It starts with a short email.
A partner sends: “Need this today. Please prioritise.”
The associate on the receiving end reads urgency, criticism, and anxiety into four words. She rearranges her entire day, works late, and delivers a memo she is not entirely confident in. The partner opens it the next morning and frowns. “This isn’t what I asked for.”
No one was incompetent. No one was lazy. Both professionals were working hard, in good faith, toward the same matter. But they were communicating in entirely different languages — and the matter paid the price.
This is the hidden cost of miscommunication in legal teams. It does not show up on a time-sheet or a budget report. But it compounds in demotivated associates, frustrated partners, delayed deliverables, and client relationships that slowly erode.
The good news is that this is a solvable problem — and it starts with understanding why legal teams are particularly vulnerable.
Legal work operates under conditions that make communication failure almost inevitable: relentless time pressure, emotionally charged matters, hierarchical structures, and a professional culture that prizes brevity and precision above explanation.
Lawyers are trained to write in a way that is legally precise, not interpersonally clear. An instruction like “revise this” communicates nothing about scope, urgency, or expectation. An email marked “urgent” could mean urgent-by-tomorrow or urgent-by-noon. The receiver must guess — and they almost always guess wrong.
Add to this the reality that legal teams are rarely composed of people with the same communication style. Senior lawyers who thrive in high-pressure, decisive environments often communicate in shorthand that reads as harsh to colleagues who need more context before they can perform at their best. Junior lawyers, eager to please but afraid of asking too many questions, fill in the blanks with their own assumptions.
The result is not a failure of skill. It is a failure of system. And the solution is a structured, intentional approach to how legal teams communicate — starting with understanding how each person in the team actually operates.
The DISC framework is one of the most effective tools for mapping behavioural preferences in professional teams. Rather than labelling people as good or bad communicators, it identifies four primary behavioural tendencies that influence how we receive information, make decisions, and respond under pressure.
In the LPM course, PocketAdvisor uses Extended DISC — a more nuanced version of the traditional model — to help legal teams recognise their own patterns and adapt their communication approach accordingly. Most people are a blend of all four styles, but one or two tend to dominate.
High D (Dominant): “Let’s decide and move.”
High D lawyers thrive in urgent, high-stakes environments — litigation, crisis management, complex negotiations. They are decisive, direct, and results-focused. When communicating with a High D, lead with the conclusion, not the background. Give them two or three options with a clear recommendation. Keep it concise. If they seem blunt or dismissive, they are not being hostile — they are being efficient in the only way they know how.
High I (Influential): “Let’s get buy-in.”
High I lawyers are natural relationship builders. They are the ones who energise client meetings, get difficult stakeholders aligned, and make junior team members feel seen. They communicate with enthusiasm and often process ideas by talking them through. When working with a High I, allow space for conversation, acknowledge their ideas before redirecting, and do not interpret their verbal processing as indecision.
High S (Steady): “Let’s be consistent and thorough.”
High S lawyers bring reliability, patience, and deep care for process quality. They prefer to understand the full picture before committing, are excellent at long-form drafting, and value predictability. Sudden changes to a matter plan will stress a High S disproportionately. When communicating with them, provide context, give adequate notice before pivoting, and recognise their contribution to team stability.
High C (Conscientious): “Let’s get it right.”
High C lawyers are the detail masters — the ones who catch the clause that everyone else missed, who question assumptions before signing off, and who maintain exceptionally high standards. They can appear slow or cautious in fast-moving environments, but that caution is almost always justified. When working with a High C, provide data, avoid vague instructions, and give them time to analyse before requiring a decision.
The value of DISC in legal teams is not that it boxes people into categories. It is that it makes the invisible visible. When you understand why a colleague is reacting the way they are — not because of incompetence or attitude, but because of deeply ingrained behavioural preferences — you stop personalising behaviour and start adapting your communication approach.
Even when team members understand each other’s communication styles, the wrong channel will undermine the best intentions. A sensitive client instruction delivered by email will be misinterpreted. A quick clarification that requires back-and-forth will be slowed to a crawl in a text thread.
Legal project communication requires deliberate channel selection, matched to the nature of the conversation:
Email: documentation and formal updates
Email is the correct channel for anything that needs a paper trail — client instructions, formal status updates, matter decisions, risk escalations. It is not a tool for resolving ambiguity or having nuanced conversations. If you find yourself writing a lengthy email to explain what you really meant in a previous email, it is time to pick up the phone.
Video calls: collaborative discussion and complex matters
Video is the closest thing to in-person communication in a distributed legal team. It is the right channel for onboarding a new team member to a matter, structuring a complex transaction, resolving a disagreement about strategy, or conducting a client review meeting where reading body language matters. The investment in a 30-minute video call will regularly save four hours of email back-and-forth.
Phone: fast decisions and problem-solving
When a matter is moving quickly and a decision needs to be made in the next 15 minutes, call. Phone is ideal for quick clarifications, urgent escalations, and keeping momentum on a time-sensitive deliverable. It is faster than email, more nuanced than a text, and does not require both parties to be looking at a screen simultaneously.
In-person: sensitive and complex discussions
Redundancy announcements, performance conversations, client relationship issues, and partner-level strategy discussions should be held face to face wherever possible. In-person communication carries cues — tone, posture, pace — that no other channel can replicate. When the stakes of misinterpretation are high, choose the channel that leaves the least room for error.
The most practical tool any legal team can implement immediately is a communication charter — a simple, explicit agreement established at the outset of every new matter that defines how the team will communicate throughout the engagement.
A communication charter does not need to be a lengthy document. At its core, it answers five questions:
Communication is not treated as a soft skill in the IILPM methodology — it is treated as a project management competency with measurable outcomes. In the Applied LPM Course facilitated by Nicolene Schoeman-Louw, communication strategy is embedded throughout the 15-module programme and the 4-step IILPM framework.
Students work through Extended DISC profiling in a legal context, apply communication planning tools to real matter scenarios, and develop the skills to establish structured communication frameworks at the outset of every engagement. The course addresses not just what to communicate, but when, to whom, and through which channel — treating miscommunication as a project risk that can be identified, planned for, and mitigated.
For legal professionals who want to reduce the daily friction of misaligned communication, improve client relationship management, and build teams that collaborate effectively under pressure, this framework provides the structure that good intentions alone cannot deliver.
Miscommunication in legal teams is not inevitable. It is a project risk — and like all project risks, it can be managed with the right tools and frameworks.
The Applied LPM Course equips legal professionals across Africa with the communication strategies, DISC profiling tools, and structured planning frameworks that transform how legal teams operate. The course is delivered entirely online, facilitated live by award-winning attorney Nicolene Schoeman-Louw, and leads to a globally recognised IILPM certification.
Watch the free LPM 101 introduction and access your R1,000 course discount.
Your team’s communication challenges have a solution. It starts here. Enrol Today.
