Well, here we are: the final blog in this series looking at multidisciplinary teams in the legal profession. This post provides you with a starting point to building a multidisciplinary team in your firm.

In my previous posts, I’ve defined and considered the role and function of multidisciplinary teams in commercial legal practice and, their distinctive characteristics.

In this post, I’ve focussed on how a law firm can most effectively and efficiently build a multidisciplinary team by asking and answering a series of contextual questions. It may be that not all these questions are relevant to your firm, how you work, or how you are articulating the strategy for your multidisciplinary team. And that’s ok. It’s still going to be important to have thought and made decisions about the matters these questions raise. And, they will also provide a foundation for the important conversations you will need to have in your team, as you tailor and align needs and expectations to your team and firm goals.

Over the last twelve months, my research has demonstrated that in order to build a successful multidisciplinary team in the legal profession you need more than just an individual willing to try. Interviews with Anu Briggs, Head of Capability, Development and Change  at Gilbert + Tobin, and Hilary Goodier, formally Partner and Chief Operating Officer (now Partner and Co-Division Head) at Ashurst Advance, highlighted the importance of leadership, direction and support to ensure systems and team culture were in place to enable different disciplines to work together.

I have found that in order to create a high performing multidisciplinary team in the legal profession, and to create an environment where the characteristics I discussed in my last blog can flourish, you need to consider your strategy and execution in four main areas: leadership, systems, team, and individual. The reason for this is that a high performing multidisciplinary team cannot be built and sustained where these elements are not working in harmony. They are interconnected much like the distinct but connected audio channels on a mixing desk in a recording studio. You can manoeuvre each channel independently, but any single change will influence the other channels in some way – maybe you wipe out the bass by turning up the strings too much. While the leadership, systems, team, and individual elements work together to create an environment for multidisciplinary teams to flourish, importantly the decision to build a team in this way also helps you continue to refine your focus towards delivering more value for your clients and solving problems with a holistic approach.

It’s these four areas, and the questions they elicit for your firm, that will help you start building your multidisciplinary team – let’s take each area in turn…

When I asked Hilary Goodier where she would start if she were building a multidisciplinary team in the legal profession, she responded with one word: strategy. According to Hilary, it is essential to know what game you are playing in order to figure out who you need on the field. This is an important insight to keep in mind as we explore the leadership questions below. Multidisciplinary teams in the legal profession require strong leadership in order to be successful. This is because purpose-driven teams are found to be more effective than teams not aligned this way.

My research also suggests that people from different disciplines and backgrounds are more effective when they are explicitly aligned on a common goal or purpose rather than merely coming together as a group of colleagues in a workplace. Bannholzer, Metzeler, and Roth also observed in their article, Fielding high-performing innovation teams, that people good at motivating “tend to be charismatic leaders, adept at spurring action.” And so, to help your team succeed, you need to be conscious of how you motivate your team and how you ensure they understand the strategy you’re working together to implement.

In my second post in this series, I discussed the changing landscape of legal client expectations – that the demand continues to move towards clients wanting their lawyers to be more like business partners and problem solvers. The first two questions below are client-centric and are designed to challenge you to think about all the different types of problems or opportunities you have heard your clients talk about. Take the time with these questions to consider the client relationship, the information that you have about the client, and the opportunities that may be present. These opportunities may not appear as “legal” problems. The two questions below act as a helpful anchor for you to stay focused on why a multidisciplinary team can add value to your firm.

These questions are not listed in order of importance. I recommend starting with the client-centric questions and gradually look inwards to your firm.  

Clients

• What questions or problems has your client/s had to deal with/work through in the last 12 months that pointed you to knowledge/skills/experience gaps in your team?
• How frequently has this occurred in similar or the same areas?
• Did you refer the client to someone else?
• Did you retain the work but had to spend time upskilling?
• Would a more diverse range of skills in your firm or available to your firm potentially have changed the answers?

Forming the strategy

• What has stopped you from building this team in the past?
• Are those blockers or risks still real?
• Can the leadership see value in building this type of team in the firm?
• Is there a leader or leaders who will champion this work with the other leaders’ support?
• What might success look like for a multidisciplinary team within the firm?
• What activities are the leaders undertaking to create an environment that is attractive to prospective multidisciplinary members and how does this align with the firm’s purpose and values?

A firm’s systems include the tools, processes, methods, and cultural elements that need to be in place, or might already be in place, in order for a multidisciplinary team to flourish.

In an earlier post, I referred to Kim Goodwin’s presentation, Boosting Research and Design Adoption. She emphasises that implementing change takes time - this is a marathon, not a sprint. Systems are where you implement and inculcate change like cultural change or a new process – it’s where and how people will experience the impact of change every day. This may require team members to develop new skills. It’s where discomfort becomes part of a process from how things used to be done to something different. It’s this discomfort that helps high performing multidisciplinary teams outperform their homogenous team counterparts.

It’s worth remembering, that your first iteration building this structure might not be the one you stick with – nor probably should you - but you’ll undoubtedly learn a lot from it. There’s value in the process as well as the outcome. We often think of improving process or methodology through iteration, a similar approach should be taken when building a team. Another way to think about building and improving the team structure is similar to how you might edit a contract – through a series of drafts and revisions. The feedback you receive from clients, and team member satisfaction, can act as the mechanism for understanding and provide guidance for the changes you will make as you implement each revision of the structure.

Research demonstrates that teams who are explicitly aligned through a common purpose or set of values are a more robust team than those who are not. This is especially true for multidisciplinary teams. Consistent values are one way you can build a common language within a multidisciplinary team. In my interview with Jemima Harris, formerly Head of Legal Operations and Tech at LOD, she described the importance “values” play in everyday life for her team. When struggling with a problem, her team will often look to their values in order to find the best way forward for the team as well as the client problem they are trying to solve. You can listen to us discussing this concept in Episode 106 of the Centre for Legal Innovation’s (CLI) The Legalpreneurs Sandbox podcast here (you’ll find all three podcasts from me on this topic there too – Episodes 105-107).

In order to get the best out of each other, multidisciplinary teams require a common language with which to communicate. Shared values is just one way to do this. Other methods might include a common process or tools.

The questions below are set out first to help you consider what is already in place, and second to help you build the mechanisms required to help a multidisciplinary team flourish in a law firm.

Rituals

• What daily rituals, if any, are in place to foster a culture of connection, communication and common language?
• Is it appropriate for your team to consider a daily check in or ground rules for every meeting? Rowan Barnes, Head of Insights and my colleague at August, talks about the types of daily check ins we use to foster connection, communication and common language in this article.
• What cultural elements, rituals and/or tools are in place to amplify peoples’ curiosity within the firm? You may want to consider establishing a study/professional development budget, discussion of learning outcomes at team meetings, review how knowledge is shared among the team or how to capture, discuss and share best practices/things that need to be improved after a matter is concluded.
• Does the team know how to identify, understand and match skills/experience to outcomes and value for the client and the firm? Are the right rituals in place to foster this?

Psychological safety within the team

• The presence of psychological safety helps teams process and maintain change better than firms/organisations who do not create and maintain this environment. How does your organisation create, maintain, and support psychological safety within teams? I recommend Amy Edmonson’s TED Talk for more information on this topic.

Tool and systems

• What tools and systems need to be ignored or not used in order to help a multidisciplinary team succeed in the firm?
• What tools and systems are in place to enable the team to self-manage? It is important the team does not rely on “command and control.”

Hiring for a multidisciplinary team

• How does the hiring process enable values-based hiring and standardised hiring so that candidates in different disciplines are aligned through values and purpose, not through role? Refer to my previous blog regarding values-based hiring and why it can be useful at this point

While having strong leadership and the appropriate systems, including organisational culture, works towards creating the right environment for multidisciplinary teams to flourish, my research has shown that building a multidisciplinary team also requires careful planning.

The questions below stem from the characteristics of successful multidisciplinary teams that I identified in my research. I also used the Bannholzer, Metzeler, and Roth Framework to cross-reference and develop these characteristics.

As a quick summary, the key characteristics are:

• Diversity of skill, knowledge, and perspective
• Strong leadership
• Curiosity is essential in order for the team to flourish
• Multidisciplinary teams speak their own language
• Purpose and values help build teams for the future

In his book Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, Greg Satell discusses the value of having different perspectives in a team. A mix of skills and experience enable you to foster a team that creates solutions which would otherwise have not emerged in a more homogenous team. Satell illustrates this point through the following example:

“A technology firm was given $1 million budget to design a sensor to detect water pollutants in minute concentrations, which is an extremely complicated task. At the team’s first meeting, the chip designers got right down to work discussing the problems they would have to solve and immediately realised what daunting a challenge it was going to be. After about 45 minutes of intense discussion, the marine biologist assigned to their team walked in, apologised for being late, and dropped a bag of clams on the table. Upon seeing the puzzled looks on the chip designers’ faces, the marine biologist explained that clams can detect pollutants at concentrations of just a few parts per million, which would cause their shells to open. So they didn’t actually need to build an expensive sensor to detect pollutants, just a cheap one that could detect when clams opened their shells. The idea not only saved an enormous amount of time, effort, and money, they also ate the clams for dinner!”

The questions below seek to expand the value that comes from having a diversity of thought and perspective within a team. These questions are designed to start a conversation about the type of team you are looking to build in the firm and what types of problems this team might solve. You may also want to apply the Bannholzer, Metzeler, and Roth Framework to your own team when considering the mix of characteristics you will require.

It is important to remember that finding ways to get the best out of different specialists in the team will undoubtedly require empathy and experimentation. Give yourself time to do this. As this team starts to build, some of these questions may also be helpful in aligning common goals and what success means as a group.

Here are some questions to consider:

• Based on your strategy and how you intend to grow this team, what types of client problems will this team work on?
• Which disciplines do you know you need at the moment in order to help clients with these problems? Keep in mind that there may be disciplines you don’t know you need yet and won’t know until you have the benefit of different approaches and perspectives!
• What does success mean for the team? What common characteristics? Can you identify among the team and how prominent is curiosity?
• How will outcomes be measured?
• What tools/processes/methods will the team use to solve problems together? Think of this as starting to develop a common language.
• What cultural elements and rituals are in place to align a common level of ambition among the team?
• How will success and failure be celebrated?
• Is your firm a place where curiosity, ideas and solutions are encouraged, welcomed and rewarded? Multidisciplinary teams are comprised of people who will approach an issue in different ways, it’s the culmination of all of these approaches that lead to the best solutions. Do you have tools and rituals that foster this?

The final area of consideration is at the individual. The characteristics discussed in my research focussed mainly on team characteristics that make up a successful dynamic within a multidisciplinary structure. However, these need to be considered in the context of how each individual contributes to the team in order to foster that dynamic in the first place.

This is because it is essential to have considered the previous factors I have described before focussing on each individual in your multidisciplinary team. This approach ensures that new and/or altered strategy and structures are firmly in place before asking individual team members to learn new skills or hiring new staff.

It also means that strong leadership with a common vision is in place and provides a framework, encouragement, and the means through which to elicit and engage individual contributions from your multidisciplinary team members.

The questions below may help with conversations about team structure, conversations with existing team members who may form part of the multidisciplinary team, as well as considerations when hiring new staff.

• What values-based hiring tactics are in place to ensure new hires are aligning to the firm’s values and purpose?
• How does the individual’s personal ambition align with the team’s?
• What does the individual do day-to-day to ensure they are accountable to their team?
• How does the individual demonstrate curiosity?
• How does the individual align their level of effort with the rest of the team?
• How does the individual manage feedback – both giving and receiving feedback?

The final area of consideration is at the individual. The characteristics discussed in my research focussed mainly on team characteristics that make up a successful dynamic within a multidisciplinary structure. However, these need to be considered in the context of how each individual contributes to the team in order to foster that dynamic in the first place.

This is because it is essential to have considered the previous factors I have described before focussing on each individual in your multidisciplinary team. This approach ensures that new and/or altered strategy and structures are firmly in place before asking individual team members to learn new skills or hiring new staff.

It also means that strong leadership with a common vision is in place and provides a framework, encouragement, and the means through which to elicit and engage individual contributions from your multidisciplinary team members.

The questions below may help with conversations about team structure, conversations with existing team members who may form part of the multidisciplinary team, as well as considerations when hiring new staff.

• What values-based hiring tactics are in place to ensure new hires are aligning to the firm’s values and purpose?
• How does the individual’s personal ambition align with the team’s?
• What does the individual do day-to-day to ensure they are accountable to their team?
• How does the individual demonstrate curiosity?
• How does the individual align their level of effort with the rest of the team?
• How does the individual manage feedback – both giving and receiving feedback?

Over the course of this series of posts and podcasts, I have looked at what a multidisciplinary team means in the legal profession and why it is important to the future of the industry. I have also explored the fundamental characteristics that make up these types of teams and how to go about building one in your firm.

From my research I have undertaken into multidisciplinary teams for my CLI Distinguished Fellowship it has become evident that the demand from clients for their lawyers to think differently about how they solve problems – to find solutions using an increasingly holistic approach – is on the rise. As someone who works in and helps lead a multidisciplinary team in the design and technology space, I know there is a great deal the legal industry can learn from others and vice versa.

Multidisciplinary teams in the legal profession create new opportunities and pathways for delivering increased client value and building stronger client and team relationships. I am excited to see how this new structure will change the legal marketplace, enhance employment opportunities, and change conversations. This Fellowship has ignited a curiosity for me to go deeper with this research so, watch this space, I look forward to continuing THIS conversation!

About the Author

Sarah El-Atm is the General Manager at August – an award-winning independent digital consultancy specialising in optimisation, growth, and bespoke product development within the health, manufacturing, and legal tech sectors. Working to improve business strategies and processes as well as contributing to August’s expansion activities in the United Kingdom and Canada, Sarah enjoys being involved in work that continues to have an impact within our global community. Particularly, Sarah is interested in the intersection of technology, design-thinking and multidisciplinary teams within the legal sector, with a view to creating better results and relationships for legal practitioners and clients alike. When she’s not at August or working on her Fellowship, you’ll find her indulging in a trail run or three.