Actually

Apropos of nothing in particular, some thoughts from a friend in the legal profession:

1. Refusing to answer a reporter with "I cannot comment on that at this stage" is not the same as saying "I don't know", but may end up being written up as such anyway.
2. A barrister who is in Court to take sentence may well, surprisingly enough, not have been the same barrister who represented that client during the plea.

Fascinating, eh? Those are completely different to the assumptions to which I might otherwise have jumped, if I had just taken a news story at face value without doing any checking myself. Thank you, mysterious lawyer-friend!

(Of course, there's no particular reason for my friend to think these things should be pointed out today.)