Internationally renowned libel lawyer Paul Tweed has enjoyed a successful career representing high-profile clients including Hollywood A-listers, members of the British Royal Family and global entrepreneurs. In his recent book ‘From Holywood to Hollywood – My Life as an International Libel Lawyer to the Rich and Famous’ he recounts the story of his career as a libel lawyer – starting with a newspaper story about a fight over a chocolate éclair in Holywood, Northern Ireland, to becoming the go-to lawyer for some of the world’s biggest stars. Global Legal Post caught up with Paul to discuss his book and the trends currently shaping the libel landscape.

How have you seen the media landscape change since you started your legal career?

The changes were very gradual but in 2006 I had a light bulb moment when the National Enquirer decided to open a European edition. We were consulted by Britney Spears about a story that the National Enquirer had published claiming her marriage with Kevin Federline was over, and so I put them on notice. They realised they had unwittingly submitted themselves to European and UK libel and privacy laws. We got a fairly quick settlement where they gave their first apology in their 70-year history. After that, all the celebrities started to come in when they realised there’s a market. Then the social media platforms came along and transformed everything. Their whole argument was, we’re just platforms, we’re not publishers – and they’re still holding that stance today. They’ve got massive financial war chests, so the threat of damages doesn’t matter, their paranoia is to avoid creating a legal precedent. So we’re trying to think outside the box, and we’ve got quite a few ad hoc cases related to this.

Can you give any examples?

We achieved what I regard as a very pivotal result against Amazon just before Christmas where we got a settlement just at the door to court for a Spanish national based in Chile who was the subject of a football-related documentary which falsely portrayed him as being corrupt. So Amazon agreed a settlement and agreed to a worldwide takedown, and that’s critically important to me. There’s no point getting an order against a company in one country given the world we live in. Unless it’s worldwide or at the very least EU-wide, it’s absolutely pointless.

What impact is AI going to have on the libel landscape?

The problem is accountability and the speed that it travels around the world. So to give you an example, there was a case of a US academic who was wrongly accused of misconduct by an AI chatbot. I have been provided with several similar examples in the course of the past year or so. Once it’s out there, it’s out there – it can take weeks to get it sorted. It’s all very well for these AI platforms to say we’ve got all these protections in place, but while it takes weeks to rectify something, on the other hand it only takes a nano second for false information to go right around the world. I’m increasingly finding that I and my team are having to become more like crisis PR experts than lawyers. And options are limited with platforms claiming they’re not publishers.

Do you ever see that platform/publisher distinction being successfully challenged?

It’s a farce – I regard it as being fact that they are publishers, and I won’t be told otherwise. But there is an interesting development with AI and chatbots. The big protection in the US for platforms is Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. The platforms argue that Section 230 protects them as facilitators – they do not create content, they say we’re just a platform for the user. But many law professors in the US have come to the view that generative AI creates new content. And because it creates new content, it can’t be classified the same as the social media platforms, and therefore they are not entitled to protection. That could be a game changer, not only in the US but also in Europe in relation to the Ecom Directive and forthcoming legislative changes. The answer as I see it from a legal perspective will be class actions.

You’ve had a remarkable career – what has been the secret to your success?

Probably just resilience and determination. As I say to all the young lawyers who come looking for jobs from us – you can look up the law, you don’t even need textbooks now as you can get most of it online, but you do need backbone and you do need judgement. Those are the two things that are essential to my type of work. You’ve got to have the courage of your convictions, your clients are totally dependent on you and your judgement. You can never be absolutely certain because of the absence of precedent and because of the extreme risk of adverse costs – so you just have to keep going and be ready to fight the case. The 3am sweat is very, very common.

You’ve acted for a who’s who of Hollywood A-list celebrities, including Sylvester Stallone, Liam Neeson, Harrison Ford and Johnny Depp. What cases have given you the biggest 3am sweats?

No matter how confident I am, that 3am sweat can often appear as a case approaches the door of the court. Most of the clients I act for are very, very reasonable. It’s not money they’re looking for, they’re looking for the record to be set straight right away, because often it’s not just their personal reputation, it’s their brand, and the brand is actually more valuable to them than their reputation, albeit they’re both intertwined. 

If you go back to the Eastwood v McGuigan case way back in the early 90s, I remember there was a judge who lived across the road from me. I was in my late 20s, and he came across the road and said you’re far too young, this is going to ruin your career. I was acting for Eastwood, and McGuigan was the more popular character. But as I describe in the book, we won that case and that set me on my way. There are other cases where I have been jumpy because I was worried a client would get cold feet on me. That’s a big risk, we’ve had quite a few situations where the client either gets bored with it, or they think this is becoming a bit messy, or the media is maybe starting to hurl a few hand grenades at them. So my biggest single fear is the client losing his or her nerve, and that is a risk that I have had quite a few times over the last 45 years.

You mentioned you were planning to take on the platforms. What else are you working on at the moment?

There are three potential scenarios I’m working on. One, I’m trying to look to see if a class action scenario can be created in relation to fake ads and create the precedent. We’re in a situation where all of the big platforms’ European, Middle Eastern and African headquarters are in Dublin, and we can get jurisdiction to get at them. We can’t do a class action in Ireland, but we can in the United States. The second thing I’m looking at is AI and what we can do there, we don’t want it controlling the lives of the population. And the third thing is that I might pen a fictional novel based on the part of the original manuscript of the book that the lawyers cut out. My book is about half the size that it was when I submitted the original manuscript!

Paul Tweed’s book ‘From Holywood to Hollywood – My Life as an International Libel Lawyer to the Rich and Famous’ is out now, published by Merrion Press.