Florida Bar Certified Criminal Appellate Lawyer
Michael Ufferman is board certified in criminal appellate law and considered an expert in criminal appeals.
Why We Advise Clients Not to Litigate Their Cases in the Media
October 12, 2026 Firm News, Legal News Social Share
High-profile criminal cases increasingly draw attention far beyond traditional news coverage. Clients and their families may be approached by journalists, documentary filmmakers, podcast hosts, authors, researchers, and producers for television and streaming platforms. The invitation is often appealing: a chance to tell your side, correct an inaccurate report, or take part in a program that promises to present the case fairly.
At Ufferman Law Firm, our general advice is simple. While legal proceedings remain pending or reasonably possible, our clients and those speaking on their behalf should not discuss their cases with the media without first consulting counsel. That advice does not reflect any distrust of journalists or filmmakers. It reflects our responsibility to protect our clients and their legal interests.
We Tell Our Clients’ Stories in Court
A client’s case should be presented in the forum where it matters legally: before the courts. We advocate for our clients through pleadings, briefs, motions, memoranda, evidentiary proceedings, trials, and oral arguments. Those are the settings where facts and law can be presented within the rules, protections, and procedures of the judicial process.
For that reason, we generally do not attempt to tell a client’s side through the media. A documentary, podcast, interview, television program, or streaming production is not a substitute for the legal process, and it is not the appropriate forum in which to litigate a client’s case. Our job is not to win the public-relations battle. Our job is to protect our client’s legal interests and obtain the best result available through the legal process.
What Is Said Cannot Always Be Taken Back
Anything said to a journalist, producer, researcher, author, or filmmaker may be recorded, preserved, quoted, edited, summarized, or presented in a context the speaker never anticipated. A conversation lasting several hours may become a few seconds of a documentary. A statement that was accurate in context may sound very different once separated from the questions and explanations surrounding it. And once information has been disclosed, there may be no practical way to retrieve it.
Media statements may also be compared with testimony, discovery, correspondence, recorded conversations, prior statements, and other evidence. They can become the subject of investigation, impeachment, cross-examination, or future litigation. Even a truthful statement can create unnecessary legal issues when it is incomplete, edited, taken out of context, or made without knowing how it may later intersect with other evidence.
Privilege and Confidentiality Matter
Communications with journalists, producers, filmmakers, authors, and researchers ordinarily do not carry the protections of the attorney-client relationship. Calling a conversation off the record, background, or confidential does not create an attorney-client 2 privilege. Of particular concern, discussing attorney-client communications, legal advice, work product, litigation strategy, or other protected information with third parties may create arguments that important legal protections have been waived. Waiver issues can be complicated, and the consequences of a disclosure may reach beyond the particular statement or document disclosed.
Clients should therefore be especially careful not to disclose communications with counsel, legal strategy, attorney work product, or other privileged or protected information when attempting to explain or defend themselves publicly. Our advice concerning media communications is intended to preserve — not waive — the attorney-client privilege, work-product protection, confidentiality interests, and every other right or protection available to our clients.
Family Members and Representatives Can Create the Same Problems
The risks are not limited to statements made by a defendant or client. Family members, friends, agents, publicists, investigators, consultants, and others may sincerely want to defend someone they care about or correct what they believe is an inaccurate public narrative. But even well-intentioned statements can disclose information, identify potential evidence or witnesses, reveal aspects of legal strategy, create additional factual disputes, or hand another party material it may later try to use. Sometimes the most helpful thing a person can do for someone involved in litigation is to resist the understandable urge to explain the case publicly.
A Case May Not Be Over When the Public Thinks It Is
The conclusion of a trial does not necessarily mean a case is legally over. Direct appeals, postconviction proceedings, habeas proceedings, resentencing, collateral litigation, civil proceedings, and other matters may remain pending or arise years later.
This is particularly important in criminal cases. A statement made after conviction, while appellate or postconviction remedies remain available, may carry consequences that could not have been anticipated when the statement was made. A case that appears finished to the public may be very much alive from a legal standpoint.
There May Be a Time to Tell the Story
Our advice is not that a client can never speak publicly about what happened. There may come a time — after the relevant legal proceedings have concluded and the potential consequences have been carefully considered — when a client decides to tell the story publicly. That decision can be made then, deliberately and with the benefit of advice about what can appropriately be disclosed. There is rarely a legal advantage to telling that story too soon, and there may be significant consequences that cannot later be undone.
Until that time, our clients’ interests are generally best served by allowing their cases — and our advocacy on their behalf — to speak through the legal process. When a media inquiry arrives, we usually don’t need to answer questions, correct assumptions, provide background, or immediately accept or decline an invitation. Preserve the inquiry and discuss it with counsel before responding.