What happens after you call.
The four steps below apply to every engagement.
The four steps of an engagement
01. Scope
The first conversation is a phone call, and it is confidential. The purpose is to clarify the issue, identify who is involved and who needs to know, establish urgency, and understand the risks attached to both acting and waiting.
Not every matter becomes an engagement. If the work is narrower than you expected, you will hear that on the first call. If it belongs with your counsel, your insurer, or law enforcement instead, you will hear that too, at no cost.
02. Plan
A written plan defines what will be examined, how, by when, and what the deliverable will be. The plan is aligned with your legal, business, and confidentiality requirements before any work begins.
Where privilege is relevant, the engagement is structured in coordination with counsel from the outset rather than adjusted afterward. Where an internal population needs to remain unaware of the work, the plan accounts for that explicitly, including how site visits and interviews are arranged.
03. Execute
Execution covers assessments, interviews, document review, and fact development, conducted with discretion. Fieldwork is scheduled to minimize disruption and, where required, to avoid signaling that a review is underway.
Interviews are conducted with attention to how they will read later. People are not led, statements are not paraphrased into something cleaner than what was said, and the difference between what a person observed and what they concluded is preserved in the record.
You are kept current throughout. If something is found that changes the urgency or the scope, you hear it when it is found, not in the final report.
04. Report
Reporting is timely, accurate, and defensible. The report states what was examined, what was established, what was indicated but not established, and what could not be determined with the access available.
That structure exists because of where these documents end up. A report may be read by a board, relied on by counsel, produced in litigation, or reviewed by a regulator. A finding that cannot be traced back to its basis is a liability rather than an asset, so every conclusion carries its reasoning with it.
Recommendations are prioritized and specific enough to assign. Where no action is warranted, the report says so and explains why.
Request a confidential consultation.
Initial call is for scoping only. If the matter is outside Fenwick Advisory Group’s scope, you will be told on that call.