Sara Jones serves as Managing Director of Mercury Public Affairs in Los Angeles, CA.
Sara Jones is a Managing Director of Mercury Public Affairs in Los Angeles and heads the firm's Litigation and Regulatory Communications practice. One of the foremost experts in crisis and issues management, she specializes in devising strategy to mitigate complex, high-risk situations. Her issue expertise ranges from activist-waged corporate campaigns and government investigations to environmental incidents and health scares. Over the course of her career, Ms. Jones has played an integral role in safeguarding corporate and brand reputation for numerous Fortune 500 corporations, earning a reputation as a highly effective and trusted counselor.
Ms. Jones’ litigation experience is defense-oriented and includes: class action defense; product liability and mass torts; environmental law and natural resources defense; white collar defense and investigations; securities litigation; intellectual property; labor and employment matters; and appellate work. During the course of this work, she collaborates extensively with legal teams, expert witnesses and expert sources for the media, often serving as spokesperson for her clients as appropriate strategically.
Highlights of Ms. Jones’ accomplishments include: guiding an internet company's response to an investigation, lawsuit and settlement with the Office of New York State Attorney General while safeguarding its acquisition by a media conglomerate; counseling a private school system through a challenge to its admissions policy, involving a successful petition for rehearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; effectively positioning a leading technology company to manage a multi-year U.S. Department of Justice investigation and resulting settlement agreement; and conceiving a tort reform-related public education campaign to expose an environmental advocacy organization's ties to personal injury lawyers and class action specialists, including some of the biggest players in the trial bar, demonstrating the group's true agenda and business model for fostering personal injury litigation.
Over the years, Ms. Jones has counseled clients such as the American Tort Reform Association, AT&T, BASF, Bayer, Chevron, Disney, Eli Lilly, ExxonMobil, First American Corporation, Gap, Hilton, Home Depot, Johnson & Johnson, Lennar, Levi Strauss, Lockheed Martin, Merck, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, Nike, Roche, Shell, UnitedHealth Group, Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo and Williams-Sonoma.
Prior to joining Mercury, Ms. Jones served in a series of senior roles with crisis boutiques and within the crisis units of global public relations agencies, including APCO Worldwide and Fleishman-Hillard, where she was integral to both litigation and labor relations practices. Ms. Jones earned her bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).