Welcome to the first edition of Word Gets Around, my new newsletter that focuses on the intersection of communications, storytelling, and what AI says about small and midsize non tech businesses. As I said in the last issue of Behind the Buzz, this is a departure from what I'd been writing about, and the style is different as well. If you were a BtB subscriber, it might not be to your liking. That's fine, I don't mind unsubscribers. That said, I hope there are lessons in here for communicators, even though I'm writing this primarily for owner/operators. It's less snark (well, maybe some snark), more practical advice.
On August 18, 2026, KLA Legal LLP, a boutique law firm with offices up and down the East Coast, announced on PRNewswire that it had opened for business with more than 50 lawyers and more than 40 support staff who had just walked out of Cipriani & Werner, P.C. Forty eight days later, the firm they left has not said one public word about it on its own website, its own news page or anywhere else I can read.
The departures were going to happen either way. The silence by Cipriani & Werner was a choice.
Cipriani & Werner is a regional insurance-defense firm based in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Going into the summer it described itself, on its own About page, as having "over 200 professionals in our 18 offices in 10 states, the District of Columbia and London, UK." The Internet Legal Research Group's directory put it at 188 attorneys in 2025.
On August 17, The Insurer reported that the leaders of the firm's cyber practice were breaking away. The next morning KLA Legal went live, founded by the firm's former chair of national litigation, its former cybersecurity co-chair and its former life sciences chair. Law360 confirmed the scale the same day: "Over 50 Cipriani & Werner Attys Join New Cybersecurity Firm."
Do the math. Fifty-plus of 188 is better than one lawyer in four, gone in a morning.
And they didn't leave from some corner of the firm nobody cared about. In April 2025 Cipriani & Werner's own press release called its breach practice "the firm's fastest growing practice group," with "over seventy team members," and called the firm "one of the go-to firms for data security incidents in the United States." The firm marketed that group as its best asset, in its own words. Then the asset left.
On C&W's own channels? Nothing.
I went through the firm's news page post by post. Since August 18 it has published a Best Lawyers announcement, a summary judgment win, a Labor Day greeting, one lateral hire, a speaking engagement, a softball tournament and, on September 14, a post titled "The Senior Leadership Team Supporting Cipriani & Werner's Next Chapter of Growth." It opens: "As Cipriani & Werner continues to grow and evolve, we remain focused on delivering the exceptional service, responsiveness, and value our clients have come to expect." It then introduces the firm's finance, HR and operations directors.
It does not mention the 90 departed people. Not once.
Publishing a "next chapter of growth" post four weeks after a quarter of your lawyers walked out, and never mentioning them, is either remarkable nerve or proof that nobody in the room was willing to say "this reads like avoidance." I'd bet on the latter.
C&W did update one thing. Its About page now reads "over 140 professionals in our 15 offices in 9 states, and the District of Columbia." London is gone from the office list. So is Massachusetts. The numbers changed quietly. The story behind them never got told.
Meanwhile the other side ran a full play. A wire release. An exclusive to The Insurer the day before. And a set of numbers nobody has contested: 100% carrier and client retention, first breach matters signed within half an hour of going live, roughly 3,500 breaches expected this year. Every one of those figures is self-reported by the people who left.
This is the part that should worry every owner reading this. Today I asked ChatGPT and Perplexity a simple question: "What happened at Cipriani & Werner law firm recently?"
Both led with KLA Legal's version, sourced to KLA's press release and The Insurer's exclusive. ChatGPT repeated the 100% retention claim as fact. Perplexity paired the 90-person exodus with, of all things, C&W's softball tournament, because that was the most substantive thing on the firm's own news page.
ChatGPT also quoted the firm's leadership saying it had worked "diligently to ensure continuity of service and the protection of client interests," and attributed that line to The Insurer. I couldn't find that sentence anywhere I can read; The Insurer is behind a paywall. So one of two things is true. Either the firm's only statement on the biggest event in its recent history sits behind a trade-press subscription, or a chatbot wrote one for it. Neither one is a communications strategy.
When you don't put your own words on the record, the record gets written anyway. And these days a machine is doing a lot of the writing.
Let me be straight about what I can price and what I can't. Cipriani & Werner is private and doesn't publish revenue, so I'm not going to hand you a dollar figure I made up.
Here's what is verified. Better than a quarter of the attorneys and 40-plus support staff the paralegals and coordinators who actually run a breach response at two a.m. left in one morning. By the firm's own About page, it went from "over 200 professionals" to "over 140," and from 18 offices to 15.
The salaries aren't the loss. Salaries leave with the people. The loss is the book, and in insurance defense the relationship sits with the carrier panel. Panels follow the lawyers who do the work. Take KLA's 100% retention claim at even half its face value and C&W may have lost most of the revenue attached to the practice it spent two years promoting.
If you want the dollar figure, the missing input is revenue per lawyer. Multiply it by 50.
Then there's the rebuild. Replacing that many lawyers is a multi-year recruiting program, and every candidate's first question will be some version of "so what happened in August?" The only answer on the record is the one KLA wrote. That cost compounds every month, and it's the one cost here that was entirely avoidable.
You probably don't run a 188-lawyer firm. Swap the numbers. Your lead associate dentist and two hygienists open a practice three miles away. Your club's head pro and his staff go to the course down the road. Your top financial advisor at your wealth management firm leaves and takes a dozen households.
They will announce it. They will have a story, and it will be a good one, because they've been working on it for months. The only question is whether yours exists anywhere a patient, a member, a client or an AI assistant answering one of them -- can find it.
A group of 90 doesn't evaporate without notice. There were resignation letters, notice periods and, I'd guess, a very uncomfortable partners' meeting. The firm had to know before the press release went out, and the hours that mattered started the moment The Insurer published on the 17th.
Three moves, in this order.
First, the carriers. Phone, not email. Every carrier on the cyber panel gets a call from a named partner: here's who is handling your open matters as of today, here's their direct line, here's who is accountable if anything slips. Carriers don't panic about departures. They panic about unattended files.
Second, a written client notice the same day. Four sentences. A group of lawyers has left to start a new firm. Your matter is now staffed by this person. Your file is yours and goes wherever you direct. Here's the number to call.
For all I know both of these were executed. But the one they skipped is was equally important; a short public statement on their own site, something a reporter or a chatbot can quote: the departures are confirmed, here's what continues, and we wish them well, by name. Graciousness costs nothing and it kills the story that there was a fight.
None of that keeps 50 lawyers from leaving. All of it keeps the people who left from being the only source on what your firm is now.
The instinct that first morning is always to say nothing until you know everything. That's the prevent defense, and the prevent defense only prevents you from winning. Forty eight days in, Cipriani & Werner still hasn't run a play unless you count the softball tournament.
Sometimes you own the narrative. Sometimes it owns you.
Sources (all checked Oct. 5, 2026): KLA Legal release, PRNewswire, Aug. 18, 2026 · Law360 Pulse, Aug. 18, 2026 · The Insurer, Aug. 17, 2026 (headline and LinkedIn summary; article paywalled) · Cipriani & Werner news page, including "The Senior Leadership Team Supporting Cipriani & Werner's Next Chapter of Growth," Sep. 14, 2026 · c-wlaw.com About and Offices pages, current, compared with Internet Archive captures of May 12 and June 12, 2026 · Cipriani & Werner release, Apr. 11, 2025 · ILRG law firm directory (2025 figures) · ChatGPT (gpt-4.1 with web search) and Perplexity (Sonar Pro) answers via API, Oct. 5, 2026.
