Crisis Management Toolkit

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Law Firm: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
Firm Size: Large
Released: July 13, 2014
Platform: iPhone (iTunes)
Cost: Free

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Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP now has a second mobile app, its Crisis Management Toolkit. The app is intended to provide company executives and in-house counsel with information for use in reacting to potential crises.

The app includes:

  • Checklists broken down by crisis type (including Aviation, Chemical, Construction Collapse, Employment Emergency, Financial Crisis, Oil & Gas Incidents, and Privacy Breach)
  • PR best practices
  • A crisis management process diagram
  • A toll-free hotline to the firm’s crisis management attorneys
  • Ability for the user to customize a crisis team contact list

This app has some nice design elements. As a resource, the app does offer a set of interesting substantive information regarding how to react to corporate crisis situations. The various crisis checklists are good, and may leave the user wanting more. The may be a positive thing from the firm’s perspective — an in-house counsel may be interested in more detailed information and guidance and thus give the firm a call. At the same time, from an app user perspective, the lack of more specific content makes one less likely to use the app multiple times and/or as a real resource for crisis situations.

The app has a number of professional, nice-looking design aspects including layouts and font selection. One odd design choice is the use of website hyperlinks (“pillsburylaw.com/crisis-resources” toward the top of the page). While such a link may be appropriate for a standard web page viewed on a desktop PC, the link looks antiquated on a smartphone app.

Overall, while the app does contain some interesting content, we are skeptical that it would be used in an actual corporate emergency. Even so, the app presents a nice marketing tool for the firm to promote its crisis management services.