2013 CLE EXPO SPECIAL FOLLOW-UP INTERVIEW
BILLY MARTIN
is cofounder of the law firm Martin & Gitner, PLLC. He spoke to Diversity & the Bar following the CLE Expo in San Diego and again in Washington, D.C. He answered questions about his career, the future of the legal practice, and offered tips to young attorneys. An excerpt of the interview follows:
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Clearly you work on crisis management issues. How did you develop those skills? It is something I enjoy doing. I have always been gifted with the ability to articulate my views, from an early age, in high school and college. My position as executive assistant U.S. attorney here in Washington helped when I was appointed as a media spokesperson. Before they hired a full-time media person, I was given the task of respond- ing to press calls and meeting with the media and coming up with statements to make in response to major cases. Also, I was retained by NBC4 in
Washington during the O.J. Simpson trial. I was on air throughout the trial, live on TV. I had the ability and the good virtue to have been trained by Jim Vance and a lot of the anchors at NBC4.
What happened after the Simpson trial? I was hired on all the major cases in the media. I learned that I am a lawyer and what I do best is lawyer. I hired a very good PR firm to come up with and develop a message but I was still the spokesperson. If you look back on the trial of President Clinton, I was at times the spokesperson for Monica Lewinsky and her family. When intern Chandra Levy went
missing in Washington I was frequently the person who would appear before the cameras for her family. On every major matter, even if the message was devel- oped by one of the PR firms who we
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® MAY/JUNE 2013
work with, I am usually the person who will deliver that message in public.
How do you manage to keep your personal feelings or emo- tions out of the situations? It’s an acquired skill. I have been practicing law now for almost 38 years, and in my early years I tended to become more emotionally involved in my cases. But I don’t think a lawyer can survive—emotionally, physically, and mentally, by taking on the burdens and emotions of their clients. You learn professionally to give them the best on every case that you have. When I was representing some
of the major professional athletes, some of the NBA players would always tell me, “Leave everything you have on the floor, so when the game is over, you’re not questioning.” In my law practice I put everything into my court cases and leave it in the courtroom. When I walk out of that courtroom, emotionally I have done my best and I separate my life as a lawyer from my personal life. I have a family, and I try to make sure I don’t bring my legal issues home to my family because those are not my legal problems.
How do you select clients or cases? I like to think it is the result of the good reputation and experience that we have in handling major matters. We are frequently called by people involved in major crises or other lawyers who want to add us to the
team. It is usually something very newsworthy and sometimes very con- troversial, and we will decide whether it is something we would be interested in. We usually assist people in a time of need. It’s not something where we feel we are sitting on a pedestal where we get to pick and choose people or those issues. We take on some controversial cases because we believe everybody is entitled to legal representation.
Are there any cases or matters that you would turn down. If so, what are the criteria? I’m sure there is but I could not tell you in advance what that might be.
Are there any high-profile cases handled by other defense teams that you thought you’d handle totally differently? Tere are. I probably know the law- yers on those matters and I would not want to criticize them openly. Tere are some recent matters that have appeared in the press where the client has given public interviews and after the interviews were given the client was criticized for statements made during the course of the interview. I don’t want to give the name of the client or the lawyers because it is an ongoing matter and I don’t think I should get in the middle of it. You’ve got to be very careful to
allow your client to give public state- ments on the subject of the lawsuits because they will pick apart and parse
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