Britney Spears’s Courtroom Plea Spurs Questions for Her Lawyer

The singer said she had not known she needed to petition the court to be released from her conservatorship, placing a focus on the court-appointed counsel who has represented her for 13 years.

Before Britney Spears broke her public silence on Wednesday regarding the long-running legal arrangement that has controlled her life, calling it abusive in an urgent and emotional speech, the man appointed to represent her in court for the last 13 years said he had no role in what she was about to say. “These are entirely her words,” said Samuel D. Ingham III, a lawyer for the singer since 2008, when she was deemed incapable by a judge of hiring her own counsel. At the time, Ms. Spears had been hospitalized for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation amid concerns about her mental health and substance abuse, and her father, James P. Spears, was petitioning in California for a conservatorship over her person and finances that continues to this day.