SANT’ANNA SCHOOL LIDER-LAB - DIRPOLIS INSTITUTE (LAW, POLITICS, DEVELOPMENT) ORGANIZED A SEMINAR ON “LITIGATION PR, OUTPUT OF COURT CASE AND REPUTATION”, PISA, MARCH 20, 2018

The Ferpi (Italian Federation of Public Relations) Comunicare le professioni” and Sant’Anna School Lider-Lab (International and Comparative Law Research Laboratory) have organized a comprehensive seminar on litigation PR and the client’s reputation at every stage of civil or criminal trials.

Academics, lawyers, and communication experts have discussed about managing public perception of an organization or individual and how publicity could impact the entire strategy of a legal case. The goal of the seminar titled “Le relazioni pubbliche nel processo civile e penale: tecniche comunicative, aspetti deontologici. Quali spazi per la tutela risarcitoria?” was to explore the role of negative publicity on public opinion and the damage to the client’s credibility.

This seminar marks the launch of Laura Calciolari’s new book on “Litigation PR tra tutela della reputazione del cliente e la creazione di nuovi team legali”. Laura Calciolari focused on the management of the communications process to protect a client’s reputation, ensure balanced media coverage and manage media interviews. The book shows how to counter negative publicity and work with the media to avoid sensationalism and media exploitation of the entertainment value in criminal and civil cases.

Professor Giovanni Comadè, who coordinates the Lider-Lab, lawyers Lorenzo Gremigni, David Cerri and Elena Occhipinti gave their lectures on litigation PR as a critical part of legal practice, crisis communications, rules of legal ethics, professional responsibility, and standards of conduct for lawyers and PR practitioners.

This seminar offered the opportunity for a joint event that involved presentation of academic research questions, and the media enormous capacity to influence public perception. Ethics and responsibility are still important topics in university experience and practice; this seminar organized by Sant’Anna School Lider-Lab provided an overview of ethics in public relations, the current state of litigation PR, and the implications for practitioners.