Services
Crisis response
When something has gone wrong, a client needs judgment before it needs words. A partner answers the 24-hour line in each office, and the partner who takes the call stays with the matter.
Our response work starts with facts. In the first hour we help a client establish what it knows, what it does not know and what it can safely say, and we write a holding statement that will still be true at the end of the day. Most statements issued in the first hour of a crisis are later corrected; the aim is that ours are not.
We then set up the matter as we would any other: a codename, a team, a single document that records every line the client has approved and when, and a rhythm of updates that suits the situation rather than the news cycle. Every external word goes through that document.
We work alongside a client’s lawyers from the start. Much of what we do in a crisis is help a client say something true and useful without saying something that will later be used against it, and that cannot be done well without counsel in the room.
What it involves
- A partner on the 24-hour line in London and New York, calling back within a quarter of an hour
- Holding statements, statements, questions and answers, and approved lines, kept in one record
- Media handling: the calls, the briefings, the interviews and the decisions not to give one
- Communications with employees, customers, regulators, investors and communities
- Digital listening twice daily, and more often when it matters
- A written account of the matter at its close, for the board and for the file
In practice In 2025 the median time between a call to the 24-hour line and a partner calling back was fourteen minutes. Forty-one matters began outside office hours.
Who to talk to
- Matthew Kerrigan Partner, London matthew.kerrigan@haldenrook.com
- Nathaniel Cobb Partner, New York nathaniel.cobb@haldenrook.com
Case studies
- 2026A global industrial group facing a regulator’s revocationContinuing
- 2024 to dateA heritage association during a product recallContinuing
- 2025An equipment lender after a service interruptionConcluded
- 2023A private bank after a data exposureConcluded