The Defuse Podcast - Personal Threat Management - The Weekly Guide to Feeling Safer
How do you feel safe in an increasingly toxic and threatening world?
The podcast covers various topics, including stalking, protective security, intelligence, psychological profiling, crisis management, risk management, communications, reputational management, workplace violence, public relations, and more.
Join me in listening to this informative podcast that delves into the critical issues facing private and corporate clients.
Each episode features global experts sharing their insights on preventing and resolving problematic behaviours and security issues that cause harm.
Don't miss out on this valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding and addressing these critical issues. Tune in today!
The Defuse Podcast - Personal Threat Management - The Weekly Guide to Feeling Safer
Reputation Management with Andrew Sanderson - Part 1
What do you do when your reputation or brand is threatened?
Handling a threatened reputation requires both short-term crisis management and long-term strategic efforts to rebuild trust and credibility.
This month, we speak with esteemed London lawyer Andrew Sanderson.
In part 1 of the podcast, Andrew shares how and why he became a lawyer and chose to focus on his niche.
Andrew debunks the myths surrounding the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs), explains the differences between defamation, slander, and libel, and describes why and how you should consider your options when facing such threats to your brand or reputation.
Bio
Andrew has nearly 20 years of experience working as a lawyer based in the City of London, advising large national and multinational clients on complex highly complex issues.
He has always adopted a commercial approach when dealing with clients and opponents.
With extensive legal, risk, and business experience, Andrew is a Solicitor-Advocate with rights of audience in the higher courts, both Criminal and Civil.
He has recently joined a new firm, Kingsley Napley
https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/our-people/andrew-sanderson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-sanderson-fcilt-minstta-8023b015/
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Welcome to the Diffuse podcast with host Philip Grindell, CEO and founder of Diffuse, a global threat and intelligence consultancy that blends psychology and intelligence to mitigate threats and risks to prominent people and brands 2025, and we start with a really great guest.
Speaker 2:Actually, andrew Sanderson has been a friend of mine for some time. I was introduced to him a couple of years ago. Andrew's got nearly 20 years of experience working as a lawyer based in the city of London, advising large national multinational clients on complex, high value issues. He's also adopted a commercial approach when dealing with both clients and opponents, possessing extensive legal risk and business experience. He's a solicitor advocate with rights of audience in the high courts, both criminal and civil, and he's recently joined a new firm of Kinsley Napley. So, andrew, we've finally made it Welcome.
Speaker 3:Morning Phil. Yeah, welcome. Thank you for that introduction. We've got here, which is great, and it's a real pleasure to be on this podcast, because I've been listening to your podcasts for quite a while now and, as you know, you've had some of my very good friends on your podcast, so it's actually nice to be sat in the hot seat, as it were.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll see how you feel at the end. So what is a solicitor advocate then? What's the difference between being a solicitor or a barrister, or a solicitor advocate?
Speaker 3:So it's a bit of a funny thing really. Traditionally the split in the profession was you had barristers effectively go to court, argue your case on their feet, as it were, in court, in front of the judge or jury, whatever it may be, and solicitors traditionally would stay in the office or be sat in the court handling the client, looking after the client, but not really get involved in the advocacy side. And that was the agreed way that the profession was split, however many hundred odd years ago. And then a few years ago, more and more solicitors were saying well, actually I want to appear in court and I want to get up on my feet and I want to be in the higher courts and have rights of audience in those courts and argue my client's case, because I know my client's case.
Speaker 3:So the development of the solicitor advocate is almost a hybrid between solicitors and barristers. They're not in chambers like barristers, they're employed by a law firm, um, but have the same rights of audience as barristers. Um, that's basically it really. Um, I qualified at the bar, um, so I qualified as a barrister prior to then, um, re-qualifying as a solicitor, because at the time when I did that however many years ago, that was now. You had to be qualified as a solicitor, I think, to be a partner within a law firm. That's, that's changed now and it's much more of a sensible approach. But but yeah, that's that's why we have sort of solicitor advocates.
Speaker 2:Do you think we'll end up in a system then where we no longer have solicitors and barristers, but we will have just kind of one, this hybrid role?
Speaker 3:I don't think so. No, I mean there are. There are some of the some of the firms in the city, some of the law firms in the city sort of push to have advocacy departments, so in-house advocacy departments, so you have barristers and solicitor advocates actually within the law firms conducting the advocacy. There's been a push for that for a few years. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, depending on the type of work and the type of firm. To be honest with you, I think there's always going to be a place.
Speaker 3:In my view, in terms of that division, the reason for that is you have a lot of barristers will have a particular area of specialism and that's all they do. And it's great for somebody like me to be able to go to a set of chambers and speak to a king's council or whatever on a particular subject and they they will know everything about it because it's the only thing that they do. Uh, it's almost like when you go to the doctors. You go, you go and see a gp and you know they'll be able to look at all sorts of things and then they'll refer you to a specialist who only knows about how you know feet or hands or necks or whatever it happens to be, so that's for me.
Speaker 3:I think that division will remain. I think it's important and it's a good thing, because nobody knows everything about everything. So having somebody you can go and speak to, who knows every single thing about a particular subject, um, you know, I think that's important. Yeah, and I think if I I think if I said we were going to get rid of that division, I'd lose a lot of friends. Yeah, I think that will always relate yeah, so going back, then what?
Speaker 2:why did you? I mean, what was your reasons for? For studying law and wanting to be involved in the law?
Speaker 3:um, that's a really good question. I so I come from a very, very working class family. Uh, I was the first person in my family to go to university, went to a, a state school, which I think at the time wouldn't necessarily be classed as particularly high on the top schools anywhere it was. It was a struggling state school and a lot of people at that school wouldn't have ever been expected to go to university, so most people would have gone and worked in local industry. So I was born and brought up in Cornwall. So, you, you may have gone into agriculture, you may have gone into fishing or worked in, you know, the, the local dockyard where where my um, a lot of my family, worked. Or you might go into the military, um, so a lot of people would have gone into the navy uh, traditionally marines, um, and I, um, I sort of thought I, I didn't really want to do that and I didn't honestly know what I wanted to do. And I have to admit, and I'm quite happy to say this, I wasn't particularly academic at school because I didn't really see a point, because I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I ended up watching a documentary on, I think it was probably on channel four or something like that, about lawyers and they talked about barristers and they talked about solicitors and it was really interesting. It was sort of a flarm documentary and I thought I'd like to do that. That looks good. Knew nothing about it, didn't know how to get there and spoke to my then careers teacher so I must have been 14-ish Spoke to my careers teacher, who was very unhelpful and basically said well, look, you need to pass some GCSEs and there's no chance of you doing that. So put this out of your mind. Me being me, one of my either strengths or faults, depending on who you talk to, is I'm fairly stubborn and I thought, no, I'm going to give it a go.
Speaker 3:So did my GCSEs, did my, ended up at university and then it sort of it went from there really and got experience with firms and sets of chambers and absolutely loved it and thought this is this, this looks good. I, I like, I liked the dealing with people, I like the solving of problems. Um, I enjoyed, uh, sort of meeting really interesting people and also, you know, you get to do some. You got. You know, I looked at it. You could do some great things. You know you, you got invited to some really great events. So for me, you know, the further I went, I thought yeah, no, this is for me and I like this. So that was my route in really so it's fascinating, isn't it?
Speaker 2:how many stories there are of teachers. You know some, clearly brilliant, and you know we've got teaching in my family both my sisters were teachers but how many teachers seek to stifle someone's ambitions. You know, I I reflect on the fact I've got my my book here that I've just written, which I received this week but I can remember distinctly being told at school, at sort of 15 you're going to leave with absolutely nothing and you're going to achieve nothing in life. And you can take it two ways, can't you? It can either be okay, I'll kind of use that as an excuse to achieve nothing in life, or as a motivator to say, right, I'll bloody well show you. Um, yeah, and you've clearly done the latter.
Speaker 2:And so the law I mean the law is, you know. You know, when you're a police officer, as I was, you learn elements of the law and then you interact with lawyers in courts and in other environments, and it's far more complex than people realise, because the law is written down, but then it's the interpretation of the law and all those other issues. So how do you, as you move through your career, then decide the areas that you wanted to focus on?
Speaker 3:I think so for me. You, I look at colleagues of mine who, when they qualified, they had a very, very defined area of law that they wanted to go into for a particular reason or a particular area of interest. So they wanted to be family lawyers or they wanted to be corporate lawyers and that's what they wanted to do. For me I knew I wanted to do something with with regards to problem solving, and where, where I sort of ended up was that if you look at my practice area, it's not, it's not defined by one particular type of law or particularly one type of client. It's very much problem solving for clients. So I, I view my role with clients as a problem solver. Now they they might come to me with a criminal matter, or they might come to me with an investigation or reputational management issue or commercial, uh, corporate matter. Now I I can't be advising them on all those different areas, because because that's not right, but I'm what I do is I, I effectively sit with my clients and contacts, find out what the problem is and then, if I'm not dealing with it, then one of my colleagues within the firm would be dealing with it. So but I would sort of always be sat there with the client because I've got that relationship trying to get them from where they are now, point A, to where they want to get to. So it's it's a lot about problem solving the law. The law is one thing, and that's what we, that's what we hang out our advice on thing, and that's what we, that's what we hang out, um, our advice on. But there's a lot of sort of practical elements to it as well and there's procedure and clients.
Speaker 3:I remember years ago and this, this has always stood me in good stead I dealt with a case for a very, very well-known household supermarket, um, that shall remain nameless, and they were involved in a pretty horrendous incident. It was horrendous and the finance director, so board director of this household name, their head of legal and a couple of other board members and me as a very, very, very junior lawyer, because the partner couldn't make the meeting but which you know a lot of people go oh my God, that's awful. It actually it was a good thing. So we went to see a very, very eminent King's Council sorry, queen's Council back then about some advice and Queen's Council sat there for a good hour and a half talking about the law and what the client had done and the application of the law and a particular case, and it was. You know, he was superb, he knew his stuff and he was excellent.
Speaker 3:And the client, the finance director, a really important person turned around to him and said look, I have no doubt you are the most intelligent person in this room and I don't doubt your credentials in terms of knowing everything about this subject, and I appreciate that. But I need the answer to two questions. Question one, number one, and I won't phrase this in the way that he phrased it. Question number one are we in trouble? You can guess the expletive he used are we in trouble? And if we are in trouble, how? How much in trouble are we? That's all I need to know. And the KC looked at him, looked at me. He said, yes, you are in trouble and you're in a lot of trouble. He said fine, brilliant, speak to andrew, speak to the general council. That's all I need to know.
Speaker 3:And we walked out and, um, he and this was on on the strand in london, near the royal courts of justice, actually the meeting and there's a little pub around the corner. He said right, let's, let's go for a drink, went for a drink and he said. He said to me do you think I was rude? And of course, this is a very, very important client. I said no, no, you're absolutely fine. And he said look, I don't care about the law, I just need this problem solving. And so I go back to my board and say, yeah, we're in trouble and this is how much, and we'll get it sorted.
Speaker 3:He said the biggest mistake lawyers make with me and people like me is that they assume that they want me to know the law inside out. He said there is somebody within my firm sorry, within my company that does, but it's not me. He said, because I don't understand it. So I just need you to tell me what we do to get it sorted out and what it's going to cost me and reputational management and how do we do that. And he said the rest of it, that's you know, I trust you.
Speaker 3:It was, it was really interesting. So I've always sort of had that at the back of my mind when dealing with clients. Is is like there are clients who want to know the law inside out, and that's you know absolutely. And there are times we have to set it out in black and white. But you know the the starting point problem is are we in trouble and how do we get out? How do we, how do we mitigate that, how do we deal with it? How do we get to to a point where we can then sort of refocus back on the business again and not on this? So that's always stood me in good stead.
Speaker 2:So really they come to you because they want a solution and the law is the framework within how that solution might be managed. But actually you've got a whole set of, but actually you've got a whole set of considerations around risk, reputationally, financially, all the other elements, yes, legal costs how much do you want to spend? All those various complex conversations? So, actually, people skills and people management you've used the term reputational management, which we're going to come on to, and I think that's where people perhaps misunderstand what a lawyer does in terms of they think a lawyer operates just purely as a. You know, these are the laws, this is the framework. You know we're going to try and get you justice or otherwise.
Speaker 2:But actually what you're saying is you know, sometimes the advice might be you need to just pay out because that's the way to mitigate this best from reputation, from cost, from time, from energy, all those sort of things. Now I've been on the reverse of that when I've been to a case where I knew I was on the right and we were told you have to pay out because it's easier and cheaper. That's really a horrible thing to be told, because you feel like you're not getting justice. So how do you manage those problems. Then when, when a client is coming to you and they want that sense of justice, but actually you're having the conversation with the commercial side of it to say it's cheaper to pay out and move on it's.
Speaker 3:It's really difficult and people think it's easier if you're speaking to a corporate client and because it's a corporate, it's not personal, it's always personal. So if you, if you have a let's call it a piece of generic litigation and you are always saying to the client look, you know, these are the cost consequences if we go ahead with this these are the reputational consequences if we continue fighting this.
Speaker 3:You know it is commercially it is better if we pay x now to deal with this than you know take a risk with regards to arbitration or litigation. So at at the back of your mind, you've got to have this thought of do we settle this? Do we deal with this commercially? You know there are. So it's a difficult conversation. If you have a client who will say I've got a point to prove here, so I'm just going to keep going, you have to keep saying to them I don't. You know, if it's not the right thing to be doing, then you need to be settling this and getting rid of it, as it were. Sometimes you know absolutely, let's fight this because that is the right thing to be doing.
Speaker 3:But clients, sometimes they can get very focused on the end and miss everything in the middle. So, corporate clients, you're generally working with a team that might be the finance director, it might be the CEO, it might be the legal team and you can have different types of conversation and most of them will have their eye on. You know what does this look like to the business. You know how much is it going to cost. Can we deal with this Because it takes up a lot of management time, which is not often factored into it. You know, yes, there's the hard costs of lawyers and experts to it. You know, yes, there's the hard costs of lawyers and experts. And then also there's the problems around, you know, sort of bad publicity.
Speaker 3:Um, clients will often, you know, sort of say we, the cost to us is bad publicity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what we want to avoid and we are really lucky, and I'm really lucky in that over the years I've built up a network of people who aren't lawyers but are brilliant at, you know, sort of helping with investigations or working on reputation management or comms or PR or whatever it happens to be, to help with those situations.
Speaker 3:So it's, you know, I I do always say to clients you really want to think long and hard before we get into any formal litigation court process. It's, it's. It's going to be stressful, it's going to take longer than you thought, it's going to cost more than you thought and at the end of the day, even if you win even if you win you may come out thinking I haven't won. So think about it long and hard and sometimes swallowing that pill of we're going to settle this and move on is much better, um, but it's it's difficult. It's difficult to do and it takes, and I'm, you know, I I am sure even now there are conversations I have with clients that are are difficult around that subject and you know you have to, you have to pitch it in the right way to the client can we talk about NDAs which are consistently kind of coming up?
Speaker 2:they come up in conversation, they come up in the news, they come, you know, they come up in these cases where whistleblowers are coming out and saying I never went, I never did anything because I was on an nda, you know. So can we talk about what is an nda, first and foremost, from a legal perspective?
Speaker 3:yeah, so effectively, an nda is a non-disclosure agreement and basically is it an agreement usually between individual and, let's say, former employer that the individual will if they leave the business. There are certain things that they won't discuss. So that might be in relation to, say, corporate sensitive information. It might be in relation to, you know, ip within the business or financial information and the company also agrees, you know, to not do certain things. So it might be that they agree to give the employee a certain type of reference or to make a settlement payout because the employee is going early. And this is all tied up in an agreement and they're commonly referred to as non-disclosure agreements and both parties have got obligations under that. I think where the misconception comes is that people think these NDAs basically that's sign an NDA, that's it. You know you're protected off you go. You know there are exceptions whereby if you've signed an NDA and it's in relation to criminal activity, for example, you know it's not going to stand up A lot of NDAs, you know you look at them and you know courts not it's not going to stand up a lot of ndas, you know you look at them and you know courts will pull them apart because they say they're not fit for purpose, they haven't been drafted in the right way, they're too wide, um, there there's an unfair advantage. So where you've got big company individual, you know they're, they're sort of taking advantage. So they're not this sort of panacea of I've got an nda, that's it. You know, the number of times you see ndas breached is, you know, is phenomenal, you know I, you, you sort of warn clients about, you know, signing ndas and they do, they do. They do have their place. You know, on a commercial basis, if you've got a director or senior member of a business leaving and they say, look, I don't want to work my 12, two-year notice period, can we come to an agreement? There's a place for that, whether that's an NDA or a settlement agreement, and it gives the individual comfort and it gives the company comfort. Um, so there is a place. But it's not this sort of you panacea that people seem to think. Think it is and, um, you've got to be.
Speaker 3:You know, I think the problem comes a lot of the time is that the ndas aren't drafted in the right, right way and also that people aren't taking legal advice on the NDAs. So there's often a paragraph in there saying you need to take independent legal advice. Are you doing this and people won't? And I think, especially for individuals, I think it's important they do do that and you've got to look behind. What is it actually covering? You know what is it? What's the purpose of it? If it's, you know, like I say, if it's touching on criminal matters, then it's not going to stand up.
Speaker 3:So you know, I know there's been a lot of news sort of recently around NDAs and settlement agreements and sort of people settling matters in court or on the court steps, as it were, especially sort of with regards to the US. You know it's much more prevalent in the US as opposed to the UK. They do have their place. They're just you. You know people have got to be very careful and you know know what they're signing up for and what's what's included and what shouldn't necessarily be included because I think the perception is they're often used to silence people.
Speaker 2:you know where there's been bad behavior within an organisation or someone's been mistreated, or they've identified poor practice or something, and it tends to be that they've been used in that fashion to suppress people, whereas what you're saying is actually the real purpose of them was a mutual agreement between two parties that they would abide by certain conditions they'd agreed to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I think there has been situations where they've been used for the wrong reason and to silence people. You know, I think there is, you know there's certainly enough press out there and enough sort of stories related to them where they have blatantly been used to silence people. So there has been a practice around that, I think, where you get a situation where you know they sort of come up for question at court or in relation to another matter, then courts and judges and barristers and solicitors are very good at sort of pulling at threads of agreements and looking behind them and sort of saying, well, hold on a second, what was the purpose of this, why? Why was this put in place? What's behind this? Um, so they are, they are very good at looking behind those.
Speaker 3:And, like I say, you have to be, you have to be incredibly careful and you have to be saying to individuals especially who are generally in a weaker position than a big corporate you need to get independent advice and that advice you know will be focusing on, you know, what you can do under the NDA, what you're signing up to, what it means if you breach it or if another party breaches it. So my, my, my view is very much. Yes, they have been used for perhaps incorrect purposes. People should be getting advice on them and know what they're signing up to, but they do. They do have their place, um, and especially if they're done in the right way yeah, yeah, and I guess that's the key, isn't it?
Speaker 2:it's always about getting reputable legal advice, and I'm conscious that sometimes people think the cost of that is going to be off-putting, but you have to see it from the bigger picture about you know, long term, this is going to be yeah, I mean lawyers.
Speaker 3:Costs are always, you know. I know there's probably a thousand jokes about lawyers and costs and everything else, and you know the fact that we charge by the hour still, and not many professions left that still do that. But you know my view and people might say, well, of course you would say that is my view, is I often see a lot of clients who will see me and say, andrew, we've got this commercial agreement. You know, we want some advice on it. And I'll speak to a commercial partner and they'll quote for the work. And the client might come back to me and say that's too much, I can't afford it, I haven't got the money. And you'll sort of say, well, look, that's fine, you know what do you get, I'm just going to sign it and and you will say to them I don't think you should, you need proper advice on this. And they'll go away and they'll come back two years later and there's a problem. And then they're into litigation and you you have to say to them gently look, if you'd got this advice before, the chances of you now being in this situation would be, you know, greatly reduced. And but it's difficult because you're comparing what's happening now with what may or may not happen in two or three years time. May not happen in two or three years time.
Speaker 3:Um, you know, I uh, I had a uh, a client of mine who would often not get good commercial advice on agreements they're entering into as part of their business activities and they, um, they once fell foul of that and I think a review of the documentation, let's say for argument's sake it would have cost £5,000. They ended up in litigation, which cost them, you know, north of a quarter of a million pounds. And I sat down with him afterwards and sort of said to him look, you love your cars. He had a collection of very expensive sports cars and I said you wouldn't take the Ferrari you've got in your garage and have it serviced by you know, the bloke up the road who's got his one-man garage because he wouldn't know what he's looking at. So there's no disrespect to him, but he wouldn't know what he's looking at. So there's no disrespect to him, but he wouldn't.
Speaker 3:He said yeah, and I said you sort of see the cost of getting something done properly, and it's like I don't want to do that, because nothing's going to go wrong, because nothing has gone wrong and it's all fine, and we've always done it like this the number of times I've heard.
Speaker 3:We've always done it like this. If I had a pound I'd be retiring, but it's, it is a difficult thing. Costs are difficult. Yes, clients are cost sensitive they always are, and and they are right to challenge lawyers on costs and say to lawyers look, I want to. You know, can you put a cap on this? Can we come to an agreement in terms of a fixed fee for certain types of work? Yeah, yeah, I would always say to clients do that, you know. Speak to your lawyer and say well, look, I want some certainty, you know, I want some certainty. And most sensible lawyers will have a conversation with their clients because they want to do the work, they want to get paid for it and if it means the client's got a bit more comfort about where they're going to get to, then have that conversation. You know, it's easy yeah, a lot of.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was the same in my world in terms of people rarely want to pay for proactivity. They want to pay because they're in a crisis. Yeah, but I have to. Before we break for this particular session, I have to say one of my favorite stories of lawyers. It was in the us a few years ago where one of the law firms said they were now charging for shower time because their lawyers were coming up with some of the best ideas whilst they're in the shower. So I thought that's really and I get it, because when you're not thinking about things often that's when ideas come to you. But I thought I can imagine being presented with a bill by X amount of hours for shower time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean there is a huge difference between how US firms operate and how UK firms operate, and you know, whether that's through regulation or just business practice, there is a massive difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what we're going to do is we're going to conclude this particular session because we're coming up for time, but we're going to have part two, and part two is going to be all about the kind of nuts and bolts of reputational management and we're going to look at the three different areas of comparing and contrasting around how do we manage that for high net worth, private clients, corporate clients and then the kind of public inquiry type client. But for now, andrew, thank you so much, and for all of you listening. Part two is coming out in a couple of weeks, so definitely subscribe and listen to that. We'll be right back with part two then.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Diffuse podcast with host Philip Rendell, CEO and founder of Diffuse. Please rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platforms.
