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Truth, lies & media mobs

29 April 2022 / Amy Zuckerman
Issue: 7976 / Categories: Features , Profession , Media
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Amy Zuckerman reports on how lawyers can help their clients deal with the media
  • Lawyers to be media savvy and to have strategies in place for protecting clients both during and after a trial.

Colin Stagg, falsely accused in 1992 of murdering Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common, spent a year in custody before being found not guilty in 1994. Last year, he revealed in a newspaper interview how false perceptions of his guilt have dogged him ever since, making him unemployable.

Matt Bosworth, who was a clerk at the time at Russell-Cooke, the firm which represented Stagg, says he was ‘able to see how the mass media went to work on a character assassination’. Stagg’s predicament, however, occurred pre-internet and pre-social media. Bosworth, now a partner at Russell-Cooke, says social media has made it even more important for lawyers to be media savvy and to have strategies in place for protecting clients both during and after a trial.

Who’s publishing?

Back then, Bosworth explains, it was possible to ‘know

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NEWS
Ceri Morgan, knowledge counsel at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer LLP, analyses the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Johnson v FirstRand Bank Ltd, which reshapes the law of fiduciary relationships and common law bribery
The boundaries of media access in family law are scrutinised by Nicholas Dobson in NLJ this week
Reflecting on personal experience, Professor Graham Zellick KC, Senior Master of the Bench and former Reader of the Middle Temple, questions the unchecked power of parliamentary privilege
Geoff Dover, managing director at Heirloom Fair Legal, sets out a blueprint for ethical litigation funding in the wake of high-profile law firm collapses
James Grice, head of innovation and AI at Lawfront, explores how artificial intelligence is transforming the legal sector
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