Executive Summary – On the afternoon of Monday, January 26, 2004, an associate by the name of Douglas L. Getter, the head of Dewey Ballantine’s European Merger and Acquisition practice has sent out an email stating “Please don’t let these puppies go to a Chinese Restaurant. This email was sent due to a note seeking someone to adopt a puppy, which offended a cultural group that feels it is victim to a negative stereotype.

Critical Issues – The public view of Dewey Ballantine LLPs culture is poor, that potential customers are insulted and potential and current employees are unhappy with the association. One individual makes a fault, the entire company is threatened and this is bad for the reputation of the firm.

Desired Outcomes – A desired outcome for Dewey Ballantine LLP is for this case to go away as quickly as possible. Another desired outcome would be an apology in front of the press and the student associations.

Possible Solutions – The first strategy that Dewey Ballantine can do is to set out aside counsel to take a look and also communicate its opinions about the firm to the public. This could be an advantage to how the firm can improve it-self to show it is progressive with issues. The disadvantage would be that people especially Chinese won’t believe the response is adequate. The second strategy that Dewey could do is to play it off as a joke. The advantage of this would be that some people would accept that dogs are eaten and empathized with Mr. Getter for saying something like that. The disadvantage would be that some people could be self-centered and be offended by such an attempt and would be still upset; putting Dewey Ballantine LLP in a worse