The landscape of legal practice is changing rapidly. Clients expect integrated services, matters are increasingly complex, and technology is transforming how work gets done. In response, some Australian law firms are turning to multidisciplinary teams more than ever before. But here’s the thing: collaboration doesn’t always come naturally to lawyers.
Despite their promise, many legal teams suffer from dysfunction. It often looks like unclear roles, fragmented communication, and underused talent. I know, it’s not something comfortable to admit. The good news is that we’re not the first to face these types of challenges. Other high-stakes sectors like emergency medicine have been grappling with these challenges for decades, and there’s now substantial research showing what makes multidisciplinary teams succeed or fail.
This article draws on three evidence-based studies. One from emergency medical services (Killien et al., 2025), one from organisational psychology (Jackson, 1996), and one from within the legal profession itself (Regalia & Wallace, 2023). Together, they highlight five essential themes that determine whether a multidisciplinary team thrives or falters.
Clients increasingly expect their lawyers to bring together diverse capabilities such as legal, strategic, technological, and commercial expertise all working in harmony. They are seeking solutions to their business, not purely legal advice. This demand for integrated counsel makes multidisciplinary teams not just helpful, but essential to competitive practice.
Yet structure is often missing from these teams. Regalia and Wallace (2023) don’t mince words: ‘Law firms have always been bad at teamwork’. Ooof. They describe how lawyers are frequently assigned to matters without clear roles, shared goals, or planning processes. The result? Duplicated work, missed deadlines, and junior lawyers left scrambling to make sense of fragmented instructions. Of course, not all legal work or legal teams are like this. But we do know it’s common.
Their research paints a familiar picture: an associate joins a case and receives ’a dozen documents attached, and a curt message to “read the attached and get up to speed”’ (Regalia & Wallace, 2023, p. 60). What follows is a series of confusing directives delivered via email, often contradicting previous instructions, with no clear workflow or accountability.
Contrast this with emergency medicine, where structure can mean the difference between life and death. Killien et al. (2025) demonstrate that when medical teams and firefighters operate with standardised protocols and defined roles, outcomes improve dramatically. Their research developing the RoadRes-Q assessment scale shows that structured approaches to team coordination significantly enhance both technical performance and crucial soft skills like communication under pressure.
Jackson’s (1996) organisational psychology research also reinforces this finding, emphasising that teams need a ‘systematic and consensus-driven approach’ to manage their composition and processes effectively. Without deliberate structure, even brilliant individuals underperform when working together.
The message is clear: in law firms, structure isn’t bureaucratic red tape. It’s how we deliver professional excellence and help people to perform at their best.
Diversity is both a powerful ingredient in effective teams and a significant risk if poorly managed. Jackson (1996) provides the theoretical foundation, categorising diversity into surface-level factors (demographics, professional background) and deep-level differences (values, perspectives, working styles). Her research shows that while diversity enhances creativity and decision-making by introducing varied viewpoints, it also creates challenges around ‘status, identity, and cohesion’. Challenges we’ve likely felt while leading a multidisciplinary team and perhaps not always identified in the moment.
Emergency medicine illustrates both the necessity and difficulty of professional diversity. Killien et al. (2025) document how medical teams and firefighters must collaborate despite bringing very different technical languages, priorities, and protocols to the same crisis. Without a shared framework for collaboration, these differences become barriers rather than assets.
Regalia and Wallace (2023) observe similar dynamics in law firms, where surface-level and deep-level diversity both shape team performance in complex ways. While diverse perspectives can drive innovation, they note that without proper support systems, diversity leads to ‘unproductive conflict and high turnover’. The legal profession’s deeply embedded hierarchical structure often exacerbates these tensions, particularly when junior staff may feel unable to contribute meaningfully to strategic discussions.
Jackson (1996) warns that diversity, when unmanaged, becomes a liability that can ‘make reaching consensus difficult’ and lead teams to ‘choose to resolve conflicts through compromise and majority rule instead of persisting to a creative resolution’. This was an insightful contrast to read in the context of diversity in multidisciplinary teams. So often we hear about the benefits of diversity. However, Jackson’s insight is certainly valid. It made me think of the Beehive vs Zoo analogy I’ve used previously. When you’re leading a team that is more akin to a Zoo, lots of different and wonderful animals, then you need to ensure you’ve got the structure and support systems in place to manage this type of team.
The management imperative is clear: we must harness diversity’s benefits while actively mitigating its interpersonal risks.
When teams struggle, communication breakdowns are almost always at the heart of the problem. In emergency medicine scenarios, clear communication protocols and shared technical language are literally matters of life and death. Killien et al. (2025) found that failure to communicate effectively across professions can delay critical treatment. As they put it, many teams struggle because they don’t share ‘a common technical language or perspective’.
In law firms, the communication challenge is no less real, though it can be less immediately dangerous. Regalia and Wallace (2023) describe how associates are often left to decipher ambiguous directives delivered via fragmented email chains. They document scenarios where team members receive instructions like ‘Research whether the first claim has any precedent in our jurisdiction’, only to discover later that ‘another attorney [had already found] these cases’. No doubt, this is changing with the use of AI in law firms. However, there’s a dependency there on prompting skills and contextual knowledge for the associate.
This isn’t just inefficient. In some cases, it’s professionally embarrassing and commercially damaging. Regalia and Wallace show that poor communication creates a cascade of problems: duplicated work, missed deadlines, frustrated team members, and ultimately, disappointed clients.
Jackson’s (1996) research reveals the deeper psychological dynamics at play. Communication patterns inevitably reflect status hierarchies, with lower-status team members participating less and higher-status members dominating discussions. This creates what she terms ‘cascading’ effects, where ‘team members follow the statements and actions of those who spoke first or hold the most authority, even if those first-movers are dead wrong’.
The solution requires more than good intentions though. Teams need structured communication protocols, regular check-ins, and deliberate efforts to ensure all voices are heard and valued.
Effective leadership transforms a group of individuals into a functioning team, but leadership skills are rarely developed systematically in law firms. Regalia and Wallace (2023) are characteristically direct in their assessment: many law firms are ‘managed by amateurs’, with partners promoted based on billable hours or technical expertise rather than proven leadership capability. An uncomfortable truth.
This leadership deficit creates environments where psychological safety, the belief that one can speak up without fear of punishment or ridicule, is often absent. Without psychological safety, people withhold ideas, concerns, and feedback that could improve outcomes. Jackson (1996) demonstrates how status dynamics naturally inhibit participation unless leaders actively work to create inclusive environments.
Regalia and Wallace’s (2023) research reveals how legal culture often prioritises surface-level politeness over genuine collaboration. One partner they interviewed described the firm’s culture as problematically non-confrontational: ‘You can not perform … but if you are nice? [A]ll of that is absolutely fine’. This ‘be nice’ culture undermines team effectiveness by discouraging the constructive challenge that leads to better outcomes.
Emergency medicine provides a stark contrast yet again. Killien et al. (2025) show that successful rescue teams depend on strong, inclusive leadership that enables rapid, coordinated responses under extreme pressure. Their assessment scale specifically measures leadership effectiveness, recognising it as fundamental to team performance in high-stakes environments.
The challenge for law firms is clear: we must move from politeness to performance, and that means developing leadership as a professional discipline rather than assuming it comes automatically with seniority.
High-performing teams aren’t born: they’re built through systematic development. Like any aspect of professional practice, effective teamwork requires training, regular evaluation, and continuous improvement based on evidence and feedback.
Killien et al. (2025) exemplify this approach through their development of the RoadRes-Q scale, a rigorously validated tool for assessing how well multidisciplinary teams perform across 60 specific competencies. Their research demonstrates that regular assessment and targeted feedback improve both individual capabilities and overall team effectiveness.
The legal profession has no equivalent. Regalia and Wallace (2023) point out that ‘many legal organisations rely solely on annual feedback, which is not well supported in the research’. Instead, they recommend regular, specific feedback tied directly to team performance outcomes; the kind of ongoing development that other professions take for granted.
Jackson (1996) frames this as an organisational learning imperative. She argues that firms must approach teams as ‘learning organisations’ that ‘recognise that current actions should be informed by all available information’ while accepting ‘responsibility for creating new knowledge through their own actions’.
Investment in systematic team development pays measurable dividends in performance, staff retention, and client satisfaction.
Multidisciplinary teams are here to stay in legal practice. But their effectiveness is far from guaranteed. Research across three very different sectors; law, emergency medicine, and organisational psychology, consistently shows that the same five factors determine whether teams succeed or fail: deliberate structure, thoughtful diversity management, clear communication protocols, skilled leadership, and systematic learning processes.
For Australian law firms, this represents both a challenge and an enormous opportunity. By applying evidence-based practices from other high-stakes sectors, legal leaders can transform teamwork from a source of daily frustration into a genuine competitive advantage.
The evidence is compelling, and the choice is ours. Excellence in teamwork isn’t optional anymore. It’s a professional responsibility that successful firms ignore at their peril.
Jackson, S. E. (1996). The consequences of diversity in multidisciplinary work teams. In M. A. West (Ed.), Handbook of Work Group Psychology (pp. 53-75). John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Killien, L., Nicolas, M., Denis, O., Mathilde, C., Adrien, G., Michel, G., Anthony, M., Paul, C., Olivier, M., & Bertrand, D. (2025). Creation and validation of a roadside rescue skills scale for training pre-hospital medical teams: The RoadRes-Q scale. Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine, 33(56).
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13049-025-01370-x
Regalia, J., & Wallace, D. (2023). Clients and lawyers unite: The dysfunction of law firm teams needs a cure. University of Dayton Law Review, 48(2), 58-87.