BUSINESS
CAREERS
DAN WILTON / IS TOCKPHOTO. COM
Dangers
creep up
quickly
from
behind
STORY BY
DONALEE
MOULTON
A good reputation is critical to the long-term survival of a company, and in the
Internet age, that reputation can be repeatedly applauded — or attacked — by social
media users. That virtual reality now has
businesses and their lawyers looking closely
at what is being said about them online. In
many cases, it’s also changing the advice a
generally conservative legal profession is
dispensing to clients in crisis.
“People are more focused on reputation
today because it is in jeopardy more quickly
and more profoundly,” said George Waggott,
a partner with McMillan LLP in Toronto.
The ever-evolving online environment is
creating new issues for companies and their
counsel. “Social media allows what used to
be small problems to become very big problems, and you can never predict what will go
viral,” said Michael Smith, a partner with
Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Toronto.
As a result, said Jerry Patterson, a partner with Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP in
Calgary, “reputation management is an
increasingly sensitive issue for many of our
corporate clients. The advent of bloggers,
tweeters and other Internet authors, with
a largely unfettered ability to publish, and
then have republished, material via the
Internet, can have a profound impact upon
a company’s reputation.
“Similarly,” he added, “the need for main-
stream media to find content for 24-hour
news channels and websites can mean that
certain news events, which in the past may
have appeared once in the middle pages of a
daily newspaper, are now broadcast and
published several times over a longer time
period to a much wider audience.”
Companies are looking to avert worst-
case scenarios and are putting their resour-
ces, legal and otherwise, to work for them.
Being prepared is essential. “The key ele-
ment is planning and, in particular, crisis
planning,” Smith said. “There can’t be any
bigger stress on a brand or reputation than
there is during a crisis.”
A crisis or reputation-management
strategy doesn’t need to be unnecessarily
detailed or complex, Waggott said. “Some-
times the word ‘plan’ can sound more
onerous than it is. It’s more about what is
your decision-making. You can never list
all of the eventualities.”
A shift in the legal landscape is also
compelling companies to shift response
mechanisms. “The traditional threat of a
defamation lawsuit is less compelling than
it used to be as the law attempts to keep
pace with the elusive nature of many Inter-
net communications. Jurisdictional issues
can, for example, prove to be problematic
for Internet postings,” Patterson said.
