Reputational Management

In an increasingly connected and fast-moving digital environment, an entity’s reputation is among its most valuable assets. Allegations, adverse publicity, online commentary, cyber-crime, regulatory investigations and disputes can rapidly escalate into significant reputational challenges for businesses, organisations and individuals.

Our Reputational Management team provides strategic, practical and discreet advice to clients facing issues that may affect their relationships with customers, employees, investors, regulators or the wider public. We work closely with both private and public sector clients to assess risks, develop effective response strategies and protect their commercial and personal interests.

Our expertise includes defamation and media law, privacy and data protection issues, crisis management, regulatory and investigations-related communications, injunctive relief, online content disputes and reputation-related litigation. 

We understand that reputational issues often require immediate action. Our team combines legal expertise with commercial insight to help clients manage sensitive situations confidently, minimise risk and protect their reputation both now and for the future.

Our team also includes health and social care specialists with the expertise and know-how to advise on the management of adverse incidents and adverse publicity arising in the healthcare sector. Given our extensive experience, we can assess the risks rapidly and work with you to develop a strategy to manage the situation effectively, devising an appropriate action plan to safeguard your organisation’s reputation whilst doing everything possible to protect you, support your staff and retain the confidence of service users and the wider public.

Our services include:

• Defamation and media law advice
• Online publication and social media disputes
• Emergency injunctive relief to include seeking online takedown orders and identification of anonymous posters of damaging content 
• Crisis and incident response to include following cyber-attacks, and pre-emptive advices on reputational risks and preparation of action plans
• Privacy, confidentiality and data protection matters
  

Recent mandates:

• Acting for a number of public and private sector clients in the immediate aftermath of high-profile cyber-attacks which involved obtaining court orders against Persons Unknown requiring them to deliver up illegally obtained data and associated Norwich Pharmacal Orders, and engaging with online content providers on foot of such court orders. 

• Acting for a large corporate client in obtaining Norwich Pharmacal Orders requiring a prominent social media platform to provide basic subscriber information relating to the identities of the creator and administrator(s) of a social media page on which defamatory material was appearing which facilitated High Court defamation proceedings subsequently issuing against three named individuals.

• Advising a corporate client regarding a fraudulent page on a social media platform used to defraud third parties which involved advising on engagements with the social media platform regarding removal of the page and complaints to Coimisiún na Meán against the social media platform.

• Acting on behalf of a semi-state regulatory body in a seminal Irish High Court decision obtaining a Norwich Pharmacal Order confirming the Irish courts have jurisdiction to grant Norwich Pharmacal Orders to statutory regulators and that the Irish courts have discretion to order the disclosure of information beyond the mere identification of alleged wrongdoers. 

• Advising a university in the context of threatening/disparaging video content published on online video platforms concerning an employee and the duty owed by the university as employer to the employee which included advices on the possible options available to have such defamatory content taken down such as via court proceedings or via the platforms’ internal reporting and notice and takedown procedures. 

• Acting on behalf of a semi-state regulatory body in defence of High Court defamation proceedings brought by a plaintiff arising from a regulatory inspection.

• Acting for a state agency in defence of High Court defamation proceedings brought by an employment candidate arising from job references provided during the course of a recruitment process.