Four Linsane Lessons for Corporate Counsel

In my work as a consultant on crisis communications and other complex public perception issues, I’m often accused of relying too heavily on sports metaphors when counseling and training.

But they work. . . so I’m making a Linsane drive to the hoop once again.

The big news in the sports world in the past several weeks, of course, has been the emergence of Jeremy Lin as a bona fide NBA star. For those of you who missed it (and if you did, you may be working too hard), Lin, a Tiawanese-American basketball player from California, had been passed over by major scholarship-granting universities (he had to settle for Harvard), then cut by two NBA teams before landing at the New York Knicks. There he wallowed on the bench for weeks, before injuries to several key players put him on the court as a starter.

Lin responded in a manner befitting a made-for-TV movie: he scored more points in his first six starts than any player in NBA history (and that includes Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal). He became the first Harvard student to play in the NBA since 1954, and the first Asian-American since the 1940s. He was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated two weeks in a row.

In the process, Lin demolished stereotypes about basketball, race, and athletic ability. He also left the sports world wondering: how so many could have been so wrong about so good a player?

But for our purposes, the question is: What can the emergence of this off-the-bench Knicks superstar teach corporate counsel and their business colleagues about legal and public perception crises? Consider the following.

1. Corporate Counsel Can Make a Difference as ‘Company Point Guard’

A point guard in basketball brings the ball up the court, directs the offense, and distributes the ball to other players on the team. Without such a leader, the team flounders. The Knicks, for example, had won 5 games and lost 15 before Lin took over. Suddenly, they won seven of the next nine with Lin leading the charge.

So, too, in crisis matters, high-profile litigation, and other complex public perception events. The lack of a sure-handed leader—a skilled corporate point guard directing the action—can lead to failure. Public implications of legal disputes are ignored until it is too late. No one is properly explaining what is happening to investors, regulators, employees, and other influential audiences. Ill-conceived public statements, slapped together at the 11th hour, do little to help. Companies and their lawyers fall back on tired clichés that reinforce the sense the things are spinning out of control—“No comment” being only the most obvious example.

As corporate counsel, it often falls on you to be the point guard for your organization in the heat of a difficult corporate crisis or high-profile legal matter. You need to run an effective offense: moving the ball down court, anticipating what’s going to happen next, passing at the right time to team members who can score.

2. Counsel Can Set the Whole Game’s Tempo