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Article: The fine art of lawyer interviews.(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- St. Louis Journalism Review
- Article date:
- March 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 SJR St. Louis Journalism Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For professionals who make their living by communicating, lawyers are surprisingly bad interviews.
In my experience, they have two standard responses to media inquiries-they either refuse to comment at all on a story or they try to say too much.
The favorite reply. is, "No comment, I'm not going to try this case in the press.
Translation: "I'm losing this case, so don't ask me about it," or "I just lost this case and I'm going to appeal, so I don't want to make the appellate judge mad by saying anything stupid."
To say the least, it's not very helpful to the reporter.
On the other hand, lawyers have been known to go to the ...