Maltin PR hosts Reputation in Litigation panel at Legal Business summit

Maltin PR hosted the Reputation in Litigation panel at this year’s Financial Regulatory and Disputes Summit. Our Senior Partner and former BBC Legal Correspondent Clive Coleman chaired the panel, and was joined by Professor Suzanne Rab, barrister at Serle Court Chambers, and our Managing Partner, Tim Maltin.

The panel discussed the effective management of information and reputation in litigation, and how this is critical to winning both the battle inside the courtroom and outside it, in the court of public opinion.

Tim explained that litigation always presents a major risk to reputation, and matter value is often dwarfed by the reputation damage that can occur if the narrative is not handled correctly. For this reason it is critical that the litigation PR team is embedded with the legal team early on.

Suzanne discussed a recent study by Gowling WLG which provides data on how litigation can impact company share prices across its lifecycle, even for claimants. This found that upon the announcement of litigation, companies see an average 5% drop in share price. The report further distinguished the drop in share price between claimants and defendants. Suzanne outlined how claimants see an average 3.5% drop, whereas defendants see an average 6.1% drop.

Upon the conclusion of litigation, the average change in share value for companies announcing positive outcomes was +8%, whereas for negative outcomes it was -1.6%. In the first 100 days following the conclusion of litigation, the study found that companies with a negative outcome underperformed in the market by -12.0% compared to companies with a positive outcome, which outperformed the market by +1.5%.

Clive focussed on how journalists increasingly rely upon litigation PR professionals to help them negotiate the architecture of complex litigation.  He spoke of how even seemingly tedious CMCs can be used by legal teams to put information into the public domain as part of the information war that lies at the heart of big cases.

For more information on the event, please click here.