Counsel for the seventy‑two hours that decide a legacy.
Strategic intelligence for organizations navigating their defining moment. We turn existential threats into competitive advantages.
Book a Confidential Briefing
A private memorandum to the executive who has already read the morning headlines.
You have spent a career building something worth defending. By the time our office receives your call, the situation has already moved from your internal war room into the public record, and the standing of your company — its license to operate, its access to capital, the trust of its board — is being measured in hours, not quarters.
We do not present ourselves as a generalist communications vendor. We are a retained advisory, 167 professionals strong, called when the issue exceeds what the in-house team, your general counsel, and your outside firm can carry together. Our partners embed alongside yours during the seventy-two hours that determine whether a story becomes a footnote or a legacy.
The firms that retain us are not looking for reassurance. They are looking for a peer who has seen the room before, who knows which regulators pick up the phone and which journalists do not, and who is willing to be quoted only in the minutes that matter.
If that is the conversation you need to have this week, it begins with a confidential call — not a discovery questionnaire.
A crisis is not an event. It is a contest — between the speed of your decision and the speed of someone else’s narrative. Win the first seventy‑two hours, and you are a counsel. Lose them, and you are a correspondent.
— Margaret Hartwell, Founding Partner · 2011 Hartwell Lecture, Council on Foreign Relations
Four operational modes across the full arc of a reputational event.
A buyer rarely needs a single deliverable. They need a partner that can move from the first hour of an active situation to the long-tail muscle-building that prevents the next one. The four panels below are the ones we run most often.
-
I.
Active Crisis Response
A senior partner and a war-room bench embedded within nine minutes of hotline activation — coordinating counsel, communications, board posture, regulator interface, and frontline employee messaging across the first seventy-two hours. Resolved or neutralized at an average of eleven days from engagement, against an industry norm of forty-seven.
-
II.
Leadership & Spokesperson Hardening
Preparation of CEOs, general counsel, and board chairs for the testimony, the press conference, the all-hands, and the regulator in the room. Scenario-driven rehearsal, not media training — built from the actual record of every comparable matter our partners have argued or answered on the record in the past decade.
-
III.
Regulatory & Legal Coordination
A permanent liaison function with outside counsel and in-house legal during open investigations, consent decrees, and cross-border inquiries. We do not litigate — we make sure every filing, every statement, and every employee action reads from the same page under the same theory of the case.
-
IV.
Post‑Incident Resilience
A twelve-month program to convert a stabilized situation into durable institutional muscle: governance review, decision-rights mapping, early-warning instrumentation, and certification of the executive team through the Hartwell Crisis Readiness curriculum. Ninety-two percent of our retained clients have not experienced a Tier-1 reputational escalation in the twenty-four months following this program.
The firm, in numbers a board could verify.
The standing of an advisory is a question of record, not rhetoric. The figures below are drawn from our audited annual disclosure and the standing files of our three offices.
- Founded
- 2009, Washington, D.C.London office opened 2014 · Singapore office opened 2019
- Headcount
- 167 professionals47 senior partners · 31 multilingual crisis analysts
- Active Retainer Portfolio
- 84 corporations · 12 sovereign entities · 6 multilateral institutionsA standing relationship rather than a project
- Response Time
- A senior partner on a confidential call within nine minutes of hotline activation24 hours · 365 days · no answering service
- Cumulative Engagements
- 1,340+ since founding96% client renewal rate, year over year
- Partner Tenure
- 11.4-year average at the firmIndustry average: 2.3 years
- Hartwell Readiness Program
- 22,400+ executives certified since 2012Our standing training division
- Recognition
- PRWeek Crisis Agency of the Year (2023) · Holmes Report Global SABRE Winner (2022) · PRovoke Media Crisis Consultancy of the Americas (2021, 2023, 2024)Selected analysis: Harvard Business Review, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times
The Hartwell Protocol — a codified system, not a bespoke improvisation.
Retained advisory should not depend on personalities. The Hartwell Protocol is the firm’s proprietary operating system — a four-chapter discipline now used as the standing manual by fourteen of the top twenty-five global public relations firms.
-
Chapter One
The First Call
Within nine minutes of hotline activation, a senior partner is on a confidential line with the general counsel and the chief executive. The first deliverable is not a statement — it is a written read of the situation, the named decision-makers, and the operational deadlines already in motion.
-
Chapter Two
The War Room
A standing room in Washington, London, or Singapore becomes the single point of decision, with a partner in residence twenty-four hours a day for the duration of the engagement. No junior staffing. Every external message, filing, and employee communication is logged against a single theory of the case.
-
Chapter Three
The Record
An evidentiary record, not a narrative. Every public statement is reconciled against the underlying documents, witness accounts, and regulatory filings — so that nothing the company says cannot be defended if a producer, a prosecutor, or a plaintiff reads it back.
-
Chapter Four
The After
The matter does not close when the headlines move. A twelve-month review formalizes governance changes, decision-rights mapping, and early-warning instrumentation, and certifies the executive team through the Hartwell Crisis Readiness curriculum before the matter is signed off.