When a Jiangsu entrepreneur, Mr Shen, was pressed for money by law enforcement officers from another province, it was his lawyer who first advised him to secure evidence and file a jurisdictional objection. When Xinba Team, one of China’s top livestream shopping groups, was caught in a scandal over bird’s nest drinks, a refund plan drafted overnight by its legal counsel became crucial to limiting the damage. And when snack maker Bestore faced allegations of falsified ingredient labels, the joint response of its legal and public relations teams proved decisive in determining whether the brand could rebuild public trust.
In today’s corporate crisis management, compliance‑oriented business lawyers are no longer mere “firefighters after the fact”. They have become central decision makers throughout the entire cycle of early warning, response and recovery. Working with PR teams, they form twin lines of defence, safeguarding companies against reputational and legal risk.
Legal and PR collaboration
Tony Chen
Partner
Anli Partners
The essence of a major corporate crisis lies in the interwoven eruption of legal and reputational risks. In one case, a well‑known company found itself under fire over product quality issues.
Its PR team rushed to issue a public apology, only to be stopped by its lawyers, who warned that a statement released without legal vetting could later be used as evidence against the company in court. This disconnect between legal and PR strategies is precisely why many corporate crisis responses fall short.
The value of business compliance lawyers lies first in their ability to build a framework that balances the “legal baseline” with the “communication boundary”. In a case of profit‑driven, cross‑provincial law enforcement in Jiangsu, lawyers not only guided the company in recording procedural flaws as evidence, but also planned the timing for submitting that evidence to the procuratorate.
The co-ordinated strategy ultimately achieved a dual objective: holding the authorities legally accountable, while restoring the company’s public credibility.
Synergy between lawyers and public relations should be based on a three-tier response mechanism. In the early stage of a crisis, lawyers prioritise determining the legal nature of the incident – such as whether it constitutes false advertising or involves criminal risk – and set non-negotiable boundaries for public relations messaging.
During the escalation phase, the PR team, guided by legal compliance advice, designs transparent communication strategies, such as the lawyer-witnessed re-examination livestream that could have been adopted in the Bestore incident. In the resolution phase, both sides collaborate on long‑term remedies: lawyers strengthen compliance systems, while the PR team translates those rectification efforts into renewed brand trust.
In one case, when a Shandong market regulator was recorded saying, “It is easy to bring down a company”, the firm’s legal and PR teams worked together to challenge the misconduct through administrative reconsideration, and used the media to clarify the company’s compliance position, preventing reputational fallout.
Preventive measures
During the risk warning stage, lawyers assist companies in transforming legal provisions into measurable risk indicators. Unlike public opinion monitoring, lawyers focus on the prohibitive clauses of the Advertising Law and the Consumer Protection Law, establishing specialised monitoring dimensions such as “absolute terms” and “efficacy claims”.
For example, the legal counsel of a livestreaming agency once used keyword monitoring to detect in advance that a host had used prohibited expressions such as “safest” and “100% effective” in a video. The video was taken down within two hours of release, avoiding penalties from market regulators. This combination of “legal sensitivity and technical tools” enables the precise identification of risks that conventional monitoring may overlook.
In the crisis management phase, lawyers build a legal firewall. In the Xinba bird’s nest incident, the company’s initial response lacked legal input, creating a logical flaw: it acknowledged that the product contained bird’s nest ingredients, but sidestepped the issue of exaggerated claims, which only deepened public scepticism.
A professional approach would have lawyers first defining the nature of the conduct, determining whether it constituted false advertising rather than a product quality issue, and designing the response framework accordingly.
This could include admitting promotional errors, clarifying actual product content, and proposing a refund or compensation plan, which the PR team can then translate into plain, persuasive language. Data show that crisis responses with strong legal involvement cut legal risks by 62% and raise public acceptance by 40%.
In long-term compliance building, lawyers turn crisis lessons into actionable systems. After a snack company experienced a controversy over its ingredient list, its legal counsel not only revised the label review process but also innovatively introduced a “lawyer-witnessed sample retention system”, where each product batch was sealed under legal supervision.
In the event of a dispute, notarised re-examination can be initiated immediately. This mechanism later became an important endorsement of brand trust. This ability to turn crisis into rectification, rectification into system improvement, and system improvement into trust also helps build effective synergy with PR partners.
Insights and model innovation
Analysis of numerous cases reveals the “golden ratio” for collaboration between lawyers and PR teams. Prior to a crisis, lawyers lead the construction of compliance systems (accounting for 70%), while the PR team assists with risk awareness training (accounting for 30%).
During a crisis, the balance of responsibilities shifts dynamically; in the legal characterisation phase, lawyers take the lead (80%), while in the communication and execution phase, PR assumes a greater role (60%). After the crisis, lawyers are responsible for optimising internal systems (60%), and PR focuses on rebuilding trust (40%).
An innovative “dual director system” is being adopted by an increasing number of companies. Under this model, a chief compliance officer, typically a senior lawyer, and a chief public relations officer both report directly to the CEO, holding weekly risk co-ordination meetings.
After implementing this system, a listed company successfully reduced its annual crisis management costs by 58%, with 73% of the savings attributable to fines and compensation avoided through early legal intervention. This structure fundamentally resolves the internal friction caused by conflicting legal and public relations advice.
Commercial crisis management has now entered a new stage of legal-business integration. As public expectations for corporate integrity rise and regulatory enforcement becomes increasingly stringent, only by combining legal expertise with the communication strengths of public relations can companies build true “compliance immunity”.
From jurisdiction disputes involving Jiangsu entrepreneurs to Xinba’s high-profile compensation case, these episodes highlight a recurring truth: Amid a crisis, co-ordination between lawyers and public relations is not a matter of choice, but a matter of survival.
Tony Chen is a partner is an partner at Anli Partners.
Anli Partners
35-36/F, Fortune Financial Center
5 East 3rd Ring Middle Road
Chaoyang District, Beijing 100020, China
Tel: +86 10 8587 9199
E-mail: tonychen@anlilaw.com
