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It seems that scandal is everywhere these days:  from political candidates to car companies, from celebrity hacks to environmental disasters.  Perhaps the scandals themselves are not new, but the breadth, reach, and very definition of media has completely changed over the past ten years.  Because these scandals typically have significant legal implications, lawyers are almost always involved from the beginning.  Yet, how a scandal plays out depends as much on understanding and managing the public narrative as it does the legal one.

What is crisis management today and what role do lawyers play?  How can lawyers better understand, shape, and engage with the public face of a scandal while developing the legal response?  The Center on the Legal Profession and the Rock Center for Corporate Governance are pleased to welcome Lanny Davis, reknowned legal crisis management expert and former White House Counsel to the President Bill Clinton, Walter Montgomery, founding partner of the New York communications firm Robinson Lerer Montgomery (now known as Finsbury),  Lin-Hua Wu, until recently a partner at the Berkshire Group and now head of corporate communications for Square, and Nigel Glennie, Director of Business Critical Communications for Cisco, for a discussion moderated by Professor Dan Siciliano.

Lanny Davis
Lawyer, Crisis Manager, Consultant, Author, and Television Commentator

Lanny J. Davis is a lawyer, crisis manager, consultant, author, and television commentator providing strategic counsel to clients under scrutiny on crisis management and legal issues by combining legal, media and political strategies. He develops and manages communications programs around litigation and crises to protect brand reputations. He is often called to serve as on camera spokesperson on behalf of an individual or corporation.

Lanny represents individuals, countries, and companies in high stakes global crises, litigation, government investigations and crisis management. He has conceived, created and led media strategies for clients that have included CEOs, sports celebrities, political leaders, world leaders, and both U.S. and international companies. He has handled the cases of public figures from Martha Stewart to Dan Snyder, companies from Whole Foods to Starbucks, and political figures from President Bill Clinton to Representative Charlie Rangel.

Lanny is principal in the Washington law firm of Lanny J. Davis & Associates, which specializes in legal crisis management, and Executive Vice President at the public relations firm LEVICK. Although a Democrat, Lanny has friends on both sides of the aisle. During the Clinton administration, Lanny served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton and was a spokesperson for the president and the White House on matters concerning campaign finance investigations and other legal issues. In 2005 President George W. Bush appointed Lanny to serve on the five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, created by the U.S. Congress as part of the 2005 Intelligence Reform Act. In that capacity, he received the highest level security clearances so that he could be fully briefed and “read in” to the various anti-terrorist surveillance and financial tracking programs at the highest classified level.

For 25 years prior to 1996, before his tenure as special counsel to President Clinton, Lanny was a commercial, antitrust, government contracts and False Claims Act litigator (both in defense as well as plaintiff). He has argued numerous appellate cases in the U.S. courts of appeals. He has experience in securities fraud and SEC investigations as well, and has found that utilizing such an integrated legal/media/lobbying approach can lead to quicker and less expensive settlements or even successfully litigated outcomes. Senior officials of public companies have also hired Lanny and his crisis group to defend themselves successfully against “short and distort” attacks and other market manipulations.

Lanny has participated in national, state and local politics for almost 30 years. He has served three terms (1980 to 1992) on the Democratic National Committee representing the state of Maryland, and during that period he served on the DNC Executive Committee and as chairman of the Eastern Region Caucus. In Montgomery County, Maryland, he served as chairman of the Washington Suburban Transit Commission.

Lanny has authored several books and lectured throughout the U.S. and Europe on various political issues: “Scandal: How “Gotcha” Politics Is Destroying America,” and “Truth To Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself: Notes from My White House Education.” His latest book, “Crisis Tales – Five Rules for Handling Scandal in Business, Politics and Life,” was published by Simon & Schuster in 2013.

Lanny graduated from Yale Law School, where he won the prestigious Thurman Arnold Moot Court prize and served on the Yale Law Journal. A graduate of Yale University, he served as chairman of the Yale Daily News. Lanny is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Connecticut and before the Supreme Court of the United States and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

He has been a regular television commentator and has been a political and legal analyst for MSNBC, CNN, CNBC and network TV news programs and has published numerous op-ed/ analysis pieces in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other national publications. He is currently a contributor to Fox News, and has a “Purple Nation” column that appears regularly in The Hill, The Huffington Post, FoxNews.com, The Daily Caller, and Newsmax. He can be followed on Twitter @LannyDavis.

Walter Montgomery
Partner, Finsbury

Walter G. Montgomery, a Co-Founder of Robinson Lerer & Montgomery (RLM) and now Advisory Partner at Finsbury, served for fourteen years as Chief Executive Officer of RLM and then RLM Finsbury. He retired from that position in 2014 but continues to work closely with the organization on client matters.

Specializing in crisis management, litigation, regulatory issues, financial communications and thought leadership, Walter has assisted more than 200 corporations, philanthropies and educational institutions. His assignments have included many of the most prominent crises and issues over the past three decades.

Previously, Walter served as Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Communications for American Express Company, and was a partner at the financial communications consulting firm Kekst and Company. He is a director of several nonprofit organizations, including Project HOPE and the YMCA of Greater New York, and is also a member and past Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. A veteran of the U.S. Army, Walter holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Chinese history from Brown University and a B.A. in political science from Syracuse University.

Lin-Hua Wu
Head of Corporate Communications for Square

Lin-Hua has spent more than a dozen years advising companies on critical communications issues, with a focus on crises, litigation, M&A, IPO’s and restructuring. She has worked with companies in the technology, financial services, consumer retail, hospitality and transportation industries. Her crisis experience also includes leading companies through in-depth crisis communications simulations so they are better prepared. Lin-Hua recently joined Square Inc., the San Francisco-based payments company, as Head of Corporate Communications. Prior to Square, she was a Partner at Brunswick Group and was previously at Kekst and Company, where she served as head of the firm’s San Francisco office. She began her career as an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati in Palo Alto.  Lin-Hua graduated with a B.A. in international relations from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Nigel Glennie 
Director, Global Corporate Communications for Cisco

Nigel Glennie is a global-minded corporate communications executive with 20 years of public relations, crisis communications, and employee communications experience. As Director, Global Corporate Communications for Cisco, he leads a team responsible for corporate PR and business critical communications. Nigel moved to the United States from his homeland of Australia in 2007. His professional background includes communications roles with a national department store chain, a regional wood products company, a full-service telecommunications provider, and a global resources company. Nigel also serves as an appointed member of the Global Ethics Committee for the International Association of Business Communicators.