I say this with a heavy heart but ... lawyers are suffering. 

Law school graduates in increasingly alarming degrees -- or perhaps with "increasing alarming degrees" -- are not finding work once they graduate law school.

According to The New York Times, every state but Wisconsin and Nebraska (plus, of course, Washington, DC!) is producing many more lawyers than it needs. According to the most recent statistics, across the country, twice as many people passed the bar exam (53,508) as there were openings for lawyers (26,239).

So what, in light of this lawyer recession, is a self-respecting barrister expected to do? Why go into PR, of course.

And that brings us to the new book on "crisis management" by our old friend Lanny Davis. Davis' book, pretty accurately described by one nasty reviewer as “a lengthy advertisement to prospective clients who might avail themselves of Davis’s services," is as good an illustration as any of why lawyers make lousy PE public counselors.

Davis, himself, has made a nice career of mainly being a BFF of the Clintons. Davis parlayed his early friendship with Hillary Clinton at Yale to latch onto Clinton coattails as a special counsel to President Bill Clinton. While he began by using his law degree as a lawyer, Davis morphed into a “spokesman” for the President during the unpleasant Lewinsky-laden impeachment years.

From there on, either unwilling or unable to make it as a high-priced Washington lawyer, counselor Davis turned to a new profession, which upon reading his latest paean to himself you might think he invented, "crisis management."

Davis’s thesis in the new book is that the only person a besieged organization or individual should hire to represent it in a crisis is a practicing lawyer versed in both politics and media; an individual, well, like Lanny Davis.

PR people, he suggests, neither possess the legal chops nor the statutory "privilege" to ferret out the facts and stand up to the lawyers.

Davis’s breathtakingly self-serving arguments notwithstanding, here’s why he's wrong, using his own five "revolutionary" principles.

#1. Get all the facts out.

Finding out what happened first, of course, is not a revelation (sorry Lanny). But Davis states that it's impossible for PR people to acquire access to "all the facts," since they legally can’t be covered by "attorney-client privilege."

Wait a minute.

What if the PR counselor is hired by the attorney, a move that would put the adviser under the lawyer-client privilege protection?  For years, of course, this arrangement has been commonplace in crisis situations. But Davis seems unaware of this wrinkle that coincidentally torpedoes his primary premise.

Furthermore, Davis suggests that in light of client privilege, attorneys characteristically learn all the facts from their client about the case. Since when? 

The fact is, contrary to Davis’s convenient explanation, no rule requires lawyers to know what the truth is or even try to extract it from a client. Alan Dershowitz was once famously asked if he thought his client, O.J. Simpson, was guilty. Said the lawyer, "That's not my job, and I didn't ask." In other words, lawyers might be skeptical of a client's story but under no obligation to fact-check it. The lawyer's job is to defend the client. Period.

PR people -- real PR people -- enjoy no such luxury. Their own reputation is on the line if they insist that a guilty client is innocent. So PR people must try to learn the truth to protect their own reputations.

Example: A PR person who suspected that President Clinton really did have "sex" with the intern would never have publicly defended him, as a certain BFF did during impeachment. So much for "getting all the facts out."

#2. Put the facts into simple messages.

Anybody whose ever been forced to sit at a conference table, enduring the incessantly-convoluted, legalistic droning of a self-important attorney knows how laughable Davis’s second principle is.

Lawyers, by and large, are horrible communicators, with little knowledge of how the media operate or how normal people get through to other normal people outside the rarefied environment of a courtroom.

This is one of the reasons lawyers and their clients need professional communicators to interpret their arguments for public consumption.

 #3. Get ahead of the story.

Davis’s third rule is another that makes sense, sounds great, has been around for years as standard crisis management fare but is often impossible to pull off.  Hired by the Sofitel hotel chain in the Dominique Strauss Kahn alleged sexual assault case, Davis, himself, unsuccessfully tried to convey the hotel’s chamber maid’s innocence, before DSK walked when the case was thrown out.   

Clearly, trying to "control the agenda" is something every crisis manager seeks. Davis crows about how he has "leaked" information in advance to friendly journalists, as if, again, he was the first to come up with such a novel concept.

What experienced crisis managers learn is that responding to new facts or information -- particularly in today's 24/7 social media environment – and sharing with everyone is often a lot more critical than dumping positive client data with a media friend, often enraging less-friendly journalistic competitors who don’t appreciate the favoritism.

 #4. Fight for the truth using law, media and politics.

AKA: Hire a legally-trained person like Lanny Davis for your crisis management needs.  

Davis’s contention that a media-savvy lawyer is always best is belied by his own work for imprisoned CEO Martha Stewart, disgraced Congressman Charles Rangel and HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, not to mention lyin' old Bubba.

In each case, lovable Lanny's client made his own lives miserable by continuing to resist telling the truth until, in every case, it was too late. A competent PR professional would have insisted that they tell the truth. If they chose, despite the advice to keep fibbing, an ethical PR counselor, fearing reputational guilt by association, would have stepped down.

By contrast, Lanny Davis wrote about how well he did for each in his new book.

#5.  Never represent yourself in a crisis.

Davis’s fifth rule, besides being totally wrong (If you're the best you know at "crisis management," of course you follow your own instincts if you get in trouble!), is also the source of his own great personal embarrassment.

Basically, Lanny was taken to task for pocketing money from a number of ethically-suspect clients, highlighted by his brief but lucrative assignment for a murdering African thug. He has been trying ever since to reclaim his reputation, meticulously altering his Wikipedia page and producing this book extolling his wonderful work for numerous high profile clients.

Nothing wrong, of course, with trying to correct the record.  But in so doing, there's a sixth principle that Crisis Counselor Davis might consider next time around.

#6. If I already paid you good money to represent me, for goddsakes don’t go blabbing about our confidential relationship in a self-serving book to save your own crumbling credibility.