Dick Armey’s resignation from law firm DLA Piper raises some interesting issues about law firm reputation. The former House Majority Leader left the firm late last week after questions were raised publicly about his position as chairman of FreedomWorks, the “grass roots” organization that has been accused of helping to orchestrate numerous angry outbursts at town hall meetings on the healthcare legislation debate. FreedomWorks’ website says: FreedomWorks’ aggressive, real-time campaigns activate a growing and permanent volunteer grassroots army to show up and demand policy change.

Most law firms are diligent about identifying conflicts when deciding on client representation. But when law firms have the opportunity to attract a high-powered, highly visible former government leader — as DLA Piper did some six years ago — they can sometimes overlook potential problems/conflicts that can harm the firm’s reputation.

Lawyers have always been involved in and at the forefront of politics. However, in the Internet age, it’s much more difficult for attorneys to keep outside political/grassroots lobbying activities separate. The media’s easy access to online databases (such as detailed information about individual political contributions) and other websites makes the task of keeping things quiet and separate even harder.

Many attorneys also hold important leadership positions in their communities and in multiple national/international organizations. It’s a centuries-old tradition of the profession and many are great humanitarian and pro-justice causes.

But law firm managing partners and executive committees need to ensure they have ironclad early-warning systems to detect controversial issues that might arise from those organizations and that might be detrimental to the firm. Once a firm has identified a problem, it can develop a communications strategy to aggressively counter negative media coverage and other public criticism that might show up online. These criticisms can, of course, wreck havoc on a firm’s positive search engine results and remain on the Web for years.

Law firms also have rushed out hastily-worded press statements that appear overly defensive or that are filled with legal jargon that don’t help the firm’s image at all. An internal strategy to deal with these issues in advance will go far in defending the firm’s reputation in the eyes of clients and prospects.

Finally, every firm should have a crisis communications plan that takes into account a wide variety of scenarios. The participation of attorneys in controversial –or even hostile organizations — should be listed as one of those scenarios.