Among the many useful skills attorneys are typically not taught in law school is how to handle media attention about your client's legal problems. For example, if you are representing a freshman Tea Party-backed Congressman charged with owing over $100,000 in child support, you might, on a moment's reflection, come up with a better statement to the press than that your client "hasn’t been a big-time wage-earner politician until recently."
Bonus lesson. From the Canadian Bar Association's "A Lawyer's Guide to Dealing with the Media," an instructive story:
Keep yourself on a short leash
Kevin Aschenbrenner tells the story of a lawyer who did a fairly significant, high-pressure interview. There were some possibilities for some tense situations and some areas that the lawyer did not want addressed.
“He got training and did a great job through the interview. He stayed on message, used all the techniques. And then, showing the reporter out of the firm, he promptly in the elevator rattled on about everything he wasn’t supposed to say in the interview. Of course, that’s what got printed. So keep yourself on a short leash and talking only about what you want to talk about is really important.”
