still receives negative news coverage when attempting to show its good side.

And the banking industry is only a step behind the once celebrated automaker.

Also, showing the inability of crisis specialists to stem bad press is MSNBC’s revisiting the BP Gulf oil spill once again, proving the axiom that only the media can decide when to stop negative press.

In its attempt to cast their magical spell on clients, many of the Merlins of our business feel only they have the answers on how to handle a PR crisis.

While techniques have changed, one tenet of crisis PR is still constantly echoed: don’t let lawyers ruin your crisis communication efforts. (See Fraser Seitel’s Feb. 18 column on this web site.)

I’ve long been an outlier on the subject of lawyers being an integral element of crisis PR situations.

That’s because I’ve always believed that despite the best PR crisis communications efforts negative coverage will continue until the media turns to other subjects.

And more important than gaining some positive coverage for clients under duress is to make certain that nothing is done to place them in deeper legal trouble.

That’s where lawyers come in. They, better than PR people, understand the legal traps and some are also proficient in communications.

PR people should welcome the role of a lawyer in crisis situations. That’s because top client management is much closer to their legal staff than to PR agency personnel.

Chances are that top client management has met with the legal staff many times on issues other than a PR crisis and trusts their advice. There are layers between top corporate management and the outside PR agency staff.

In my opinion, the client's legal staff to prevent inadvertent miscues, which could worsen the situation, should also review every step that PR people want to take during a crisis. Before preparing statements for media release, PR people should have them cleared, but not dictated, by the client’s attorney.

Too often the PR crisis team’s initial impulse is to distribute a client message ASAP before all the facts are analyzed. That’s a deficient plan that can create more harm and media distrust as new details about the problem emerges.

Lawyers should play an important role in constructing and controlling the strategy of a PR crisis team and decide what, when and how information to the media will be released.

Advice from lawyers in big-ticket PR crises can’t prevent the flow of negative articles, but neither can the PR crisis team. But lawyer’s advice may prevent new legal issues for the client by making certain that lawyer-client privilege is not damaged.

Perhaps the most important role that a crisis PR team can play is to help a client craft a boilerplate statement that sounds caring and newsy, make certain that all comments from company officials are cleared internally before being issued, decide when announcements should be made and who should make them, filter media requests to make certain they reach the proper spokesperson(s), identify key allies and seek their support, know which media will be fair and which to avoid, be able to craft a fast response to media reports containing inaccurate information and to create a pro-active PR campaign that can be implemented immediately after the media decides the bad news story isn’t worthy of further 24/7 coverage.

It’s also important that a savvy PR account group should be aware of a client’s soft underbelly prior to crafting a crisis plan (or a non-crisis program). Corporate attorneys can identify past problems that might again gain the media’s attention when preparing a crisis plan.

Have lawyers helped troubled companies from worsening their legal problems? I’m sure some have and some haven’t. But one thing is clear: crisis PR efforts leave a lot to be desired.

It often comes down to what’s more important: getting good press for a client or preventing a client from digging a deeper legal hole for it self. To me, the answer is a no-brainer: lawyers should be an active partner in crafting aspects of PR crisis plans.

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Arthur Solomon was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller.. He contributes to PR and sports business publications, consults on PR projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at [email protected].