When a company crisis hits, it's tempting for in-house legal teams to opt for near silence: don't say anything that could be used in court. But some crisis management consultants say this can be exactly the wrong way to approach a bad situation.

It's a topic that's come up a lot recently, as tech giant Apple Inc. faces a preliminary French criminal probe and domestic lawsuits over claims that it purposefully slowed down older iPhones to incentivize the purchase of newer devices.

The Cupertino, California-based company released a public apology at the end of December in a post that admitted iPhones with older batteries experience slower performance. Apple's post claimed that the slower performance was introduced in an update last year to prevent the problem of random shutdowns in older phones, and wasn't intended to trick users into buying new iPhones.

“I find consumers will accept mistakes so long as you explain to them what's happened so that it doesn't happen again,” said James Haggerty, an attorney and president and CEO of PRCG Haggerty, which provides consulting on reputation management. “What they don't abide by is the cover-up.”

Which is why, Haggerty says, Apple's post should have come out as soon as the company knew older iPhones were slowed. Even with best intentions, an apology coming out around a year after the update's installment reads as a cover-up, he explained. He added that the delayed reaction also indicates that the company may not have had a real plan to handle an issue that it would have been able to anticipate might become public.

Harlan Loeb, global chairman of the crisis and risk practice for Edelman and a professor at Northwestern University Law School, agrees that it's important to be as transparent as possible as early as possible. He says that even if a company isn't fully sure what's causing a problem or doesn't have a solution, consumers have more trust in companies that speak out early.

But he also says it's good that Apple did eventually say something.

The apology post may have revealed more than the average in-house lawyer would have liked, but its attempt to increase transparency and offer a solution—reducing the price to replace iPhone batteries—could keep consumers from abandoning Apple, Loeb says.

“Legal risk is addressable and solvable with money,” Loeb said. ”You can pay to address legal risk, but you can't pay to restore your credibility or restore trust for integrity and transparency.” 

Haggerty argues that legal teams who opt for a “say nothing and we'll handle this in court” approach in a PR crisis are taking a shortsighted route that has been “proven wrong so many times it almost amounts to professional negligence.”

It's unclear why Apple didn't disclose the iPhone-slowing software sooner. But the consultants agree there's still a lesson for legal teams: if something could be an issue, spot it early and let the public know—because it will probably come out eventually (see: Uber's data breach).

“You could win the battle from a legal stance and lose the war,” Haggerty said.