Review of Kendall Coffey’s Book “Spinning the Law”

Spinning The Law

Along with expertise in fighting legal battles, Kendall Coffey is also known as prolific author. Coffey has written some three-dozen articles on legal topics from the Yale Law and Policy Review to the Wall Street Journal. After the success of “Foreclosures In Florida” Kendall did not rest.  His new book “Spinning the Law: Trying Cases in the Court of Public Opinion” is becoming popular among lawyers, media persons, journalists, and the general public.

Here is an example review of Kendall Coffey’s book “Spinning the Law”. This review was written by James Zirin (a former Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York):

Litigators love to tell war stories, and Miami attorney, Kendall Coffey is no exception. Coffey’s book, “Spinning the Law,” is not so much an account of his own extraordinary accomplishments in court, but a passing account of celebrity trials through the ages conducted by other lawyers, and how spin dramatically affected the proceeding. It is nothing new that a lawyer must have his unique bag of tricks. In the graveyard scene, Hamlet said to Horatio, “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his qualities, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks?” Kendall Coffey argues that spin is just another weapon in the litigator’s arsenal.

Coffey’s premise, expressed in the opening sentence of his book, is generally accepted: “When attorneys spin, it’s about trying to win,” a snappy jingle reminiscent of Johnny Cochran’s closing mantra in the O.J. Simpson trial, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

What we have in “Spinning the Law” is a handbook, laced with well-known examples for trying a high-profile case in the press. As Coffey puts it, “No one really knows the full extent to which a verdict from the court of public opinion might influence decisions inside the court of law.” Ignoring that this proposition is at odds with every conception of a fair trail based solely on the evidence adduced in the courtroom, Coffey argues that the modern advocate must try to win both verdicts for the client.

His vaunting ability to engage in and recognize spin skirts the pejorative implications often associated with the term. In public relations, the term spin generally “signifies a heavily biased portrayal.” Spin often, though not always, implies disingenuous, deceptive and highly manipulative tactics. Here  spin is seen as the counter-force, as necessary in today’s world as any other protective tactic against aggressive media forces.

The old ways of spin include many of the odious tools used by Mussolini’s Ministry of Propaganda: cherry picking, i.e., selectively presenting facts and quotes that support ideal positions (thus possibly lying by omission); using loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response; obfuscation such as the so-called “non-denial denial”; phrasing that in a way presumes unproven truths; euphemisms for drawing attention away from items considered distasteful; and ambiguity in public statements. That is why judges instruct juries to avoid media accounts of the case, which in our time must include posts on Twitter and Facebook.

Kendall Coffey argues that if prosecutors are going to announce damning indictments, laced with lush tidbits of the proof they hope to present, shouldn’t defense lawyers inform the community of the mitigating circumstances or the exculpatory evidence? After all, there are two sides to every story. It is the media’s job to dig, but their tendency is to publish the salacious. What the defense puts out needs to be more coherent. If spin is used judiciously and lawfully, it can make a tremendous difference to the client in court or, perhaps just as importantly, in the real world where reputations reign supreme.

Coffey knows whereof he speaks. He has appeared repeatedly as a savvy media analyst of high-profile cases on the Today show, Good Morning America, Larry King Live, Anderson Cooper 360,˚ CNN Headline News and many other of the usual suspects. He is clearly fascinated media in all its forms and makes the case that the skills of the advocate and the spin-doctor are very much interrelated.

Coffey displays a fascination in his book with trials that have experienced intense public interest. Every case is important to the litigants and to society, but it is the high profile case that Coffey is brings to life for us. Like skimming a rock across the surface of a pond, he begins with a fraud trial in which he participated, involving the election of the Miami mayor. He then takes us on a promenade through history in which he explores the role of spin in the trials from Socrates to Joan of Arc.  Other cases he discusses are the media trials of the century: the Lindbergh kidnapping case where the press concealed movie cameras in the courtroom as a work-around to the trial court’s ruling barring cameras, and the O. J. Simpson trial where the judge ordered gavel-to-gavel coverage on national television. Could we ever forget Judge Ito? Coffey also relates his own experiences in the Elian Gonzalez custody case and speculates on the controversy’s effect in Florida on the 2000 Bush/Gore presidential contest.

In Spinning the Law Kendall Coffey serves up a hearty stew of some of the most publicized cases of recent times, those of Michael Jackson (acquittal), Kobe Bryant (prosecutor dropped case after it was abandoned by complaining witness), Martha Stewart (conviction), Scott Peterson (conviction), Gordon “Scooter” Libby (conviction), and impeached former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (conviction on one of 24 counts).

This is an entertaining and interesting book if for no other reason than to take us down the memory lane of famous trials of our era. What Coffey points out is that in the high profile case the advocate must also consider the verdict of history, and must try to influence that verdict outside, as well as inside, the courtroom.

As Judge Leval stated in the Westmoreland libel case, “Judgments of history are too subtle and too complex to be satisfied with a verdict. It may be for the best that the verdict will be left to history.”

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This article was originally published in the New York Law Journal.