In the USA, some defence lawyers reportedly sen d Christmas presents of toiletries to journalists, along with a note saying how much they are looking forward to working together in the new year.In the UK, few law firms send Christmas cards, let alone bottles of Old Spice or No.5 to reporters.

But some solicitors here are concerned that the intense and speculative media coverage of the Fred West case is taking them another step down the American road.Tony Miles is a partner at Bristol-based Bobbetts Mackan, and solicitor to the late Fred West, the Gloucestershire builder charged with 12 murders.He fears that unless a halt is brought to the kind of intrusive reporting surrounding his late client's case, solicitors will be forced to respond by US-style wooing of the media.As the outcome of cases will be decided as much in the press as in the courtroom, it will become incumbent on solicitors to protect their client's interests in both arenas.

It is not a prospect he relishes.It is hard to see how anyone, media, police or the legal profession, will emerge with any credit from a case apparently spinning out of control.

At the same time as the police are warning that the coverage about Fred West may jeopardise the likelihood of his wife coming to trial, one of their colleagues is alleged to have hawked the story to a literary agent.

While Mr and Mrs West's current lawyers are calling for press restraint in the interests of justice, two people associated with a law firm previously acting in the case have now been accused of trying to sell confidential information to the press.Despite this, according to Mark Stephens, media lawyer and partner at Stephens Innocent, the real villain of the piece is the Attorney-General, who has consistently sat on his hands in the face of the lurid reporting of a string of high-profile cases.

Mr Stephens cites in particular his clients the Taylor sisters - for whom he has won leave to review judicially the attorney for failing to bring contempt proceedings - and that of Colin Stagg.

He adds: 'If the civil proceedings for libel of Terry Venables or Bruce Grobelaar ever came to trial, I would have grave concerns about whether they could be fair.' Each time the attorney fails to act, the press is encouraged to go even further with its coverage next time, he says.

'I don't think it is the journalists' fault.

It is a good journalist's job to sail along the boundaries of what is permissible.'In cases like Fred West's, Mr Stephens says the attorney should take a strong line, citing an apparently similar case in Canada, where there was a total news blackout.

'It is incumbent on the Attorney-General, in cases which obviously have all the ingredients of sex and violence to attract media interest, that he should take pre-emptive action by warning editors of the problems in relation to particular cases,' says Mr Stephens.

Not only did Sir Nicholas Lyell fail to do that, but he rejected requests to intervene over the press coverage at the time of Mr West's arrest last year.

'I think that was misconceived,' says Mr Stephens, with uncharacteristic understatement.However, according to the deputy editor of the Guardian newspaper, Alan Rusbridger, it has not just been journalists whose comments risk prejudicing the outcome of Mrs West's trial.

He describes some of the comments of Mrs West's solicitor, Leo Goatley, as 'a bit rich'.

'He was going round saying she was completely innocent and that Fred had told the police she wasn't involved.

What's that if not prejudicing the trial.

Solicitors have responsibilities in the same way as newspapers.'Mr Goately remai ns unrepentant.

'I have had to stand by and watch my client take a barrage of scurrilous and contemptuous comment - attention-grabbing headlines that completely leapfrog any legal reasoning.

If my comments can just redress the balance in any small way, I have no problem with that,' he says, adding: 'I also happen to be telling the truth.'The Guardian was one of the few papers - tabloid or broadsheet - to be circumspect in its coverage following Fred West's apparent suicide.

Whereas other broadsheets had headlines trumpeting: 'West 12 victims', and 'Second worst serial killer', the Guardian was careful to include the word 'alleged' liberally in its copy.

Mr Rusbridger puts this down to 'a good old fashioned presumption of innocence'.It is a presumption which puts the Guardian in something of a minority.

The editor of the Daily Mirror was heard on national radio defending his paper's treatment of the case on the grounds that it did not amount to contempt and any way, what could be more prejudicial to the outcome of your trial than having a dozen dead bodies under your floor boards.Mr Stephens says the case against Mrs West should be thrown out because it will be impossible to find an open-minded jury.

'Everyone in this country thinks they are both guilty as sin.

Why do we think Mrs West did it? Why do we know she did? Not because we have interviewed the witnesses; nor, God forbid, have we seen the evidence.

But because the media has implanted the implacable belief that these people are guilty.'