Crisis management

When the first hours matter

When a story is about to decide the outcome, the first hours are not the time to work out who speaks and what can be said.

What the first day looks like

A reporter’s deadline, a leaked document, and a legal team still assembling the facts create different clocks. The first job is not to write a sweeping statement. It is to establish who knows what, who can approve a response, what must be preserved, and what can be said without outrunning the evidence. Our guide to the first 24 hours of a corporate crisis lays out that sequence.

How LUCID handles a crisis

What is crisis management, and when should we call? Crisis management is the work of protecting a reputation in the hours and days a public story is deciding it: a lawsuit that becomes a headline, a leaked investigation, a video circulating, an executive named. Call when the record is incomplete, the story is hardening, or silence is creating its own meaning. The earlier you reach us, the more options are still open.

What does LUCID actually do in a crisis? We keep verified facts in front of the people who matter, prepare you for the questions that count, and help decide when silence protects you — and when it creates avoidable risk. That means sorting what is confirmed from what is not, deciding what triggers a public statement and what does not, and keeping the public position and the legal position from damaging each other.

Do you work alongside our lawyers? Yes. The public story and the legal strategy are usually run by different people, on different clocks, and the gap between them is where the damage happens. We work alongside inside and outside counsel so the public posture protects the standing the case is being fought to defend.

Can you guarantee the story goes away? No, and anyone who promises that is selling something. Much of whether a story breaks is outside anyone's control. What we can do is make sure that when it breaks, you are deciding from a plan rather than reacting from fear.

How fast can you start? We respond quickly, and LUCID is reachable after hours.

Speak with LUCID before the story hardens

If a reputation is about to be decided in public, speak with us confidentially.

Phone: 310-859-4600