"there's a Tv News Crew in the Lobby Asking for a Partner "

• Jurisdiction: California,United States
• Citation: Vol. 03 No. 2012 Pg. 02
• Publication year: 2012
• Pages: 02
• Year: 2012
• topic: Business of Law,Civil Procedure

California Bar Journal 2012.

CBJ - March 2012 #02. "There's a TV news crew in the lobby asking for a partner "

The California Lawyer
March 2012

"There's a TV news crew in the lobby asking for a partner "

By Diane Karpman

Spinning is not just an exercise using a stationary bike, but also a term used to describe the manipulation of news media by lawyers and others in high-profile cases.

Some authorities have suggested that if the prosecution is indicting your client (not just technically but also by verbal abuse) that it's almost malpractice not to mitigate the toxic environment created by adverse publicity. Alan Dershowitz writes in his foreword for Spinning The Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion, by Kendall Coffey, "In today's work of multimedia, twenty-four-hour news cycles, the role of lawyers does not stop at the courtroom door, or even the courthouse steps." (Spinning the Law, page 7)

Obviously, spinning goes on in lots of different types of cases: high-visibility criminal cases; celebrity family cases; high-profile tort claims; big defective product cases; and political cases. These can all be tried in the...