The In-House Media Lawyer: Balancing Law, Business and Reputation

"Can we run it?" That was the question at the centre of last Thursday's #SLPTMTSeries session: a newsroom twenty minutes from the ten o'clock news, a story naming a prominent businessman, and a threatening letter from his lawyers sitting on the desk. Adunola Falola, Company Secretary and Head of Legal at Channels Media Group, used that scenario to unpack what she calls the three legs of every in-house decision: law, business and reputation. They are meant to carry equal weight. In practice, they rarely do, and which one wins out says a lot about how mature an organisation's risk function really is. A few things worth noting from the session: → Truth remains the strongest defence to defamation, but the word "allegedly" has stopped doing the work many lawyers assume it does. Nigerian courts have taken judicial notice of its overuse to mask an assertion of fact. → The in-house lawyer's job is to protect the business from unnecessary legal constraints, not to protect the company from the business. Her framing: a guardrail, not a brake pad. → Independence has to be earned, not assumed. In-house counsel don't get the automatic deference external counsel often receives. Thank you to Adunola Falola for a session that ran well past its scheduled time without losing the room, and to everyone who joined. The full report and slides are available to members. #SLPTMTSeries #MediaLaw #InHouseCounsel #CorporateGovernance #NBASLP #LegalPractice