Litigation support
With every piece of litigation filed comes a diversion of management resources, reputational risk, brand damage and potential personal liability. Each party enters into a case seeking to achieve the best possible outcome. More often than not, this is achieved by using an expert legal team with the support of a skilled communications team.
The Civic team understands the need to protect the reputation of a client and their business throughout the litigation period. Our extensive experience in providing litigation communications support combined with our understanding of – and contacts in – the media can help ensure the impact of negative coverage is minimised while creating proactive opportunities to reach key audiences.
Civic appreciates the need for litigation communications support to be led by the legal strategy – not the other way around. Many members of our team hold law degrees and have experience working with legal teams to ensure that strategies and tactics deployed comply with legal requirements and support the overall litigation strategy.
Some of our experts
Jason Aldworth
Chris Newman
Mark Hawthorne
Rora Furman
Rebecca Harrison
Sam Bishop
Fiona Bauer
Emily Broadbent
Some of our success stories
After a star athlete’s contract with the national team / players association was torn up after posting religious scriptures on social media, Civic was engaged to support him as he took his unlawful termination case to the Fair Work Commission and the Federal Circuit Court.
Subject to intense media scrutiny, a need for the athlete to speak directly to supporters was identified. Content for social media and a dedicated website was created and combined with a proactive approach that saw the story run across all national news networks and mastheads rather than just the sports pages.
By taking control of the narrative, Civic was able to galvanise the athlete’s support base in the face of a well-resourced PR campaign run by his former employers.
In December 2019, a confidential settlement was reached. According to the Australian Financial Review, the Civic-led PR campaign was pivotal in turning “a weak legal hand into a strong suit” that ultimately led to the athlete “extracting a huge payment and apology from rugby authorities”.