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Bunker Mentality Ill Serves ATLA
If you were seeking to polish your public image, would you embrace the media or push it away? The Association of Trial Lawyers of America claims to be on a mission to enhance public understanding of trial lawyers' contributions and to counter criticisms of trial lawyers leveled by big business. As we discussed here last month, this mission led the organization of plaintiffs' lawyers to change its name to the American Association for Justice. (My post criticized the name change and a Los Angeles Times editorial earlier this month echoed those criticisms.)
Now we learn, through a column by Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly editor David Yas which was reprinted this week at PointofLaw.com, that ATLA, for the second year running, barred members of the media from attending its annual convention. As Yas so aptly puts it: "Umm ... guys ... what does that do for the image of trial lawyers?"
I've attended my share of ATLA conventions, not as a member but as a member of the news media. In fact, for two years in the early '90s, when i was editor of Lawyers Weekly USA (now Lawyers USA), I took teams of reporters to ATLA conventions in Boston and San Diego to put out daily convention newspapers. We had a sour incident at one, when our front-page morning story highlighted a strategy speech by ATLA's lobbyist that was supposed to be closed to the press. Hey, no one told us. That incident aside, my attendance at ATLA's conventions helped me better understand the organization and the people who make it up.
I've attended plenty of other legal conventions over the years, including some of the leading defense organization, the Defense Research Institute. Every time, I'd describe the outcome as a mutual win-win. As a representative of the media, I came away with a better understanding of the organization, new names for my Rolodex and a bucket of story ideas, most of them positive. The organization not only earned some positive press, but it established direct contacts with and better understanding of the reporters who write about it.
Yas wrote in his column: "Trial lawyers may be fighting a bare-knuckle, public-image battle. But what happens at ATLA, stays at ATLA." In my mind, that kind of PR may work for a party town such as Las Vegas, but ATLA's bunker mentality can only hurt an organization that seeks to better its public image.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on September 1, 2006 at 03:11 PM | Permalink
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