TJ Walker says lawyers shouldn't write crisis statements because legal language kills trust. He explains why minimizing legal risk backfires when you need public goodwill, and shows how CEOs should acknowledge harm and speak like humans instead.
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Look folks, some of my best friends are lawyers. Lawyers can be wonderful, sweet, charming, nice, intelligent people. And when you're in a jam, they can keep you out of prison. They can keep you from paying huge fines to the government, to people who claim you've wronged them. So I'm not anti lawyer, but if you or your organization have gone through a crisis and the whole world is looking at you now, all the media are focused on you, I beg you, do not, absolutely do not let a lawyer write your statement that you are going to give to the media. Now I've seen countless, countless, we've all seen in just the last week or so examples of major corporations, major airlines in the recent past, major oil companies who have responded during times of crisis with statements obviously written by lawyers. Here's the problem with this. Lawyers are experts at the law. They are very good at persuading a judge to not imprison you or fine you. But the reality is, if you are a modern day corporation or any institution, it's not enough to stay out of prison. You have to have the support of your customers, the public, regulators, government officials. If everybody hates you and thinks you're contemptible, even though they don't think you've done anything illegal, you will be out of business. And that's the problem with lawyers crafting statements. They have their own language that doesn't mean anything to most people. They are looking at very arcane, specific legal issues and they're going in to keep you from further exposure, legal exposure. All of that's incredibly useful for a part of your objective. But if it's a crisis, your biggest objective has got to be to not lose goodwill of your customers, clients, prospects, investors and everyone else. And hiring a lawyer to write a statement like that is like hiring a surgeon to paint your house crazy. It's like hiring a public relations person to defend you. If you're on trial for murder. Would you do that? You may have the smartest, most highly paid, successful PR person in the world willing to work for you for free. But would you have that person defending you if you were up for the death penalty? I don't think so. So why does this happen? Corporation CEOs rightly need to worry about legal concerns so they listen to their lawyers. And unfortunately, there is a stature gap in most organizations and most companies. I'm still shocked, but I still encounter major corporations around the world where the head of primary is a young person, 25 years old, making $39,000 a year. The chief legal counsel is 55 years old and, you know, has hair like mine and is making a million dollars a year. Well, guess which one has the ear of the CEO? The same one who's sitting in on board meetings and attends the same country clubs quite often. So the PR person is ignore. Huge, huge, huge mistake. Now, certainly, I would let your lawyers look at the statement you plan on giving to the public. And if they're telling you, if you say this, I guarantee you're going to prison. Well, you can scratch that off. But what's needed in a time of crisis is for you to acknowledge what's happened, show some remorse for anyone who's been hurt, talk about how you're investigating to make sure this thing can never happen again, and reassure people that you're going to do your best to make sure that your company is going to behave honorably, ethically, and not harm anyone. And you can say those things without opening up legal liability. I've worked with plenty of clients who have done that successfully. I've also seen numerous clients and in fact, I've had clients who ignore that or they practice that and then they let their lawyers write the script saying we're not culpable of. We'll investigate and let you know at our next board meeting in three months. Awful, awful, awful stuff. So CEOs out there especially listen to lawyers, let them edit out something they think is going to guarantee danger. But you've got to listen to actual communicators when crafting a message during a time of crisis. And you got to speak like a real human. Do that and you'll be in much better shape. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. Please like this page? Please share it and leave a comment.
