An Investigative Reporter Wants Comment on Your Firm. How to Answer.

Answer. Not answering is an answer, and “did not respond to a request for comment” tells every reader, including your clients and the judges you appear before, that you had nothing to say. Ask what the story is about, what they already have and when they file. Say when you will call back and keep to it. Then decide, with counsel, what you can say on the record, and say that much and no more. An investigative story about the firm is a different problem from a story about a case, and it is the one most firms are least ready for.

The first call

Get the questions in writing. Get the deadline. Ask what documents the reporter has, because the answer tells you what the story already is. Do not characterize anything in that first call, and do not say anything you would not want quoted, because everything is quotable unless the terms were agreed first. Twenty minutes to call back is fine. Tomorrow is not.

What to send back

A written statement, short, true and specific, that answers the questions you can answer and says plainly which ones you cannot and why: a client’s confidentiality, a matter under seal, a rule of professional conduct. Reporters print the sentence that explains a refusal far more kindly than they print a refusal. Where a fact the reporter has is wrong, correct it with a document, not an adjective.

What not to do

Do not threaten the outlet. Do not go off the record with a reporter you have never worked with. Do not answer on social media before you answer the reporter. Do not let a partner freelance. One voice, one statement, approved by counsel. And do not assume the story is hostile because the questions are; the questions are always hostile. In one matter, the defense pitched a true story about my client to 60 Minutes. I spoke with the producers, showed them why it was not news, and the segment did not run. That started with picking up the phone.

Before it ever happens

Know what a reporter finds when they search the firm’s name and the partners’ names. Fix what is wrong before it is a headline. That is the standing work a firm does on its own name, separate from any case, and the firms that have done it answer an investigative call in an hour instead of a week. The 60 Minutes case → When a reporter calls →