On the Job: Games P.R. People Play:

"'I want to cause you legal pain,' Jarrell told the IRE members. Sharing secrets, he explained to me later that a frequent strategy is to 'get the story about my client away from the reporter, away from the producer, and up with the general counsel' — a kind of legal leapfrog. Thus, the smart crisis managers will often refuse to deal with the reporter, sometimes alleging bias from the first contact and interview; they won't wait long to draft letters from the corporation's high-priced outside law firm.

'I want to take control of your story away from you,' Jarrell says. This stalls the story, and it frequently puts the fear of God into the media organization —'Do we need this hassle? Is this story worth it?' The lawyers nitpick, and even solid reporting can become suspect internally. "