Citizens' Groups Need Pro Bono Legal Help

PR reps of four of the biggest law firms, employing a total of 3,586 lawyers, will reap publicity for their firms Nov. 5 via a PRSA/NY program. The firms have pro bono practices and we have some candidates for them.

McDermott Will & Emery, 1,100-lawyer firm at 340 Madison ave., where the meeting will take place, gets the biggest play on the chapter website. The notice for the meeting has a link to MW&E’s website.

A search of the site pulls up 707 entries under “pro bono.” Awards include one from the National Assn. of Pro Bono Professionals for outstanding work. MWE partner Andrew Kratenstein, it is reported, received the 2015 “Above & Beyond Award for Excellence in Pro Bono Advocacy” for work for the Sanctuary for Families, New York.

Elizabeth Lewis is the WM&E pro bono litigation partner.

The other firms on the program, Paul Hastings, Duane Morris, and Davis Polk, all have sizable pro bono practices.

Paul Hastings, 986 lawyers, “has built a strong foundation for its pro bono and community service effort nationwide and has received accolades for its success in doing so,” says the firm’s website.

What Has Law Done to Corporate PR? Wrecked It

The program’s title, “Lawyers in the Limelight?” is presented as a question. The chapter rightfully wonders if law firms really want publicity since “Many lawyers believe that the less they say to the media, the better.”

Law firms have to do marketing and that is why four emissaries of major firms will show up Nov. 5 even though the legal “profession” has just about wrecked corporate PR.

The former “PR” Seminar, the annual gathering of nearly 200 blue chip companies, dropped the “PR” from its name in 2007.

New titles such as corporate communications and marketing replaced “PR” but the change was far more than just cosmetic.

Communications of all types came under the firm control of legal. Casual in-person PR/press contact ceased to exist, replaced by exchanges of emails. Call a CC department and an outside PR firm will return the call.

PR Directories Were Abolished

Directories that made it easy for reporters to contact corporate people were anathema to legal which had them destroyed.

PR Society of America published its last 1,000-page members’ directory in 2005. It was a bonanza for reporters looking for PR contacts. There is an online version but reporters can’t use it since they are not allowed to join.

O’Dwyer’s Directory of Corporate Communications, listing PR contacts at nearly 6,000 companies, trade associations and government departments, published its 30th and last edition in 2005.

Companies cut their press contact lists to the bone, if they had any such contacts at all, and also stopped buying the directory. Sales fell below 500, effectively killing it.

Legal does not even like PR people talking to each other on an informal, unsupervised basis. About 25 New York PR/IR luncheon and dinner groups went belly up. PR Society: New York, folded in 2013 in its 50th year.

That report lists many of the dead clubs. PRSA/NY, which once had monthly luncheons drawing 300+, ended them in the 1980s.

We lay all this at the feet of lawyers who have gained unprecedented power in the American economy, politics and anything to do with communications.

Lawyers Are Only Contacts in Hamptons

We face lawyers in our attempts to cover stories in Westhampton Beach, Southampton and Quogue. The towns have budgets totaling $100 million but there is not a nickel in any of them for “PR” or “press contact.” Lawyers do the “PR” but none of them are available for interviews or reachable on the phone. An occasional email will be answered with a minimal amount of words.

The one place where WHB lawyers can’t avoid us is the monthly trustees’ meeting since it has “Public Comment” section at the end.

What is our experience there? Outside legal counsel rules the meetings, refusing to put us on the agenda and limiting us to five minutes of addressing the room. During out brief stay at the mike, WHB lawyers shout at us, “Address the board!” “Address the board!” should our eyes shift to the video camera recording the meeting or people in the room

Our attempts to question the five trustees bring replies that the trustees are not going to defy advice of “legal counsel.” New York State law is that the public can speak at government meetings but officials are under no duty to reply.

At the Sept. 3 meeting, Sokoloff got 47 minutes to give WHB’s version of the eruv litigation that threatens WHB with $1 million+ in costs and penalties and we got five minutes. It’s like a baseball game where one team gets nine innings to score and the other team, one inning. We could have rebutted just about everything Sokoloff said.

Cartoon: Mel Toff

Pro Bono Needed for Anti-Eruv Group, O’Dwyer Co.

Residents in WHB and Quogue have been fighting in courts since 2011 erection of an eruv Jewish religious boundary. They have lost decision after decision and now face paying all the costs of the East End Eruv Assn. should the final suits go against them. Losers in a “civil rights” case pay costs of the winner.

EEEA, meanwhile, has since 2011 had the “pro bono” legal expertise of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, ranked No. 20 by American Lawyer in 2015 with $1.15 billion in revenues and 1,072 lawyers. Weil, blasting the Hampton towns with hundreds of filings totaling billions of words, is like a Godzilla monster on a rampage.

Normal bombs and rockets are useless against the monsters just like reason, fairness and logic have no effect on the EEEA onslaught.

Jewish People for the Betterment of WHB, which employed a small, local law firm, was outgunned by Weil. It should have a giant law firm working in its behalf to offset Weil.

The O’Dwyer Co., again fighting the PR Society’s boycott that bars the company from exhibiting its six news/informational products at the annual conference in Atlanta Nov. 7-10, could also use pro bono help. We’re not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting the Society in court for an untold number of years.

Watching some of the 28 Godzilla movies on TV lately we find that the only thing that stops Godzilla are other monsters including giant flying bats. Pro bono "giant bats" are needed by JPBHWB and the O’Dwyer Co. to stop the legal Godzillas.