Crisis Management Attorney
If you are a professional or institution facing a legal, regulatory, or reputational crisis in Florida, your reputation, standing, and future may be at serious risk. These situations often unfold quickly, involve multiple stakeholders, and carry consequences that extend far beyond the immediate issue. The Suskauer Law Firm P.A., based in West Palm Beach, provides crisis management counsel to professionals, executives, and institutions throughout Florida when discretion, timing, and strategic judgment are critical.
We provide decisive, confidential legal guidance designed to protect your rights, your reputation, and your future at every stage of the crisis.
Guiding Professionals and Institutions Through High-Stakes Legal and Reputational Challenges
Michelle Suskauer provides legal-led crisis management for professionals, executives, and institutions facing high-stakes legal, regulatory, or reputational threats.
Based in West Palm Beach and serving clients throughout Florida, she is called upon when situations are sensitive, consequences are significant, and timing is critical.
With more than three decades of experience and distinguished service as President of The Florida Bar, Michelle brings a rare combination of legal judgment, strategic foresight, and discretion to matters where legal exposure, public scrutiny, and professional standing intersect.
Schedule a
Consultation
If you are facing a legal, regulatory, or reputational crisis in Florida and need discreet, strategic guidance, you can request a confidential consultation. A member of our legal team will respond promptly to discuss your situation and next steps.
When legal exposure, public scrutiny, and professional standing converge, Michelle Suskauer provides discreet, strategic guidance to help leaders navigate sensitive situations with clarity, confidence, and long-term perspective.. With more than three decades of legal leadership in Florida, Michelle advises executives, professionals, and institutions through moments that shape careers, organizations, and public trust. Her guidance integrates legal judgment, reputational awareness, and decisive action when it matters most.
Strategic Crisis Counsel: How We Guide Clients Through Crisis
Protecting Reputations
With more than three decades of experience navigating complex legal matters and reputational risk, Michelle Suskauer provides discreet, strategic counsel designed to strengthen legal positioning while protecting personal and organizational credibility. Her guidance reflects a deep understanding of how narratives unfold across courts, regulatory bodies, the media, and key stakeholders. By anticipating vulnerabilities and clarifying strategic pathways, she helps clients contain risk and prevent escalation before it threatens careers, operations, or long-term trust.
Rapid Crisis Response
The first 24 to 48 hours of any crisis are often decisive. They shape whether a situation stabilizes or becomes permanently damaging. Michelle delivers a disciplined, proven response framework that brings clarity at the moment when missteps are most costly. Clients are guided to make high-consequence decisions quickly, tactfully, and with full awareness of the legal, reputational, and operational implications of each action.
Sector-Specific Insight
Michelle brings a sophisticated understanding of the legal, regulatory, and reputational dynamics faced by different professional communities. Her work includes advising healthcare leaders navigating licensure exposure and compliance scrutiny, financial services professionals managing fiduciary obligations under regulatory oversight, corporate executives and boards confronting operational and stakeholder risk, and public figures whose matters require careful alignment between legal strategy and crisis response. This industry-specific perspective allows her to tailor counsel to the realities each client faces.
Decades of Florida Leadership
Grounded in more than three decades of legal leadership in Florida, including service as President of The Florida Bar, Michelle is a trusted voice within the state’s legal, business, and civic communities. Her longstanding presence in Palm Beach gives her a nuanced understanding of the region’s professional ecosystem and the heightened expectations placed on its executives, institutions, and high-net-worth residents. That experience allows her to guide sensitive matters with an awareness of how decisions resonate across prosecutors, regulators, community leaders, and the media. For clients operating in Florida’s most visible environments, she provides the credibility, regional insight, and steady judgment to manage scrutiny required to preserve long-term trust and reputation.
Who We Represent in Sensitive, High-Stakes Matters
Physicians and Healthcare Professionals
Advising medical professionals navigating licensure exposure, regulatory inquiries, allegations, and matters that place careers and reputations at risk.Financial Institutions and Wealth Managers
Guiding professionals facing fiduciary scrutiny, regulatory oversight, compliance issues, or public and client-facing crises.
Financial Institutions and Wealth Managers
Guiding professionals facing fiduciary scrutiny, regulatory oversight, compliance issues, or public and client-facing crises.
Executives and Business Owners
Supporting leadership teams and business owners managing internal investigations, legal disputes, public scrutiny, and operational risk during critical moments.
High-Net-Worth Individuals and Public Figures
Providing discreet counsel to individuals whose personal, professional, or public standing requires careful coordination of legal and reputational considerations.
Professionals Seeking Confidential, Rapid Guidance
Assisting clients who need immediate, trusted legal counsel when sensitive issues arise and the margin for error is narrow.
Frequently asked questions about crisis management in a Florida criminal case
What should I do if a reporter calls about my arrest?
If a reporter calls about your arrest, do not answer questions, and do not say "no comment" either, which reads as an admission in print. Say that your attorney will be handling any statements, take the reporter's name and outlet, and call your lawyer. Anything you say to a reporter can be quoted and can also be used by the prosecutor. A lawyer can decide whether a statement helps, and if so, write one that is accurate, brief, and does not commit you to facts before the evidence is known. In Florida, arrest reports are public records, so the story may run regardless. The goal is to shape it, not to stop it.
Can I get my mugshot or arrest record taken off the internet in Florida?
A mugshot can usually be removed from the internet in Florida; an arrest record only partly. Florida law requires commercial mugshot websites to remove your booking photo within 10 days of a written request, at no charge, and imposes a $1,000 per day penalty if they refuse (Fla. Stat. 901.43). That covers the mugshot sites. News articles are different: newspapers are not required to remove accurate reporting, though some update or unpublish stories when a case is dismissed and a request is made. The court record itself can only be hidden by sealing or expunging the case, which requires a qualifying outcome. We handle all three tracks.
Should I post about my case on social media?
No, do not post about your case on social media. Delete nothing, post nothing. Prosecutors and detectives read public profiles, obtain private messages by warrant, and use posts as admissions, as evidence of state of mind, and to impeach you at trial. A post that seems harmless, a photo out with friends while claiming hardship, a comment about the accuser, can cost a bond or a plea offer. Deleting existing posts after you know about an investigation can be charged as tampering with evidence. Set accounts to private, stop posting, and let your lawyer review anything that exists.
How does a lawyer handle the media in a high profile criminal case?
A lawyer handles the media in a high profile criminal case by controlling what gets said, by whom, and when. The goal is that nothing said outside the courtroom damages the case inside it. That includes a single point of contact for reporters, written statements instead of interviews, correcting factual errors on the record, and, where appropriate, providing context the initial arrest report left out. Michelle Suskauer has spent years as a legal analyst for CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and West Palm Beach stations, so she knows what reporters need and how a story gets built. Florida's ethics rules limit what lawyers may say publicly about a pending case, and everything is done inside them.
Will my arrest show up in a background check if the case is dropped in Florida?
Yes, a dropped case still shows up in a background check in Florida unless the record is expunged. An arrest is a public record from the moment it happens, and commercial background check companies collect it within days. A dismissal or no file decision is added to the record but does not remove the arrest. Expunction (Fla. Stat. 943.0585) is what removes it from the public record and from the clerk's and sheriff's files, and it is available when a charge was dropped, dismissed, or never filed, if you have no prior convictions. Until then, you are entitled to explain that the case was dismissed, and a letter from the State Attorney's Office confirming it helps.
Do I have to report an arrest to my employer or licensing board in Florida?
You often do have to report a criminal case to your licensing board in Florida, and the deadline can be short. Health care licensees must report a conviction or plea, including a plea with adjudication withheld, in writing within 30 days (Fla. Stat. 456.072), real estate licensees must report a felony plea or conviction within 30 days, and lawyers, teachers, insurance agents and financial advisers have their own rules, some of which reach arrests and charges. Failing to report is itself a ground for discipline. Employment contracts, security clearances, and hospital privileges have their own rules. What to report, in what words, and when, should be decided with your criminal lawyer, because a careless report becomes evidence. The answer is rarely "say nothing," but it is also never "say everything."
Do I need a lawyer if I have not been charged with anything yet?
Yes, you need a lawyer before charges are filed if there is an investigation, a complaint, or a reporter. The period before charges is when reputations are decided and when the most can be done: preventing an interview that becomes the case, preserving evidence that helps you, presenting your side to the State Attorney's Office in West Palm Beach before a filing decision, and controlling what is said publicly. Once charges are filed and the arrest is public, most of those doors close. The consultation is confidential and privileged whether or not anything is ever filed.