Some Lawyers Know Dick about PR
April 30, 2008 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Lawyers are often very good at helping organizations achieve their goals. But when it comes to plotting effective public relations moves, they too often forget how that legal action can be seen as aggressive overkill to the average person.
Case in point, the chill effect attempted by lawyer Clifford Shoemaker on behalf of his clients, who are suing to prove the generally disproved theory that mercury formerly used in vaccinations may have caused autism. Their son was diagnosed with a form of autism.
(I work for a health care organization and have an autistic son. Writing that last paragraph without adding five or six more disclaimers gives me the willies.)
Shoemaker dispensed a subpoena to at least one critic of the conspiracy theory, Kathleen Seidel. He also went after the medical/science committee that released a finding that there was no proven link between vaccinations and autism.
As a legal tactic, this may have been the right thing to do (but I doubt it).
As a method of forwarding his clients’ cause in the arena of public opinion, his bully tactics totally fail. The clumsy legal maneuver gives the appearance that he and his clients are abusing the legal system to go on an information fishing trip, squelch criticism and root out confidential information that has no connection to their lawsuit.
Seidel wrote an amazingly good legal motion for a non-lawyer, and succeeded in having the subpoena quashed. Shoemaker now has to respond to Seidel’s motion, which called for sanctions against him for using a subpoena as a harassing blunt instrument.
Legal action against bloggers may seem like a good idea because so few of them have the time and money to invest in a legal fight. But what they’re good at is drawing attention to heavy-handed legal tactics, and rallying bloggers and mainstream media to their cause.
Clients who blindly follow their lawyer’s advice run the risk of alienating the public, regulators and others. They need to map out the public relations implications, not just the legal strategy.
