How Public Relations And Law Go Together

I am highly interested in how public relations and law go together. It’s something that has intrigued me since last year. However, I’ve known about how law and PR go together for quite some time. That being said, I was extremely compelled to talk about this subject after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings recently.

Public relations is the court of public opinion and law is, well the court of law. What people don’t realize is that the two are very much interconnected, especially in times of crisis. Brett is exactly in the middle of that crisis right now.

In my opinion, if he has a publicist, he needs to fire him. When facing a scandal, it is important to not only apologize, but be transparent. This is often against what lawyers are taught, as I have mentioned in my last Tanacon post. Lawyers are taught to not speak any incriminating statements. Public relations professionals are sometimes taught the same, but we also know that it’s important to present statements lightly.

I think if Brett had gone on Fox News to say, “I drank a lot back then and often I was just too drunk to remember or even know what I was doing. So, I truly apologize to Mrs. Ford for her suffering caused by me. I am so sorry about what happened.” If he had said something like this, where this somewhat diffuses the situation, I’m pretty positive that this whole fiasco wouldn’t have happened. I think more Republicans and Senator Flake would have pushed him through.

However, he lied about it, which is a huge flaw in character when approaching a position of power such as supreme court judge. You can’t lie, not in the court of public opinion and not in the court of law. Additionally, you have to show that you have changed in order to change court of public opinion. I think many lawyers think staying silent will make the whole situation go away. I don’t think this is necessarily true. Sure in some cases this may be true, but I think when it comes to serious charges like sexual assault, these instances cannot be swept under the rug so easily.

The picture that Brett is trying to paint is simply not true. Additionally, he’s still trying to portray a good image: one of good husband and father, most notably. Personally, I don’t think children should be used as pawns when it comes to very negative situations. In fact, it broke my heart when his children was sitting in the room in the hearing in early September while people in the crowd yelled. If I were a little girl who adored my father, I would be very upset by this.

However, with the hearings, there is definitely a push and pull as to what one can and cannot say. What should he comment on legally? What should he comment on publicly? How is this going to make him look? These are the questions his team should have really dived deep in. That being said, I’m not sure if there is much to clean up both in a public relations sense and a legal sense. I would be very surprised if we don’t see ripple effects of all of this.

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Photo by Giammarco Boscaro on Unsplash