Media disputes

Clifford Chance's leading international media disputes practice with experts in defamation, crisis management, privacy, data protection, copyright and other intellectual property, acting for and against the media.

Whether you are a publisher, broadcaster or the subject of a proposed broadcast or article, we offer you a legal team that understands the various codes of practice regulating each media sector, how they interact with key legislation – and what that means for you.

We will help you to comply with all the relevant codes and legislation – and so protect your organisation from claims. We offer global 24-hour pre-publication expertise from our London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and Frankfurt offices.

On the other hand, when your good name, privacy or intellectual property comes under threat Clifford Chance's media specialists are able to help protect your interests. We offer the highest quality legal, crisis and risk management services to enable you to act quickly and effectively in the pressurised environment of today’s round-the-clock media culture.
If you are the subject of a media investigation, we will help you exercise your rights – to information from the media, to respond to allegations, and to remedies if your reputation is damaged by a publication or broadcast.

As skilled crisis managers, we will help you to co-ordinate the legal and PR response. We think creatively about the best way to help you address the issues raised by the media.

As claimant lawyers, we have represented public companies, politicians, businesspeople and leading institutions. Several of our lawyers have spent time on secondment at the leading media regulators, so we can put our in-depth knowledge of these organisations to work for you.

We can act for you after the publication of damaging material to seek redress in the most appropriate way. This may be through legal proceedings or by making a complaint to the relevant regulatory body, be it Ofcom, the Press Complaints Commission or the Advertising Standards Authority or European regulators such as the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel in France and the Deutsche Presserat in Germany.

Our expert global team has extensive experience covering both the established print and broadcast media and new media, including the Internet and wireless technology.

Our lawyers are experts in:

• crisis and reputation management
• defamation
• privacy
• copyright
• data protection
• freedom of information
• comparative advertising
• human rights
• judicial review.

We also have significant experience of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the competing rights of privacy and freedom of expression.