Episode 3

[00:00] Sarah: Welcome to This Multidisciplinary Life, a podcast where we explore the nuances and uniqueness of multidisciplinary teams across the world. Each episode, I‘ll be chatting with experts who are involved in and leading multidisciplinary teams. I want to understand what makes these teams so special to build and be a part of.

Research from Harvard Business Review tells us that multidisciplinary teams outperform homogenous teams. I want to understand how and why this is the case.

My guest today is Mollie Trigulis. Mollie is a consultant and ex lawyer within the legal industry. She provides coaching and mentoring programs to people as well as strategic advisory and facilitation to corporate and government clients. Mollie has a vision for a new way of working and one that I particularly love, that we stop the busy work, that we play to our strengths and energy.

I love these notes, by the way. Her work focuses on navigating disruption, particularly within the legal profession, and she does this through being part of and helping to facilitate courageous conversations with people. Mollie is a multidisciplinary professional with a background in law, project management, design thinking, and coaching.

Mollie, welcome.

[01:20] Mollie: Thank you for having me.

[01:21] Sarah: I‘m so excited that we‘re having this conversation today. We have some big questions to ponder in this chat, and before we dive into those, because I think they‘re going to take us on many different tangents.

[01:33] Mollie: I can‘t wait to see.

[01:35] Sarah: I have a question for you that I‘ve been wanting to ask you for a really long time.

It‘s this concept around busy work. And my question is, what does busy work mean to you? And what do you think it stops us from doing?

[01:48] Mollie: Yeah, great question. For me, busy work is the culture around working, this sort of obsession with productivity and the hours you work or the amount of time you spend at work, rather than the experience of being work or what you deliver out of it.

I see this so much in legal teams where if you walk down the hallways, you will literally hear people say to each other it‘s the code. How are you? Busy? You busy? Oh, surviving. Yeah, surviving. And that means. I‘m doing well because I‘m ticking the boxes and I‘m here all the time. It‘s about a pace of work that frankly is unsustainable, but we might get to that.

And what it stops is space for the other things. And if you even just think in a work context, it stops space for strategic thinking, creativity. Big planning. And for me, one of my big concerns at the moment is it also stops the ability to be ready for change and disruption. So if you think about the big thing, everyone‘s talking about, and let‘s call it emerging technologies.

Cause we‘re probably all sick of just hearing about gen AI. But in my experience over many years of trying to help people embed change and embed new technology, it needs a lot of time and space. You need the mindset to be ready. You need time and space to think differently, work differently and play and experiment.

And busy work is just a fast paced existence on a hamster wheel. So you can imagine. I think we‘ve all been there, right? Where you‘re just, you‘re running and you‘re getting busier and you‘re like ticking off the list. I‘m doing so well, I‘m ticking everything off my list. And then you get home and you think, what did I do today?

And also you‘re buzzing from the busyness of it all. So it‘s that culture and that way of working. And it really concerns me. I‘ve been there. The reason I‘m concerned is I‘ve been there. It made me sick. I got better. And I see it just being so prevalent in these knowledge worker industries at the moment.

[03:47] Sarah: And it‘s and you say knowledge worker industry, and I totally agree with you because I think it spans across multiple industries, not just the legal profession, but it is this really strong. expectation and pressure, even as you‘re building your career, that if you‘re busy, you must be more productive because you‘re working so hard.

But that working so hard doesn‘t actually yield the results that you‘re talking about.

[04:12] Mollie: That‘s right. And I think, the legal industry has a particular challenge because the utilisation model of most firms rewards looking and being busy. But the thing I find really interesting having consulted to in house legal teams is.

When someone leaves private practice and leaves that billable model, billable hour model behind, they take the busy ness with them. So if you look at in house legal teams, They‘re usually even more, even busier, like even higher pace, faster pace of work. And you think, why? You don‘t have these targets, but there‘s something about what they‘ve learned, how they‘ve learned to work well and be perceived as going up a ladder, being productive.

It‘s all related to the amount of time you are there, sitting there, typing away delivering without any sense of what happens if I went for a walk in the middle of the day? Cause I know that I‘ll think better. And I‘ve got a complex issue to solve, but there‘s none of that kind of connection of why space is important in the day.

I think the legal industry has got a long way to go still in working that out.

[05:16] Sarah: Do you think where this question is just, as you‘ve been talking about time and space and change, I was just thinking about this idea of, are we aware that we need time and space in order to process change? I wonder if we are.

[05:31] Mollie: Practitioners who work in change know it. It‘s a pre condition for change. And anyone that‘s done a retrospective about why something didn‘t work will acknowledge that. Most of the time it‘s because people didn‘t, were too busy to get on, get involved. So anyone that‘s trying to do, make change or could be a change maker knows it, but I think someone who‘s in the busy cycle, one of the challenges is you‘re not stopping and thinking about what you‘re doing.

You‘re just onto the next thing. Everything feels urgent. You‘re putting out fires all the time. So that sense that you‘d stop and think. Is this the right way to work? Or, is this gonna really help me with my longer term goals or this big change ahead? There‘s no time for even that consideration. And also I think change is hard and change is mucky and It‘s that dopamine discussion.

It‘s probably in the moment more satisfying to tick off the next thing or send that next email. It‘s much less satisfying to think, Oh, I‘m going to have to sit in discomfort for 12 to 18 months with this big thing that‘s happening. And I don‘t know where it‘s going to go. It‘s going to go somewhere. I don‘t know, but I‘ve got to just sit with it.

Like, how very unappealing. We have not been trained to work in that way.

[06:42] Sarah: Yeah. And it‘s interesting because even when someone asks you socially, how are you? What have you been up to? There is that pressure to respond with, "Oh this and this. And I‘ve been doing this"

[06:53] Mollie: That‘s right. That‘s right.

[06:54] Sarah: And the busyness.

[06:55] Mollie: Yes. And I‘m in my current world quite consciously trying to Not work that way. And then it means what I‘m trying to, I‘m talking to people what I‘m, about what I‘m doing. Everyone‘s what do you mean? You rest at two. And are you being lazy? Are you doing any work? It‘s yeah, I‘m working, but it‘s just different.

There are other ways it can look, but it‘s quite foreign. It is quite foreign. Yeah.

[07:15] Sarah: And brave.

[07:16] Mollie: It feels good.

[07:19] Sarah: I love it. I love it. Okay. Let‘s change direction a little bit. I‘m keen to ask you about dive into some examples. So I want to talk about your last role at Minter Ellison. I understand you were the executive director of the Legal Optimisation Consulting Practice when you were there. Can we talk a little about that? What did it involve? What did it look like? Paint the picture for me.

[07:42] Mollie: Yeah, so it was a role I designed for myself with the help of some sponsors. But essentially I with a leader of the firm, built a consulting practice for in house legal teams. So the sole client base of this practice was other lawyers in house.

And it came about, so if we trace back the history, so before that role, I was a head of legal operations at Minterellison. So that was an internal facing role, like as multidisciplinary as you can get. I was part of both a business operations leadership team. So advising one of the managing partners with a, someone from finance, someone from marketing and someone from.

HR. So we were like the strategic advisory team there. But I was also part of the big digital legal operations team, which is like 75 people with all different skill sets who support the firm in the ways people are working, embedding new technology, encouraging project management, a whole range of things.

So that was the background I came from. And that was a recognition that whatever this thing we were doing was, which we put under the banner of legal operations. clients wanted a piece of. So clients would look at that or get wind of who are these other people on our matters? Or who are these other people you‘re, that are helping us deliver this big project?

You say, Oh that‘s Sam from legal project management and that‘s Ken. He‘s head of the legal technology space. So he can talk to you about legal technology. And that experience for clients was, fantastic in the sense that they were really interested in these other things that the firm was doing to support the work.

And so we basically packaged that into a consulting practice. And this is where the real multidisciplinary piece comes in. I was the front face of it in the sense that I was the key consultant, but the model was that we would draw on this we need to have these experts within the firm. So if we needed a legal process review, we would draw on our legal process review team who were internal and external, or we would draw on our legal project management team, or we‘d draw on our workflow automation team and build project teams To deliver to clients that then extended because the firm has branched out into so many other consulting practices that we were collaborating very often with the technology consulting team, but the range of other consulting teams to build teams or get the, their insights or work with their clients to build out our pipeline and our workflow.

[10:20] Sarah: Yep. And so these teams would come together as you described for a particular purpose or a problem to be solved. Yes. And then they would disband, but likely come together in a different formation for another piece of work.

[10:32] Mollie: Yes, that‘s right. Yeah. And so there was some key players or people in the firm that I would ring for advice a lot.

And so often what would end up happening, even if a project team wasn‘t built, is that I would bring one of these SMEs to a meeting with a client to talk through the pros and cons of a particular approach. And that in itself was extremely valuable. So that was my advisory team, but also we could create an advisory team for the client with them as well.

And the most, the team we worked most with was the process review teams. We did a lot of, it‘s called a continuous improvement team, but a lot of Lean Six Sigma reviews, legal process reviews for clients, which was really interesting and the best examples we had, which is like multidisciplinary in so many ways, is that of a client where we were working with the legal team, but for example, also their internal HR team who had a challenge.

And the challenge was both had legal risks and HR risks. So they would come together. We‘d bring a team of someone with legal expertise, a project manager and the legal process review team in to help manage that problem. Review. How interesting. Yeah. So you look at, then they‘d be looking at efficiency, legal risk, and that sort of intangible how can we get along better piece as well, all at the same time, and they were really effective.

[11:55] Sarah: Quite a, more leaning towards a holistic problem solving approach than just looking through the legal lens and only taking that path, essentially.

[12:06] Mollie: Yeah. And increasingly we found when we were speaking to clients that, the work we did was so intertwined, A, with the legal, what was being delivered from the legal side, but it would often come as a technology problem.

Rarely was it a technology problem. So phrased as a tech problem? Yes. Phrased. It would come to us as a technology problem. The most common one would be the challenges around not having a document management system, like a really clear example. Yes, there is a challenge to having a document management system, but often there was a culture of sort of everyone having their own ways of working and ways of naming and ways of storing and not, no one really having the time and space to think about, Oh even if we just had a naming convention, it would make a huge difference.

And one of the great challenges we found with these teams is we could bring all the experts you want in, but all this work takes time and it was often unpalatable, a little bit unpalatable to think about. the time it would take to get these things right. That‘s a great challenge. This was never enough time to deliver the big thing because they wanted us, often wanted a spot solution, which was interesting to navigate.

So then it was working out what can we do and how much of this can be done from the people perspective? If we change the hearts and minds of the team, often it would get a team a long way down the change path, and then they‘d be ready later on for some technology, for example, but we found increasingly the work we were doing was in the people space.

[13:46] Sarah: Yeah. Capturing hearts and minds is so powerful to driving change.

[13:52] Mollie: That‘s right. Really necessary. And often you‘re talking about people that are really high performance, really busy, wanting to do the right thing, feeling a lot, huge pressure from their organization because the legal teams were usually a cost center.

Down the bottom of the food chain. And so part of the interesting work was trying to elevate them up. So they were having the right kind of discussions internally with their cohort, their executive team to then be able to actually do the work they needed to do to change.

[14:25] Sarah: Right. There‘s quite a bit in that.

Thinking about some of your background, because you are trained in project management, you‘re a trained coach, you have a design thinking brain and background to that as well. How did all of those skills help you with even just being aware that there was a people issue to be looked at and examined?

How did it help you?

[14:49] Mollie: They were critical. It couldn‘t have worked any other way, I think, in the sense that one of my skills from having what I consider my toolkit, like I don‘t, I‘m anti being a one methodology gal, but I say I‘ve got Agile, I‘ve got Lean Six Sigma, I‘ve got Design Thinking in my toolkit.

And often the power of that is being able to look at a problem. from a whole lot of different angles and then think what‘s the right sort of tool or line in this example, what is this problem really? Is it really just what will have the biggest impact? Is it really just in this case, there‘s a whole lot of inefficiencies in the system.

So we want to just do a process review or is this really as so often as a case about something so much more to do with the people and how they‘re interacting with each other. So my training and background gave me, gives me this sort of. ability to zoom out and look at the problem from all the angles and then work out how do we solve this.

And when I say solve this, probably start to solve it because most problems are much bigger than, a quick fix. But I think it‘s something I really pride myself in as well that I‘m, and I would say to clients of people I work with that I don‘t want to come in with a presupposed solution or answer.

I think so often. Consultants go in and it‘s quite appealing, right? To go in and say, Oh, all you‘ve got to do is these four steps and everything will be solved. I‘m anti, like the antidote to that in the sense of we‘re going to have to look at this problem and talk, do a lot of discussion to work out actually what needs to be solved.

Like what is the problem to be solved here? Generally not the one you‘ve come to me with. And so that. Multidisciplinary approach means I‘m not pre assuming that it‘s a legal problem or a process problem or a design thinking problem even, but that all those options are open to me in terms of how you might tackle something.

So it‘s been, really critical to how I work and still is in my new life as well.

[16:56] Sarah: Sounds like it will only be more essential as well, especially when you‘re dealing with problems around change and disruption and helping people learn about change and drive change.

[17:09] Mollie: Yes. And increasingly I‘m finding that the problems or the Disruption I‘m helping with, there is not a single answer for.

And the emerging technologies one is a perfect one. So multifaceted. If one person with one skill set is coming in and saying they can solve that, It‘s just, that‘s a joke, like you fundamentally, the bigger the change, the more different expertise you need in the room. You need people with HR experience, you need the money people, you need the ones that are really good at influencing stakeholders.

You need the tech people like this. These groups have to come together to solve, not to solve, to keep talking about and incrementally changing what is a very big. Set of questions that are surrounding particularly if we look at the legal industry at the moment. What is the business model in three years?

Yeah, it‘s a yeah, it‘s a genuine question It‘s a genuine question with as I see it right now not a clear answer.

[18:10] Sarah: And I think that also because there‘s not a clear answer that also makes people very uncomfortable with the uncertainty. We like certainty. The legal profession loves certainty.

[18:21] Mollie: Discomfort is real. And for a lot of people, I think that manifests in ignoring it or sat or still sitting in the position of let me know when basically you‘ve rung the fire alarm and I‘ll get my fire hat and climb down the steps until then it‘s business as usual. And I know this because I‘m married to one, someone, a barrister who said this to me, something similar quite recently, and I was really surprised, but it was a very insightful for me.

He‘s not old, he‘s not traditional, and yet still that‘s the perspective he brings at the moment. Like until someone tells me I‘ve got to change. I‘m not going to. And when I have to, I‘ll just do it. But that‘s a perspective, but certainly in the discussions I‘m having in law firms, there is still a significant amount of distrust and fear probably around, is this just another sort of hype machine?

The interesting thing as well at the moment is a lot of firms, we know that a lot of firms are investing a lot. In emerging technology, as example, and we know that through looking at the recruitment patterns, all these things that are happening, the two market discussions are often dulling down that.

So a lot of, if you look at the AFR, some of the big firms have come out and said, it‘s not really all it‘s cracked up to be, but we know that they‘re, like busy beavering behind the scenes. And but some, for some people there‘s comfort in thinking, Oh, I‘ve read an AFR article. It says there‘s nothing to see here at the moment.

So I‘m justified in not moving. Yeah. Yeah. So it‘s a very interesting one. A lot of fear, a lot of distrust, a lot of, I don‘t know, weariness at just yet another thing to have to tackle, learn about, tackle and also a valid thought for some people I‘ve got three years left as a partner.

Why would I throw my practice out the window now? This is not an issue for me. This is an issue for someone else down the track, which is really interesting. The legacy piece.

[20:28] Sarah: Absolutely. We‘re heading towards thinking about the future and talking about the future. And in in some of the prep that I was doing and that we were talking about for this conversation.

The concept of T shaped lawyers and O shaped lawyers came up within the context of multidisciplinary teams as well as are we heading towards maintaining those trends of T shaped and O shaped lawyers? Do you need to be a T shaped lawyer in order to work in a multidisciplinary team in the future? Is it better?

Can you just be a lawyer working in an MDT and that will be great? Yeah. Before we delve into that a bit further, T shaped, being a T shaped lawyer or a T shaped professional, as I understand it, is you have your discipline your vertical that you are trained in, but the T is these other additional complementary skills that you start to accumulate and become knowledgeable about.

What are your thoughts on this? Where do you sit in this question?

[21:32] Mollie: I have conflicting views in a way. I think and I‘m I‘m a bit torn because on the one hand I think what a lawyer‘s going to need to be ready for what will, I think, fundamentally be a different workforce and way of delivering legal service in three years.

They‘re going to have some of the tea, so they‘re going to have a little bit of a. Okay. Experimental mindset and an ability to try new things. There‘s going to have to certainly be some mindset shifting. But on the other hand, so maybe it‘s going to be a bit of both. Like I, I think actually we need some T‘s and some I‘s, I think is what it is.

Cause they‘re just, because if you think about it increasingly, if technology takes over 40 percent of what is done. You want someone you, who do you want to call when you‘ve got a really big crisis in cyber cyber law crisis? I don‘t know, I‘m just making that up. You want the number one expert on the other end of the phone, and you‘re not going to care if they‘re experimental in that moment, right?

Like still that top percent of the wor of the reason people want to call a lawyer. You just want the best lawyer for that knows the most and has been around for 35 years and has seen everything. And so I think there‘s going to be a lot of value in the eye. But we can‘t have all eyes because the profession‘s changing.

So we need probably maybe a 50 50 split. And probably you just need some people, you just let them be. Uber nerds in their area. And then the rest who, and this is often the way it is like for people that are on big deals, for example, a lot of what they‘re doing is project management, in terms of managing or same on massive litigation, managing big volumes of material or people or strategy, and then there‘s the black letter law bit, but they‘re needing these other skills.

So I think. Both are gonna be critical. Yeah. I don‘t think it‘s fair to ask everyone to be a t-shaped lawyer or an OSHA lawyer, whatever it is, and not everyone‘s capable of it. Not everyone came into the profession with that with that intention. Barristers are a good example. Going back to my husband, he‘s an eye. Yeah. And he is a very good eye and people want him to be an eye. So I think , he should just be left to be an eye. And we harness the many people who have actually come in with that. Mindset already, like if you look at young lawyers, you can tell some are so excited about the change, grab them, get them as T as they can be and bring them into the tent of these big teams that are managing change and use that team to support the eyes and keep them as they are.

Long answer. It‘s not easy, but yeah, I don‘t think the answer is everyone needs to be a T.

[24:23] Sarah: It makes me think of two things. One is having a complementary skills to a legal background that are looking at project management, people, tech and even that curiosity and harnessing that curiosity.

Potentially also makes you better at identifying when you need. an eye shaped lawyer. Yes. As that pointy end of the spear. Yes. To really help drive a particular solution or provide expertise that you just wouldn‘t get as potent if you had team involved. In some instances, yeah, you do want that singular brain who just has that experience or has done that case in a particular way at a particular point in time.

And they know they can just provide the level of reassurance that a client needs. I agree.

[25:18] Mollie: I agree completely with that. I think that‘s a great way to put it. Yeah.

[25:21] Sarah: It‘s It‘s an interesting question in terms of the business model of law moving forward and the concept of multidisciplinary teams and how this brings into play different disciplines and as you say, we can see recruitment data and roles that are being hired into firms.

How do you think allied professionals that are working in multidisciplinary teams Think of, do they, do you have experience where they are thinking about that‘s a T shaped lawyer, or that‘s a lawyer with additional skills? What‘s your experience been like with that?

[25:59] Mollie: In terms of people that are working with, so legal adjacent, if they can spot.

Yeah, totally. And I think the trouble is in a firm that you know immediately, probably on meeting a lawyer in a legal team. If they‘re going to be your person for a project, but everyone spotted them, they‘re in demand. They‘re in demand. And so genuinely, and I‘ve just finished a diagnostic around interviewing innovation champions.

And one of the challenges with the innovation champions who are all T‘s is that they‘re also the DEI champion and the, this champion and the ESG champion, because they have that way about them. Yeah. And I think. So I think probably we need to cultivate some more T‘s or make those T‘s more known. And one of the things that‘s so interesting, I think, when I talk to younger lawyers is they still don‘t understand that it‘s possible to be a T.

So there‘s a lot of them that are waiting for permission to get there. And I know this because I have some as coaching clients who are still at that level, which I remember really well, where you assume the only way to be good is to go up the ranks and get really specialized in something. And then when you say to them, there‘s 150 ways you can run, you can do this.

And one of them is you might be a really good generalist and that‘s cool too. And you see this light bulb go on. So part of it, I think is the ability to have much more open conversations from the beginning about, Hey, there‘s different ways this can look and all are valid. And then inviting, people to explore those because then when you‘ve got these people in hot demand because they‘re so valuable, right?

If you‘re running a legal change project and you‘ve got a really amazing embedded lawyer that gets what you‘re doing, can speak enough of the language, share information well, that is the success of the project right there. Absolutely. And so how do you cultivate them or you allow space for people to actually have the discussion about whether they want to be specialised or not, or whether they like the idea of being a T shaped lawyer.

Like why not let people choose rather than presupposing, but I think there‘s probably still not enough of that discussion around, and it means that then there‘s, yeah. 10 in a firm that everyone‘s ringing all the time, and then they get in trouble because they‘re not meeting their billables, yeah, I think I‘m not sure if I answered your question.

I probably went on a deep tangent.

[28:23] Sarah: No, I think it raises other questions around career paths and career path communication in law firms. Because even as you say, where young lawyers are thinking about How do I become a specialist, because I think that‘s the only path, or what‘s my pathway to partnership, because I think that‘s maybe the only path to be successful as a lawyer.

How do I think about this differently? It would be interesting to explore how open those conversations are in law firms and the, I guess the multidisciplinary perspectives that even come into play.

[28:59] Mollie: Yeah, I think from my experience, which is of course not covering the field, but If the bigger end of town, there‘s not much of that sort of discussion Because I mean if you think about it critically as in a critical light of the law firm It‘s not really in the interest to have juniors at a junior level that are floating about experimenting.

Yeah. As a junior, if you think of it, it‘s a pyramid. As someone said to me, you realize Mollie that law firms are like MLMs. And I was like, Oh my God. Because I‘m obsessed with MLMs. But they need a big bank of juniors just beavering away. Really like at the moment, that‘s the model. You need the worker bees to work and not question too much.

Like I‘m being very cynical, but if you step back, this is The model at the moment, that triangular model we have, and so part of it again goes back to business model and thinking about actually, what does it mean to be a junior of the future? It‘s going to look very different because the worker bees.

They aren‘t gonna be as necessary, but a really good lawyer prompter or a really good per person with inter really good relationships with clients. Like they‘re the skills you‘re gonna need massively in a new business model. So I think part of it is at the moment, it doesn‘t serve the firms to open that door to early.

Yeah. For fear of people leaving or wanting to jump ship over into, say, the multidisciplinary project team, which looks really fun because it is. Yeah. But, yeah, I think there‘s a lot of opportunity there to work out what people want and keep smart people rather than what I see at the moment often is that they‘ll leave because they think that they‘re going to have to go in house or quit the law altogether.

And it‘s no, let‘s not lose these bright generalists because they‘re going to be very valuable.

[30:46] Sarah: Yeah. I was, at a conference recently, and I heard someone mention on a panel that they‘re, this idea of emerging tech taking lawyer jobs is not necessarily true because this notion of being able to think critically and have that specialized knowledge and be able to, as you say, prompt really well and be quite an astute prompter is only going to become more important, especially as you‘re building your career.

And I think that was, I thought that was such an important point and distinguishing factor to make as well, because we hear so many statements that emerging tech will take so many law jobs by X year. But I don‘t really think it‘s true.

[31:33] Mollie: I think they‘ll just be different looking jobs. Like they won‘t be all cookie cutter.

Look at other I‘m going to get into territory I don‘t know enough about, but if you look at other massive industry disruptions, sure for a while there might be a different size and shape, but there‘s look at, I don‘t know, look at Google, it‘s a silly example, but there‘s, it‘s so busy, right?

There‘s a lot of jobs there. There‘s a lot of jobs. And if we‘re thinking about what firms are becoming, which is not maybe just. specifically only legal service delivery in the current model, but maybe delivering legal solutions in a range of ways. There‘s a lot of different jobs that we don‘t even have names for yet that are coming down the line.

[32:16] Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And it‘s interesting because those jobs, those legal solutions that are being delivered and being asked for by clients, it sounds like for From what I understand, are being asked for in different ways than they have in the past and they‘re coming across as real business problems that are not just I‘ve got this legal issue.

Can you help me? It‘s no, I‘ve got this problem in my business. What do I do? Yeah. And I need not just legal help. I need business help.

[32:48] Mollie: Yes. Yeah. So that role of a smart lawyer that gets the legal risk but also understands the client‘s business context. How valuable. Super valuable.

And valuable not just to the legal team. Like C suite. It‘s a really interesting notion of what it means to, yeah, what is the value of a lawyer? As you said, part of it is that really incredible ability to think critically, get across information quickly, make hard decisions.

In a world of like change and risk, who do you want on the other end of the phone? Like probably that person.

[33:22] Sarah: Absolutely. Mollie, I‘m going to move in one last area before we eventually...

[33:28] Mollie: How many areas have we had?

[33:29] Sarah: Oh, we‘ve had quite a few. It‘s great. We‘ve been going on some interesting pathways.

[33:32] Mollie: I love it, it‘s always the way when I‘m having a good discussion.

[33:36] Sarah: I have a big question for you.

[33:38] Mollie: Oh, yeah.

[33:38] Sarah: So I‘m really curious to know where you‘ll take this. We‘ve seen multidisciplinary teams continue to grow in law firms, particularly in Australia over the last few years. What I‘m interested to ask you is, do you think lawyers can be happier in multidisciplinary teams?

Because lawyer wellbeing is also a topic that is being discussed more and more. What are your thoughts on this?

[34:08] Mollie: I think yes, if, depending on the team. . So there is always a risk that a multidisciplinary team in a law firm inherits the traits of the lawyers and gets just as busy. and I have seen this.

The alternative is that the people in this multidisciplinary team are people that are genuinely working and thinking differently to the lawyers in a way that really facilitates the lawyers to open their mind to other ways of working. So you can imagine if you had someone who‘s genuinely come from a place where you work when you have something to do and then you don‘t work when you don‘t.

Which is for me, the North Star is actually, let‘s just do our work and go lie in the sun. Like it‘s, this should be what technology does for us, but it hasn‘t got there yet. So I think if there were these really positive influences asking and challenging the ways of working in the firm, incredible change is possible.

If that multidisciplinary team is just focused on efficiency and productivity, Which I think sometimes happens in the sense of, Oh, let‘s just make the lawyers jobs more efficient. They can get through more. It‘s not really tackling this big other piece around the culture. So of course my answer is it depends, but I think I can see a world where if a law firm thinks really differently about who‘s in the tent, like you think, imagine having a range of people with say, design thinking expertise, cultural change expertise, I don‘t know, like a psychologist.

Who‘s just popping around, having chats, think if we think really differently about it. I think there‘d be a really fascinating sense of potential to shift what‘s going on in the lawyer land. So it depends who has the stronger influence, which side, do the, does the multidisciplinary team inherit the ways from the lawyers or not?

But yeah, I think anything to encourage curiosity. And experimentation, because I think lawyers are very are very good at their job and are trained to be so focused and black letter about it all and risk averse. And that serves them very well in a particular way of doing their job, or for particular tasks.

The trouble I see is that it‘s often taken into everything. It‘s taken into the way that they‘re interacting with their colleagues. It‘s taken home with them. And that‘s when the trouble really begins, when you‘re walking home and you‘re looking at everything as a risk. Or you‘re always looking for, looking to the end of a plan, to see, to make sure that it doesn‘t, blow up, i.

e. go to court, right? Again, I may or may not be speaking from my personal experience, but that‘s okay. But it can really impact and there‘s studies on this, which I can‘t quote off the top of my head, but on that mindset, like if you have that sort of watchful risk averse mindset in all areas of your life, it‘s really challenging to stay optimistic or look at.

Big picture or blue sky. Yeah. So anything that a multidisciplinary team can do as an antidote to that, or to just allow pockets of time, as interestingly, I‘ve had a discussion with a firm recently, time to play an experiment. What would that look like and what would be the benefits of that in terms of the overall experience of those lawyers at work?

And then what are they taking home as well?

[37:35] Sarah: Yep. Brave conversations to raise.

[37:40] Mollie: Super brave. And it‘s all linked with this new world that‘s coming in terms of ways of working in business model, I think, because I think firms or the ones that are really looking forward are recognising that a bunch of really blackletter risk averse lawyers in a group are not the ones that are going to be able to solve the unsolvable alone.

So what is the mindset shift or who needs to be there with them along the way in order to, and a key part of it is simply time and space to work things out, experiment, have different ideas. These are things lawyers need, our T shaped lawyers need. And they need people around them who can help them with that because it‘s not a skill you get.

trained in? No. And you don‘t, you have to, it has to be retrained. It‘s probably you know it as a kid. Everyone knows how to, most people know how to play. You lose it. Who can you have around you in your team or in your broader team to encourage that again? Yeah. It‘s really, it‘d be really interesting kind of idea to explore.

[38:50] Sarah: And almost to help you remember how to play.

[38:53] Mollie: Yeah. Tap back into that. In a safe way for a certain amount of time. Then go back and write your advice, whatever it is. Yeah.

[39:00] Sarah: And gradually you see that circle get bigger, that circle of safety around play slowly get bigger in other areas.

[39:07] Mollie: And I have a live example of that, which is that I‘m working with a firm on monthly design thinking sessions. And it‘s been. We‘ve probably done six now, I think, and it is so fascinating to watch that muscle grow for the team. So there‘s a core group that come because they really love it. And not just lawyers, so it‘s open to anyone.

So it‘s really good because there‘s always lawyers, people from client team, like a big team. A mix, which is lovely in itself and seeing what they produced or how they acted in the first one to the last, the one we just did recently was mind blowing and like me and the others in that, who have been designing it.

Yeah. Look at what they‘ve done. Oh, great. So it is that kind of consistent flexing of the muscle. It‘s an hour a month, that one, like it‘s not. A big ask. It‘s at lunchtime. Yep. And yet you‘re now getting this group of people in the firm that really get design thinking, could probably run it and also have that mindset and capability to take back into their roles.

So that‘s, I think that‘s super exciting. And low effort. It‘s not hard. That‘s not hard to do.

[40:14] Sarah: No. Low effort, but high value.

[40:16] Mollie: Yeah. Yeah. And it might, you might only be capturing a small group, but imagine if you‘ve got a firm, you‘ve got 25 people that champion design thinking. Amazing.

[40:24] Sarah: Amazing. What a different conversation you‘d have.

[40:27] Mollie: Absolutely. And because they‘re from all different multidisciplinary teams, they‘re taking that back. They‘re spreading it back into their teams.

[40:35] Sarah: As we wrap up I recently read a quote that your design thinking example just made me think of and it said, I don‘t know who, I don‘t know where the quote is from, but I absolutely love it.

And it said, intensity impresses, consistency transforms. And it has, it just reverberates in my mind so often. I just think consistency transforms, it‘s so important.

[40:58] Mollie: It‘s such a good. Way of thinking about it because I think there‘s a tendency to think you have to go big. You have to do these big grand things.

But as my mentor says to me, change comes step by boring step or step by aching step. Sometimes it‘s not, like transforming everything at once. It‘s literally like every month come and sit down and learn this skill in 12 months. Amazing. You‘ve got a cohort that‘s thinking and working differently.

[41:26] Sarah: Mollie, this has been thoroughly illuminating.

[41:29] Mollie: It‘s been so good. Thanks for having me.

[41:31] Sarah: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I‘m excited to talk to you again at some point. I have a feeling we will go down more tangents.

[41:36] Mollie: Yes. Love it.

[41:38] Sarah: But until then, thank you.

[41:40] Mollie: Thank you.

[41:47] Sarah: That wraps up our episode of This Multidisciplinary Life. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a thumbs up, a you know the drill, and subscribe for more episodes. And if you‘re interested in being a guest on the show to share your multidisciplinary life, you can get in touch with us through the links in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded on Wurundjeri land and brought to you by Sarah Alatom, researcher, consultant, and speaker on multidisciplinary teams. It is created in collaboration with Balloon Tree Productions. and marketing expertise from August, with special mentions to Daniel Banik, Andrew O‘Keefe, Mike McCusker, Nina Wan and Stefan Imbesi.

This Multidisciplinary Life Build a team that’s productive, DISRUPTIVE, and happy wouldn‘t be possible without the support from the wonderful guests who share their stories and perspectives.