Litigation public relations

Litigation public relations, also known as litigation communications, is the management of the communication process during the course of any legal dispute or adjudicatory processing so as to affect the outcome or its impact on the client's overall reputation. The aims of litigation PR differ from general PR in that they are tied to supporting a legal dispute rather than general profile raising. Accordingly, there is a greater focus on the legal implications of any communications given the strategic aims and sensitive rules around disclosure during court proceedings. According to "The New York Times", sophisticated litigation public relations efforts have included "round-the-clock crisis P.R. response, efforts to shape internet search results, and a website with international reports and legal filings" intended to support one side of the case. 
Background.
The use of mass media to present a particular narrative to the public has been employed by both plaintiffs and prosecutors for a long time, but the formal practice of litigation PR, a sub-specialty of crisis communication, emerged in the United States in the early 1980s with Alan Hilburg, a pioneer in litigation communications representation of U.S. Tobacco in the Marsee case. Since then, the demand for litigation PR has expanded significantly as media coverage of court cases and legal disputes has increased. Parties to a lawsuit often have interests that expand beyond legal concerns. Negative publicity about a litigant can cause damage to an individual's reputation that persists even if they win the case itself. Thus, many seek to limit the negative publicity associated with their cases. Given the often complex matters which are the subject of litigation, practitioners need to digest and simplify these to ensure media and public interest in the story, without diluting any of the meaning in legal documents.
Definition.
Litigation PR is the management of the communication process before and during a legal dispute or adjudicatory processing so as to affect the outcome or its impact on the client's overall reputation.
Objectives.
One objective of litigation PR is to influence the outcome of the court case by encouraging early or favorable settlement or by pressuring the prosecution into bringing lesser or no charges.
Another objective is to protect the client's reputation before and during the trial. In this regard, litigation PR is similar to reputation management, managing public perception of an organization or individual, rather than information itself. A key aspect of reputation management is influencing attitude about the individual and corporation, which can encourage positive activation to the benefit of the organization.
Author Kathy Fitzpatrick identified six objectives of litigation public relations:
To achieve those objectives, the PR agent has to establish credibility with the media as an information source. The next step is to control the flow of information to the media to ensure the preferred narrative is disseminated. The third step is to develop a message that supports the client's position and spread that message to the media and the public.
Media coverage.
Litigation PR on the part of defendants, especially in high-profile cases, aims to counter the inherent bias in the media in favor of plaintiffs and prosecutors. When allegations are made public, the media often casts the lawsuit in terms of victim versus villain. News stories frequently lead with the plaintiff or prosecutors' allegations. If the defendant's responses are included at all, they appear well into the story. Thus, the defendant is forced on the defensive from the outset. In such a situation, "working with the media to create more balanced, accurate, and less sensational coverage of a lawsuit is a necessary element in defending high profile defendants".