Litigation public relations, also called litigation communications, is the management of communication during a legal dispute, structured to protect a client's reputation without prejudicing the case. It operates under privilege, gag orders and jury-pool limits that general PR does not face, and ABA Model Rule 3.6 on trial publicity governs what lawyers may say. Fox News settled Dominion's $1.6 billion defamation suit for $787.5 million in 2023.
This is EPR's discipline overview: where the practice came from, the landmark cases that defined it, why it fails, who runs it today, and how AI answer engines have made the litigation record permanent. It is part of EPR's Legal and crisis communications coverage, and it sits under the broader legal PR guide.
What is litigation public relations?
Litigation PR differs from general public relations in one structural way: its goal is tied to supporting a legal dispute rather than general profile-raising. That means a much greater focus on the legal implications of any communication, given the strategic aims of the case and the sensitive rules around disclosure during court proceedings. Sophisticated campaigns have been described in the press as running round-the-clock crisis PR alongside the legal team, coordinating message and timing with courtroom strategy.
The discipline is more regulated than ordinary PR because of the potential to prejudice the legal process. Practitioners have to avoid breaching contempt-of-court rules, violating gag orders or tainting a jury pool. Litigation PR also leans on one-way communication: because the law is adversarial, the goal is to reinforce the legal strategy and theory of the case, not to open a dialogue with the other side. EPR's guide to what lawyers can actually say covers where that line sits.
Where did litigation PR come from?
The formal practice of litigation PR emerged in the United States in the early 1980s as a distinct sub-specialty of crisis communication. Alan Hilburg is generally credited as a pioneer, through his litigation communications work for U.S. Tobacco in the Marsee case. Plaintiffs and prosecutors had used mass media to present a narrative long before, but demand grew as media coverage of court cases increased and parties recognized that their interests extend beyond the legal questions in front of the judge.
Which landmark cases defined the discipline?
Four cases shaped how litigation PR is practiced, and each teaches a different lesson.
| Case | Year | Litigation PR lesson |
|---|
| Big Tobacco and the Master Settlement Agreement | 1998 | Litigation posture and public narrative interact over decades |
| Madoff and Lehman bankruptcy litigation | 2008 onward | Long-running financial litigation needs sustained perception management |
| Anti-SLAPP venue strategy | Ongoing | Where a case is filed can determine whether a defendant has an early public off-ramp |
| Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News | 2023 | Internal communications disclosed in litigation can reshape the public narrative |
What did Big Tobacco teach litigation PR?
Big Tobacco shows how litigation posture and public narrative interact over a multi-decade timeline. The industry reached the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with 46 states, and a 2006 federal RICO ruling found it had deceived the public about smoking's health effects for more than 50 years. The industry's communications strategy and its long-term reputational cost are still taught as a cautionary reference.
What did Madoff and Lehman teach litigation PR?
The Madoff liquidation and the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy produced some of the largest and most closely watched litigation of the post-financial-crisis era, with trustees pursuing tens of billions of dollars in claims against banks and counterparties. How banks, trustees and defendants managed public perception through years of clawback and fraudulent-transfer litigation shaped how litigation PR approaches long-running financial disputes.
What is anti-SLAPP venue strategy?
Anti-SLAPP strategy uses state statutes to dismiss Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation early. SLAPPs are suits filed to intimidate or silence critics rather than to win on the merits. More than 30 states and the District of Columbia have adopted anti-SLAPP statutes, often with fee-shifting that punishes the plaintiff for filing, which makes venue selection a communications question as much as a legal one.
Why does Dominion v. Fox matter?
Dominion v. Fox matters because the settlement showed how internal communications disclosed in litigation can reshape the public narrative regardless of the legal outcome. Dominion sued Fox for $1.6 billion in March 2021, and before trial the judge ruled that certain on-air claims about Dominion were false. The parties settled for $787.5 million on the day the trial was to begin, as NPR reported.
What does ABA Model Rule 3.6 allow?
ABA Model Rule 3.6 bars a lawyer from making an extrajudicial statement that will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing a proceeding, and most states have adopted it with modifications. The rule lets a lawyer state the claim or defense, the identity of the people involved, information in a public record, that an investigation is in progress, and the scheduling or result of any step in the litigation.
The rule also includes a safe harbor: a lawyer may make a statement that a reasonable lawyer would believe is required to protect a client from the undue prejudicial effect of recent publicity not initiated by the lawyer or the client, limited to what is necessary to mitigate it. Litigation PR professionals work inside the same ethical envelope as the attorneys they support, so communications strategy has to be cleared through legal counsel, not run independently of it.
Who runs litigation PR today?
The senior litigation PR bench is a small, discretion-driven category. The firms most consistently named by general counsel include Sitrick and Company, Joele Frank Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, Levick, Kekst CNC, Sard Verbinnen & Co and 5W AI Communications, each profiled alongside 480-plus other firms in the EPR PR firms directory. For what engagements cost and how general counsel select a firm, see how to choose a litigation PR firm, and for the ranked bench see PR firms for lawyers.
Why does litigation PR fail?
Litigation PR fails most often when the legal strategy and the public strategy pull in opposite directions. Counsel's instinct is to say less and admit nothing, which protects the company in court but reads to the public as indifference or evasion, and denial reads as dishonesty once the facts surface anyway.
| Case | What happened | Lesson |
|---|
| BP and Deepwater Horizon, 2010 | After the spill that killed 11 workers, CEO Tony Hayward said the environmental impact was likely to be "very, very modest" | Minimizing a disaster while liability is contested becomes the headline |
| United Airlines, 2017 | Early statements described the removal of passenger Dr. David Dao as re-accommodating customers, before CEO Oscar Munoz apologized | A defensive first statement sets the frame that later apologies must undo |
| Theranos, 2015 to 2022 | Theranos and its lawyers pressed the Wall Street Journal not to publish John Carreyrou's reporting, and Elizabeth Holmes was convicted of investor fraud in January 2022 | Pressure on journalists becomes its own story and does not change the evidence |
| Volkswagen, 2015 | Volkswagen admitted in September 2015 that it had installed software to cheat diesel emissions tests, and CEO Martin Winterkorn resigned days later | A regulatory case becomes a trust case when the company is seen as having concealed the problem |
In EPR's analysis of these four cases, the companies that recover fastest are the ones whose legal and communications teams agree before the crisis on where the line sits and who owns the decision when the two priorities conflict. Whether a statement of sympathy can be used against a company as an admission depends on the jurisdiction and the exact wording, so counsel has to clear it first.
What do landmark trials teach about litigation communications?
Five high-profile trials show how defendant statements, trial counsel coordination and social media amplification shape the outcome of a communications strategy.
Sam Bankman-Fried gave interviews and public statements around his December 2022 arrest, reportedly against his lawyers' advice. He was convicted in November 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in March 2024, and the case is a standard example of why a defendant's own statements need counsel's sign-off.
Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard, a 2022 defamation trial in Fairfax County, Virginia, ran on live broadcast and across social platforms at the same time, as EPR's Depp v. Heard analysis covers. A televised trial needs a response capacity built for the platforms where the audience is watching, not only for the press.
Alex Murdaugh's South Carolina murder trial was livestreamed and ended in a March 2023 conviction. State-court matters with broadcast access run on local press depth and courtroom coverage that differs from federal cases. The O.J. Simpson trial of 1994 and 1995 remains the reference case for the gap between a courtroom verdict and public opinion.
Four practices follow from these cases. Coordinate counsel and communications from the first day. Stay inside Rule 3.6 and any gag order. Keep the media voice separate from the courtroom voice. Decide how to treat reporters before the first call arrives, not during it.
How did AI answer engines change litigation PR?
AI answer engines made the litigation record permanent. When ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews answer a question about a company that has been sued, the answer synthesizes court filings, investigative journalism and press coverage, weighted by source authority, not by what a party's communications team pushed at the time. A strategy built only for the trial-era press cycle now has to account for a citation record that persists indefinitely.
The record forms before the verdict. The plaintiff's filing, the investigative journalism from week two and the congressional inquiry become permanent retrieval anchors regardless of how the case ends, so litigation PR has to build a competing primary-source record from day one. Boeing's 737 MAX litigation is the canonical example.
Silence, once a defensible legal instinct, now leaves the plaintiff's framing unchallenged. Earned media from credible third parties outranks corporate statements in AI retrieval, so the company needs credible third parties saying accurate things on the record. Recovery content, such as safety audits, third-party assessments and operational reforms, has to be built while the case is active, not after it resolves.
The ethical line still matters. Legitimate litigation PR means publishing accurate facts, providing context for complex legal claims, putting the company's documented position on the record and formally correcting factual errors in coverage. Seeding incomplete information, spinning settlements as exonerations or using media pressure to influence witnesses or juries becomes its own citable story about the company's tactics.
Which case studies show litigation PR in practice?
EPR's case studies show litigation PR succeeding and failing in public.
