Crisis Management

In today’s interconnected world, a crisis can take many forms: a congressional or legislative inquiry; data breach; theft of a trade secret; public corruption; multijurisdictional prosecutorial or enforcement action; product-related injury; whistleblower allegation; investigative journalism; or allegation of workplace misconduct. But regardless of the source, the necessary features of crisis responses are the need to quickly take command of the facts, and anticipate the need to defend your organization across multiple government, media, and litigation forums. Our Crisis Management Group’s approach cuts across traditional practice areas, pulling together a tailored multidisciplinary team to respond to any crisis. We have acted as lead counsel in matters ranging from investigations of the Russian SolarWinds hack, to national security and antitrust reviews of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger, to sexual misconduct by New York City councilmembers, to serving as the independent compliance monitor pursuant to Odebrecht S.A.’s landmark Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) settlement, to the recall of Fitbit’s Force activity tracker.

We recognize that when crisis strikes, time is of the essence. A company must answer to external actors—regulators, law enforcement, customers, media, and legislatures—while managing internal and other external stakeholders and demands. The first step in addressing these overlapping concerns is assembling a team to implement an organized decision-making process, master the facts, understand reputational and risk concerns, and develop a tailored response strategy. We know how to build and quarterback a response team, while working alongside crisis communications firms, outside experts, and your in-house media, legal, and government relations teams.

We have decades of experience across disciplines, industries, and government agencies, successfully guiding clients through crises of the highest levels. Our team includes former federal and state prosecutors and regulators, internationally recognized cybersecurity authorities, former congressional staffers, seasoned white-collar defense lawyers, product safety specialists, and former senior officials across a wide spectrum of U.S. government and state agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of the Treasury, Department of Defense, Department of State, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Food and Drug Administration, the National Security Council, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and state attorneys general (“state AGs”) offices. Our collaborative firm structure makes it easy for us to build client teams across disciplines, drawing on our Investigations and White-Collar Defense, Securities, Privacy and Data Security, Antitrust, Product Liability, and Appellate practices.