Slater and Gordon CEO ‘may need to go’ in trust fix
Mumbrella checks in with communications veteran Peter Wilkinson on the crisis that engulfed law firm Slater and Gordon two weeks ago following the unauthorised leak of company-wide salary data and sensitive personnel information. Wilkinson says it will take years of brand building for the firm to regain trust, and CEO Dina Tutungi may have to go.
It’s valuable to frame the Slater and Gordon crisis via the recent Roy Morgan survey on trust and distrust. Reviewing the Roy Morgan presentation is well worth 20 minutes of communications professionals’ valuable time. Some key points:
1. It puts data around the cliché that you can spend a lifetime building trust and trash it in five minutes. In Slater and Gordon’s case, the trashing took a few days.
More relevant now for the legal firm is that it takes five years to rebuild your brand close to where it was before the crisis, according to the data. There are conditions, the main ones being that you have to do the hard work in the first nine months, and then keep at it.
Certainly, the impact on staff morale and talent acquisition will be significant in light of this situation. However, as you pointed out, the brand’s history and origins could be leveraged to aid in its recovery.
Regarding future client impact, I believe that since firms like Shine, Maurice Blackburn, and Slater & Gordon primarily focus on class actions and workers’ compensation cases, this issue is unlikely to affect new client acquisition unless it gains broader mainstream coverage beyond The Australian and AFR—for instance, if it reaches A Current Affair.