What if your company has a full third of its engineers with Ukrainian backgrounds? What if a solid chunk of your company’s personnel are former military who have very specific views about gun control, and then there is a mass shooting? Or maybe your company has taken definitive stances on women’s and LGBTQ issues and is admonished by a governor? 

When corporations and executives decide they want to speak out on hot-button social or political issues, in-house lawyers have a host of factors they need to consider, such as how a statement may affect each corporate stakeholder. And they need to do as much planning in advance, according to a panel of law department lawyers who spoke at an annual Minority Corporate Counsel Association conference on Monday in New York. The consensus was that, no matter how well thought out and how “on brand” a statement is, it’s not possible to keep everyone happy.