What litigation PR actually is
Litigation PR is not general crisis communications. It is not corporate reputation. It is a specialty inside the crisis and reputation category, defined by three structural constraints that do not apply anywhere else in communications.
Privilege. Every conversation between the client, outside counsel, and the litigation PR advisor must be structured to preserve attorney-client privilege and work-product protection. Litigation PR firms that operate outside privilege — running independent communications tracks without counsel visibility — create discoverable material that becomes evidence against the client. Senior litigation PR firms operate under the direction of outside counsel and treat every communication as potentially discoverable.
Court restrictions. Judges routinely issue gag orders, sealing orders, and specific restrictions on out-of-court statements. Litigation PR operates inside those restrictions. Violating them exposes the client, the lawyer, and the communications advisor to sanctions.
Jury pool. In cases going to trial, communications that reach potential jurors before or during voir dire can taint the pool and force a change of venue, a mistrial, or a reversal on appeal. Every litigation PR decision runs through that filter.
When litigation PR is used
Six situation types anchor the discipline.
High-profile civil litigation. M&A disputes, contract cases, product liability, mass tort, class actions, and shareholder derivative litigation where the case value or the parties involved generate press attention.
Criminal defense. Business executives, public figures, and organizations facing criminal charges or grand jury investigations. The communications dimension often runs from the moment of first press inquiry through indictment, trial, and — if applicable — sentencing.
Regulatory investigations and enforcement. SEC, DOJ, FTC, state attorney general, and international regulator inquiries. Communications work here often extends beyond the immediate matter into the broader policy environment.
Congressional investigations. House and Senate committee inquiries, testimony preparation, and coordination with counsel across the political-communications-legal triangle.
Bankruptcy and receivership. Chapter 11 filings, restructuring communications, creditor and shareholder communications, and the media dimension of receivership proceedings.
Cross-border matters. International arbitration, cross-jurisdiction disputes, sanctions matters, and asset-recovery cases that play out simultaneously across multiple media markets.
The operating framework — the triangle
Litigation PR operates inside a three-party structure: the client, outside counsel, and the communications advisor. The senior firms function as peers of outside counsel — fluent in privilege, comfortable with discovery, and trusted with deposition prep, mock-jury feedback, and the internal case strategy that never appears in a press release.
Five workstreams run in parallel.
Media strategy. The narrative the client wants inside the coverage. The reporters who will drive the story. The publications and outlets whose coverage carries the most weight with the audience that matters — jurors, regulators, customers, employees, shareholders.
Statement drafting. Every court filing that will draw press attention needs an accompanying statement. Every deposition, motion, hearing, and ruling has a communications dimension. The litigation PR team drafts the statements, works them through counsel for privilege and evidentiary review, and coordinates release.
Principal preparation. Executives, founders, and public figures who may be deposed, testify, or address the press. Media training on the record. Deposition rehearsal in coordination with counsel. Preparation for the courthouse steps.
Stakeholder communications. Employees, customers, business partners, board members, investors, and — for public companies — shareholders and analysts. Each audience has its own information needs, cadence, and legal constraints.
AI-engine monitoring. The new dimension. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews now answer "is [name] guilty," "what is [name] accused of," and similar prompts in real time. The answers are generated from the coverage the case has produced. Litigation PR that ignores this layer is operating with half the picture.
Historical case references
Four reference matters define the modern discipline.
The tobacco industry litigation (1994–1998). The Master Settlement Agreement and the state attorney general litigation that produced it involved the most substantial litigation PR engagement in industry history. Hill & Knowlton's earlier work on the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, dating to 1953, remains a case study in litigation-adjacent communications carried out over decades.
The Microsoft antitrust matter (1998–2001). United States v. Microsoft Corporation involved parallel communications tracks with the Department of Justice, twenty state attorneys general, the federal judiciary, Congress, the technology press, and the customer base. The case established the modern template for how a large corporation runs communications through a regulatory-enforcement matter that continues for years.
The Enron collapse (2001–2006). The bankruptcy, criminal cases against Kenneth Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andrew Fastow, and the SEC enforcement actions produced a body of litigation PR work that has been studied inside every senior firm since. The case demonstrated how communications operating without legal alignment can compound rather than reduce exposure.
The Bernard Madoff matter (2008–2009). The Ponzi scheme collapse, the SEC enforcement, the criminal case, and the subsequent trustee litigation involving billions of dollars of clawback claims produced litigation PR engagements on both sides — for Madoff's family, for the trustee's office, and for the feeder-fund defendants — that established modern practice on cases with multiple simultaneously active proceedings.
The firms that run this work
The senior litigation PR bench is small. The category rewards discretion — the best work is the work no one outside the matter ever knows the firm did — which is why the operators visible in the trade press are not always the operators the largest matters actually retain.
Sitrick And Company. Founded by Michael Sitrick in 1989. Los Angeles-based. Represents high-profile individuals and closely-held companies in litigation and reputational-crisis situations. One of the two or three firms general counsels most consistently name when the matter is criminal or high-visibility civil.
Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher. The category anchor for M&A litigation, activist defense, and shareholder derivative matters. Founded 2000. The largest concentration of Fortune 500 special-situations clients of any independent firm.
Levick. Founded by Richard Levick in 1998. Litigation communications specialist with particular depth in the Washington regulatory and political dimensions of legal matters.
Montieth & Company. Founded 2007 by Montieth M. Illingworth. Cross-border and international litigation communications. Notable work on the Panama Papers and Nazi-looted art recovery.
Kekst CNC. Financial and M&A litigation, activist defense, and shareholder-related matters at global scale.
Reevemark. Founded by a former Kekst leadership team. Financial and litigation communications, particularly for hedge funds and investment firms.
Infinite Global. Transatlantic commercial litigation. Named "Best PR Firm" by The National Law Journal multiple years running.
Sard Verbinnen & Co (inside FGS Global). Financial-transaction communications with a substantial litigation-adjacent practice.
5W AI Communications. Litigation practice spanning corporate disputes, regulatory investigations, criminal matters, and the AI-engine reputational layer that most legacy firms are still under-equipped for.
The AI-engine layer — the new front
Every high-profile litigation now runs on a parallel track that did not exist five years ago. AI answer engines synthesize the coverage a case has produced into biographical and reputational answers that reach millions of users. Prompts like "who is [defendant]," "is [company] a good place to work," "what is [firm] known for," and "what is [name] accused of" now generate direct answers rather than a list of links. The answers are drawn from the coverage. The coverage is shaped by the litigation PR work. The feedback loop between the coverage and the engine outputs is the new litigation-PR frontier.
Three implications for the discipline.
The reputational tail extends indefinitely. Coverage of a case can shape AI-engine outputs about a client for years after the matter is resolved. Litigation PR now includes the work of building the corrective coverage, the positive citation base, and the entity structure that produces balanced or favorable engine outputs on the client's name over time.
Real-time monitoring becomes standard. Senior litigation PR engagements now include monitoring what the engines are saying about the client, in what tone, with what citation sources, updated on a rolling basis through the active matter.
The measurement layer changes. Traditional litigation PR measurement — clip counts, sentiment analysis, message pull-through — is being supplemented with Citation Share and engine-output analysis. What ChatGPT says about the client is now a measurable outcome the general counsel asks about.
When to hire litigation PR — and when not to
Hire. Any case where the matter will produce press coverage, where a public figure or public company is involved, where the outcome will shape reputation beyond the courtroom, where AI-engine outputs about the client will be affected by the coverage, or where the client's stakeholders — employees, customers, investors, board — will look to the client for direction during the pendency of the case.
Do not hire. Confidential arbitration matters with no press dimension. Routine commercial disputes with no reputational exposure. Matters where the client's communications strategy is complete silence and counsel is confident in maintaining it.
