A Reporter Contacted Your Client Directly. What Should the Client Do?

The client should take the reporter’s name, outlet and deadline, say that they will have their lawyer’s office call back, and say nothing else. Not “no comment,” which reads as hiding, and not a sentence about the case, which reads as evidence. The trial publicity rule binds the lawyer, not the client, but anything the client says can be read against their testimony later, and the defense will read it. The client is free to speak. The question is whether they should, and that is a decision made with counsel, not on a doorstep.

Tell clients this before it happens

In the first meeting, not after the first call. Reporters find claimants through filings, through social media, through other claimants, and through the defendant’s own outreach. A client who has been told what to do answers calmly. A client who has not either says too much or hangs up, and both become part of the story. The script is one sentence: here is my lawyer’s number, they will call you back today.

Then decide, with counsel, whether they speak

Sometimes the answer is yes. A client who tells the story once, accurately, on their own terms, with counsel’s written approval, can put a face on a complaint a defendant is trying to make abstract. Often the answer is no, because the interview would drift toward a witness, a document or an opinion about the outcome, or because the client is not ready and a first interview would feel like a second injury. Either way, the reporter gets a call back before deadline from someone, because an unreturned call becomes the line that says so.

What consent means here

No client speaks without knowing exactly what is being asked and why, and without the right to stop, including mid-interview. That is not a legal requirement layered on top of the work. It is the method, and it is why a client who does speak is usually more credible than a coached one. In a mass tort, this is where a standing cadence of client communications earns its place: claimants who hear from the case regularly already know what to do when a stranger calls. Should your client talk to the press before trial? → Keeping claimants informed →