Crisis communication research has resulted in a set of evidence-based guidelines that describe how an organization should communicate with the public during a crisis. As such, organizations are recommended to communicate timely, transparently and accommodatingly. A long-standing assumption in public relations research is, however, that organizations refrain from such accommodating crisis responses out of fear for legal liability. From the very outset of the research field, a distinction has been made between a public relations strategy and a legal strategy in crisis communication. Distinctions like these paint a negative picture of a great divide, in which crisis messages are either delayed, or scrutinized and rewritten by legal counsels. Ultimately, there is an expectation that liability concerns will lead to stonewalling and an overall defensive approach to crisis communication. My proposal wants to put an end to these assumptions and strive toward a more effective PR-legal collaboration during a crisis. Through participatory observations in two Belgian communication agencies, as well as quantitative findings from a content analysis and an experiment, I want to answer three research questions. First, how do PR and legal counsels collaborate regarding organizational crisis communication (RQ1). Second, in what distinct ways do both professions shape organizational crisis responses (RQ2). Third, what is the impact of their respective approaches on public perceptions (RQ3).