This year has been a field day for anyone studying impact of sexual misadventures on the careers of public figures.  It’s hard to know what the public cares about when the offense is merely a character flaw.  If it doesn’t cost us money, we don’t seem to judge harshly, or at least not for very long.

When Eliot Spitzer, the NY Attorney General, was publicly shamed into resignation and labeled “Client #9″ in a prostitution ring scandal, few thought he had any future in public life. But a recent poll in the Atlantic magazine makes us wonder. Five hundred New Yorkers were asked (on September 1, 2009) if they would vote for Spitzer if he ran for public office again: “15% would vote for him “no matter what”, 39% would vote against him “no matter what”, and 47% said it would depend on what office Spitzer ran for and who else was on the ballot.”

The Atlantic goes on to say that they think a 2010 run for office is a long shot for Spitzer but who is to say what could happen? The public sometimes has a long memory for disgraced heroes and other times we are inclined to overlook past failures.

When Eliot Spitzer fell from grace, we wrote a paper identifying strategies for the litigator with a publicly disgraced client. In that paper, we focused on five basic steps to follow:

1. Apologize correctly to mitigate hypocrisy
2. Rebut the fundamental attribution error
3. Focus on past positives and weigh them against this fall from grace
4. Focus on what has been lost and how your client has been affected
5. Avoid surprise

You can download a copy of this paper (Client No. 9: Defending Uncivil Behavior) at our website. Scroll to the bottom of the page and register for free access to various papers we’ve written over the past 10 years. We promise we won’t sell, trade or use your contact information for nefarious purposes. We just want to know who is interested in our ideas and we will let you know from time to time when we have new papers on the website.

The complete paper describes what to do in each of these steps and why (based on the recent research) you should do the actions recommended. We think you’ll find it useful.

While the public may be willing to look the other way when a family is victimized by salacious conduct, the rage against fiduciary violations has real sticking power.  The findings in our previous paper are as relevant today for the management scandals of today and tomorrow as they were during the Enron scandal (see “Enron Effect:  Uncertainty, Mistrust, and Cynicism”).

Related posts:

1. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Eliot Spitzer: On letting people off the hook [Part II]:
2. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Eliot Spitzer: On letting people off the hook [Part I]
3. You don’t have to drink to show intoxicated recall and behavior!
4. Hot hazy weather, violent behavior and the expert witness
5. Charlie Sheen or Tiger Woods? When behavior doesn’t fit the image