No comment interviews

We were speaking among ourselves in the office recently about the types of police interviews that clients end up giving and how there seems to be some misunderstanding about what the options in an interview actually are.

Defence lawyers often need to give advice over the phone to people as they are held at the police station. In that context, it can be extremely difficult to explain what a "no comment" interview actually means.

In explaining the questions that you should answer, the questions that you shouldn't answer and how you should answer them, it often gets quite confusing.

I thought it would be a helpful to summarise what the options in an interview are:

• A "no comment" interview;