Lawyers battle in courts of law – 1Up Communications battle in the ‘court of public opinion’. In fact, time and time again, it has been shown that failure to engage experts to manage a crisis has resulted in the demise of organisations, either before the final outcome of litigation or in the aftermath of an eventual outcome – mud sticks, chaos erodes confidence and perceived ‘sinking ships’ result in stakeholders abandoning.
1Up Communications are experienced in working with lawyers/barristers, defendants and litigants for the public relations component of their legal battles. Traditionally, a lawyer’s first instinct is to recommend a course of action of silence or a ‘no comment’ response until the matter resolves. However, this often leads to public perception of guilt, resulting in a long-term detrimental crisis of faith by those stakeholders a business relies upon to succeed. The reputational impact on the brand may never recover, because in silence, others are filling the information vacuum.
Whether you are under investigation(s) by others or conducting your own internal investigation(s) for suspected misconduct, irregularity, fraud, accidental death, sexual harassment, workplace harassment or other potential breaches of law, it is imperative your business proceeds quickly with a controlled and informed response in partnership with the legal team.
1Up Communications is led by one of the foremost experts in Litigation Crisis Management. We work with your legal team; or if they do not have one in place, we have relationships with leading legal experts to guide clients through their practices. We manage a proactive communications strategy to leverage positive opinion to others and defend against negative opinion.
We have expertise in:
- Litigation and defense support
- Issues and crisis management
- Strategic counsel and on-site crisis management support
- Conducting internal investigations
- Oversight, investigations and government relations
- In-person crisis simulations
- Message development
- Media relations training
- Social media relations training
- Stakeholder mapping and engagement
- Advocacy before investigating agencies
- Preparedness planning
- Media monitoring and analysis
- Publicity of class actions
- Design and construct crisis specific stakeholder website
- Video production
- Reviewing compliance for other areas of risk
- Reputation recovery