This Multidisciplinary Life

How do you guide people through genuine change and deliver exciting new ideas, all while managing the long-standing operational realities of running high performance law firms? That’s exactly what Kim Wiegand—founder of Julip Advisory—helps firms around the world to figure out, turning big, ambitious ideas into things that actually happen. There’s no single answer or magic bullet for how to get this done. In this episode, Kim joins Sarah to discuss the process of transforming law firms and building cultures of high performance: balancing hierarchy with genuine human connection, and strategy with delivery. Throughout the conversation, Kim and Sarah unpack why client experience (CX) design is a crucial differentiator, despite being an enigma for many firms. They discuss how AI might power improved CX, but crucially, why it should never replace the human touch of service delivery. And, why confidence and conviction sometimes means saying: ‘I don’t know how to do this…’ Packed full of practical tips, compelling anecdotes and fascinating references—from Google’s Project Aristotle to Thomas Edison’s philosophy on strategy—this episode is all about leadership, learning on your feet, building resilience, and why sustainable growth is about finding the balance between people, planning, and pushing on to get things done. – Follow Kim Wiegand:- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimwiegand/–Follow me:- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SarahEl-Atm- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahelatm/ –#multidisciplinary #legalinsights #crossfunctional #interdisciplinary #interdisciplinaryteams

The way we work is changing rapidly. This conversation with James Hutchins, Associate General Counsel at Meta, perfectly reflects the exciting nature of the transformation. Throughout, James elaborates on what it means to be a leading legal voice inside a forward-thinking, high-performance technology company, solving some of the more sophisticated challenges a business can face today. Global variations in regulatory and compliance considerations. Rapidly evolving shifts in technology. Collaboration over multiple geographies, time zones, and jurisdictions. Translating concepts and terminologies between sales, product, and operations teams. The key message is clear: navigating this complexity means connecting with different disciplines, collaborating effectively, and finding ways to build long term rapport. Throughout this episode, you’ll learn how legal teams can shift from being reactive advisors to proactive collaborators. You’ll hear about managing risk and progress and building cross-functional fluency. And, you’ll come away with new tools, improved questions, and an understanding of why ‘being too lawyer’ isn’t a good thing when working in-house. – Follow James Hutchins:- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-hutchins-2a090321/–Follow me:- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SarahEl-Atm- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahelatm/ –#multidisciplinary #legalinsights #crossfunctional #interdisciplinary #interdisciplinaryteams

In this episode of This Multidisciplinary Life, Sarah sits down with Amanda Fajerman—Head of Digital Change at Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer—for a wide-ranging and thought-provoking conversation about what it takes to lead change in legal tech. With an extensive background in both computer science and law, Amanda has built a career at the intersection of law, data, consulting practice, and technology. But what makes this conversation particularly fascinating isn’t just Amanda’s obvious and extensive technical expertise. It’s her clarity and insight into the skills that can be harder to develop and are far less structured: influence, empathy, curiosity, patience, and listening. Throughout the chat, Amanda unpacks what it means to act as an effective ‘orchestrator’ across multiple disciplines, elaborates on how structured data is transforming law firm operations, and highlights why active listening may be the most underrated skill in leading meaningful change. Sarah and Amanda also discuss some big potential mindset shifts for the legal industry; from the potential harm associated with fear of failure and perfectionism, to the need for greater transparency, collaboration, and adoption of generative technologies. Check out the conversation for practical insight and real-world perspectives on how to build trust, drive innovation, and empower multidisciplinary teams to work more effectively. – Follow Amanda Fajerman:- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandafajerman/–Follow me:- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SarahEl-Atm- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahelatm/ –#multidisciplinary #legalinsights #crossfunctional #interdisciplinary #interdisciplinaryteams

What happens when an established lawyer realises the legal industry will benefit from progressive change, and then builds a company to drive it? That’s exactly what you’ll find out in this episode of This Multidisciplinary Life, where Elena Tsalanidis shares insights from her journey from practicing lawyer to co-founder of legal tech startup, Deeligence. It’s an equally candid and energising look at what it takes to build and lead a multidisciplinary team, while influencing change in an industry that historically prefers to avoid risk and maintain established practices, systems, and processes. Throughout the conversation, Elena discusses the hidden cost of perfectionism (and the value of being comfortable with evolving information), the challenge of leading team members from beyond your professional domain, and how to de-risk without slowing down. For anyone leading teams across disciplines, you’ll get practical insights into coaching across skill sets you don’t share. You’ll learn techniques to help build rapport between teams with different professional backgrounds. You’ll access Elena’s secret techniques for making quality decisions with incomplete or evolving information, and how to build confidence with stakeholders while building something trailblazing. – Follow Elena Tsalanidis:- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elena-tsalanidis/–Follow me:- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SarahEl-Atm- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahelatm/ –#multidisciplinary #legalinsights #crossfunctional #interdisciplinary #interdisciplinaryteams

In this episode of This Multidisciplinary Life, Sarah chats with Nathan Bellgrove. Nathan is Partner and Global Practice Head of Ashurst Advance, Advanced Solutions. Hailing from the UK and working with geographically distributed teams from all around the world, Nathan has spent his career at the intersection of business and law. Nathan has a keen curiosity and ability to bring people together from different perspectives and disciplines to achieve new, innovative outcomes across all kinds of organisational challenges. This episode is packed full of practical insights to help leaders and team members harness the value of multidisciplinary teams. Throughout the conversation, Nathan offers techniques for effective leadership in multidisciplinary teams, tips to help you lead multiple teams dispersed across time zones, business units, and disciplines, insights into the future of legal work and broader professional services, and guidelines to mitigate risk while working in multidisciplinary environments. Enjoy the episode! – Follow Nathan Bellgrove:- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-bellgrove-574b9a14/–Follow me:- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SarahEl-Atm- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahelatm/ –#multidisciplinary #legalinsights #crossfunctional #interdisciplinary #interdisciplinaryteams

This episode of This Multidisciplinary Life offers a unique perspective on the intersection of legal work, software, technology, and artificial intelligence. Sarah catches up with Jack Stoneman, a Director in MinterEllison’s Applied Innovation team and a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School. Prior to joining MinterEllison, Jack practiced as a lawyer at Arnold Bloch Leibler and worked in corporate strategy, with a focus on capital markets and mergers and acquisitions. In addition to a JD and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne, Jack has a Master of Computer Science from Monash University, majoring in Artificial Intelligence. Throughout his education and career, Jack’s constantly immersed himself in multidisciplinary teams. Jack brings unique expertise in navigating team dynamics and building high performance cultures. This episode’s conversation offers valuable insights for all kinds of teams, including: techniques to bring people together across different specialisations, helping to define team purpose, the role of technology in supporting innovation, and principles for leaders to manage mixed disciplines, contexts, and crafts. Enjoy! 

We’re back: welcome to Season 2 of This Multidisciplinary Life! Episode one of this sophomore season kicks off in conversation with Danielle Corden. Danielle is General Counsel for the Royal Women’s Hospital—one of the oldest and most distinguished women’s hospitals in the world. Danielle is involved in some incredible work, with The Women’s continuing to lead the way in women’s and newborn healthcare. But also some incredibly challenging work. Danielle’s role involves working with all kinds of specialists while navigating different fields of expertise: providing exceptional patient care for women and girls is a truly, profoundly multidisciplinary practice. While Danielle’s role is highly specialised, this conversation has valuable lessons for leaders of all kinds of teams. This episode covers topics and questions like how to provide a sense of structure and safety for teams in environments where no two days are the same. We look into what happens when multidisciplinary work is challenging, and not the polished success story we hope for. We discuss how to ensure teams are resilient and able to look after themselves when faced with confronting situations. And much, much more. – Follow Danielle Corden:- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-corden-2012b720/–Follow me:- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SarahEl-Atm- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahelatm/

Julian is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, teaching in the areas of legal ethics, civil procedure, and regulatory theory.–Episode 6 of This Multidisciplinary Life features a second conversation—the first being back in Episode 2—with Professor Julian Webb from the University of Melbourne. It’s another brain-bending and thoroughly eye-opening conversation, discussing Mirko Nordegraaf’s idea of connective professionalism. Sarah and Julian chat through traditional professional boundaries and how they’re designed to ‘protect turf’ rather than facilitate openness and collaboration—a dynamic which will change as we move towards a more multidisciplinary future. Episode 6 also covers some of the significant knock-on effects that will occur as a biproduct of this change. The idea of ‘professional knowledge’ will be de- and re-constructed, changing the ways we produce, retain, and use information. Sarah and Julian also discuss the key pitfalls and things to protect against as AI and generative technologies become more prevalent. Lastly, they run through the most important skills to develop in the ‘lawyer-as-cyborg’ era, as we become increasingly reliant on technology in the not-too-distant future.

Mick Sheehy is a recognised international leader in the field of legal innovation and transformation. In Episode 5 of This Multidisciplinary Life, Sarah El-Atm catches up with Mick Sheehy, Lead Partner and Founder of PwC’s Australian and APAC NewLaw practices. NewLaw focuses legal departments on being ahead of the curve as changes in technology and resourcing pressures continue to escalate. As such, it requires a breadth and depth of capability that perfectly aligns with a multidisciplinary approach: drawing on input from lawyers and general counsel, customer experience specialists, technology and data science teams, artificial intelligence specialists, organisational design specialists, and much more. As an idea and practice, NewLaw is perfectly reflective of Mick’s broader career, where he’s spent over 20 years driving transformation, innovation, and positive disruption in the legal sector. Drawing on this extensive experience, Sarah and Mick chat through techniques for leading diverse multidisciplinary teams at scale, fostering cohesion across wide-ranging specialisms, and what’s in store for the future of legal services in enterprise environments.

Jemima is an expert in legal and people operations, strategy, transformation and continuous improvement. – In Episode 4 of This Multidisciplinary Life, Sarah El-Atm has a fascinating chat with Jemima Harris—Chief Legal Officer at Megaport—about leading teams, building culture and purpose, designing process, and the value of being ‘the friendly spider in the middle of the web’. With over 20 years’ experience as a lawyer and leader of multidisciplinary teams, Jemima oversees two distinct business units, being People and Culture and Legal and Compliance. As a result, Jemima offers significant expertise around what’s involved in building and championing high performing multidisciplinary teams: across multiple disciplines and specialisms, in a sector that is constantly evolving, with teams located all over the world.

Mollie is a ex-litigation lawyer, facilitator, mentor and strategic advisor. – In Episode 3 of This Multidisciplinary Life, Sarah El-Atm engages in a wonderfully future-facing conversation with Mollie Tregillis. Mollie is an ex-lawyer, corporate executive and consultant within the legal industry, with a vision for a new way to work: that we stop the ‘busy work’ and play to our strengths and energies. Over the course of the conversation, Mollie outlines why several factors will trigger drastic change within the legal industry. These include business models based on unsustainable levels of ‘business’ in productivity, the impact of emergent technologies, the shift towards more multidisciplinary skillsets in delivering value with clients, and more. If you lead or work within a team in the legal profession, this episode will help you drive change and create the space for strategic thinking, creativity, and big planning, while helping teams to play, be creative, and reach their full potential. – Follow Mollie Tregillis: Site: https://www.mollietregillis.com/ LinkedIn:   / mollie-tregillis   Instagram:   / mollie_treg   YouTube:    / @sarahel-atm   LinkedIn:   / sarahelatm   – Follow me: YouTube:    / @sarahel-atm   LinkedIn:   / sarahelatm   – #multidisciplinary #legalinsights #crossfunctional #interdisciplinary #interdisciplinaryteams

Julian is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, teaching in the areas of legal ethics, civil procedure, and regulatory theory. – In this episode of This Multidisciplinary Life, Sarah El-Atm interviews Professor Julian Webb from the University of Melbourne about the evolution of multidisciplinary practices (MDPs) in law. Professor Webb discusses how regulatory disruption has allowed law firms to integrate diverse professional expertise, enabling them to move beyond traditional legal advice to holistic business solutions. He highlights the rise of incorporated legal practices and their role in fostering innovation and meeting client demands for comprehensive, cross-disciplinary services. The conversation also explores hybrid professionalism, where traditional legal ethics and expertise intersect with modern managerial and interdisciplinary practices. Professor Webb examines the cultural and ethical challenges this shift creates while emphasizing its potential to transform knowledge-sharing and organizational dynamics. Looking ahead, he predicts that multidisciplinary collaboration will remain central to the legal profession’s future.

Amber is Head of Innovation at Australia's largest law firm, MinterEllison. – In this episode of This Multidisciplinary Life, Sarah El-Atm interviews Amber O'Meara, who shares how her background in marketing and client experience fuels her role as a “connector of dots” in innovation, where she leads projects like the Digital Academy for digital fluency and Mintcoin, an internal cryptocurrency that rewards curiosity. This conversation dives into how multidisciplinary teams at MinterEllison solve complex client challenges by blending diverse expertise. Amber also reveals the firm’s purpose-led approach centred on curiosity, collaboration, and excellence, creating a culture where learning, empathy, and even "failing fast" are encouraged. Whether you’re in law, tech, or business, this episode is full of actionable insights on building innovative, future-ready teams.

Introducing This Multidisciplinary Life. Sarah El-Atm is an expert on multidisciplinary teams in law. This series seeks to highlight the benefits and challenges of using diverse expertise in law firms. By collaborating with specialists in areas like technology, risk, and PR, lawyers can offer clients richer solutions and foster better team culture. Sarah emphasises that multidisciplinary teams need shared purpose and strong communication to succeed. The coming interviews will explore real-life insights on the creation and optimisation of multidisciplinary teams in legal practice.