For Lanny Davis, Silence Is Not an Option When Crisis Hits
Davis has a focused understanding of a lawyer's role in times of crisis.
March 28, 2019 at 05:30 AM
4 minute read
“Tell it often, tell it early, tell it yourself.” That's the subtitle of Lanny Davis' 1999 memoir about his time in the Clinton White House, when he answered 125 phone calls a day from members of the press chasing stories about purported campaign finance violations and other percolating scandals.
And it's an indication that Davis, whose latest in a long string of high-profile and often unsympathetic clients is President Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen, has a different, more focused understanding of a lawyer's role in times of crisis.
After his return to private practice at Patton Boggs in 1998, the one-time litigator found himself giving clients advice that broke from what they heard from other attorneys.
“I became something of a renegade or a rogue lawyer in my profession, disagreeing with my fellows that 'no comment' was a strategy to save a reputation, or company or share value,” he says.
Since then, Davis has taken his law practice through Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; McDermott Will & Emery; and Dilworth Paxson. In 2016, he launched Davis Goldberg & Galper with two colleagues who were with him at both Patton Boggs and Orrick. As an indication of the firm's priorities, it's tightly intertwined with D.C. public relations firm Trident DMG. When Cohen appeared before the House Oversight Committee in February, both Davis and his Trident co-founder, PR specialist Eleanor McManus, were seated directly behind him.
Testifying under oath before a group of elected representatives eager to score points with a national television audience is an act that benefits from legal and media advice, which Davis and his team are happy to provide. But he's also built his crisis management practice on the notion that lawyers wield a crucial tool that PR specialists lack: attorney-client privilege.
That insight emerged, Davis says, during his stint as special counsel for President Clinton. Lawyers met daily to discuss special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's inquiry—not just how to respond to discovery requests and handle the investigation, but also how to handle the press. White House press secretary Mike McCurry was excluded from the conversation. “I can't go into that room,” he'd tell Davis. “Make sure you do not leave that room of lawyers without your blood being on the floor.”
“What he meant,” Davis explains, “was I had to argue and argue and argue using the vocabulary of lawyers.”
Davis says he had to make the case for Clinton's team pre-emptively getting the facts out, rather than reacting, as lawyers often recommend.
His law partner Joshua Galper, who joined the White House office of legal counsel after Davis' departure for a law school summer, says the principle now guides the firm's work for corporate clients and individuals: “It's that same idea of law, politics and media all under the attorney-client relationship,” he says.
For privilege to apply, the attorneys' legal skills have to be part of the equation. In 2001, a federal judge found that privilege did not apply to the communications between former White House counsel Jack Quinn, now a partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, and fugitive financier Marc Rich in pursuit of a pardon from President Clinton.
Adam Goldberg, the third partner in the operation, assures that there is a legal dimension to their work, saying that much of what they do is aimed at heading off a potential crisis.
“We just had a client a couple months ago who was thinking of engaging in a very high-profile transaction. They just wanted to make sure they were looking at it from all the different perspectives,” Goldberg says.
The client's other legal counsel wasn't fully attuned to certain regulatory and reputational angles of the matter, so Davis Goldberg & Galper weighed the media response and how to respond to federal agencies and forces on Capitol Hill.
As Davis sees it, the growing number of law firms tacking on crisis management work shows that others are coming around to his perspective: In the face of scrutiny, silence is not an option.
“A lawyer can't help a client when their shares are going down and they're being attacked in the media,” he says.
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