Legal Commentary

Thanks to Dan & The Gang for having me back.  Like Doug B., I live in Ohio and am struck with how much attention the state is getting from the media and candidates. Obama, Hillary, and McCain have all been through Toledo already, and Hillary is speaking today at my University.  Usually, Toledo is the center of the political universe during general elections:   it?s on the Ohio-Michigan border, so it?s a good place to reach voters from two big swing states.  In the fall of 2004, Toledo was the biggest market for political TV ads, and you couldn?t swing a cat around without hitting Kerry, Edwards, Bush or Cheney on one of their multiple visits. It?s unusual that Ohio?s primary is important, but hey, it?s fun.

One interesting aspect to this, at least in the "how does this affect me, Joe Slater, and other law profs?" sense, is that the media will contact lots of academic types for interviews.  In the past couple of weeks, I?ve spoken to both Al Jazeera and Le Monde about Ohio, labor, and politics.  I got a special kick out of the Le Monde piece, because they translated my answers into French (website only; I can?t give a link because it?s subscriber only, but if you want to see it, send me an e-mail).  I?m not sure I actually said, "There is a structural crises in Ohio," but seeing my interview begin, "Il y a une crises structurelle dans l?Ohio" seems so . . . Continental intellectual.

More seriously, I wonder if schools do any preparation or media training for law profs who do interviews with the press semi-regularly.  I?m not talking about the media-savvy profs who do national press interviews on a regular basis.   I?m talking about folks like me, more typical for law profs generally:  in a mid-sized media market; called up by the local media several times a year and by the national media maybe once or twice a year; subjects range from questions directly within my expertise ("this new case held what, exactly?"); to at least within my general field, albeit not law related ("how long do you think this strike at GM is going to last?"); to broader questions on which, although I have something to say, my knowledge isn?t any better than that of lot of other folks (Le Monde?s first question was, "will any of the Presidential candidates be able to bring back jobs to Ohio?").

My guess it that most law profs have sufficient intellectual and performance skills to avoid looking really stupid in interviews. In part, that?s because there is some overlap between media skills and being good in classroom and other public presentations. But it is different -- you don?t control which part of what you say is used being the most obvious -- and there are specific skills involved TV, radio, and press interviews.

So, my question is, do law schools do media training for their profs? If not, should they? If so, what do they do and/or what should they do?