By Tracy Callahan
In the 1990s, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson set out to study medical errors in hospitals. She expected to find that the best-performing teams made fewer mistakes. Instead, she discovered the opposite: the highest-performing teams reported more errors, not fewer.
They were not making more mistakes. Team members felt safe enough to name them. The lower-performing teams looked smoother on paper because everyone stayed quiet.
This finding launched decades of research on what Edmondson termed “psychological safety,” and it carries an important implication for law firm partnerships: the partnerships that appear the most harmonious may be at the greatest risk.
The Myth of the Smooth Partnership
When a law firm partnership appears to run without friction, the instinct is to admire it. But Harvard Business Review has identified a phenomenon called “fake harmony,” in which the absence of visible conflict masks a deeper dysfunction: the avoidance of difficult but essential conversations. What harms partnerships is not disagreement, but the absence of candor.
Avoidance does not prevent the explosion. Baron and Lachenauer describe what they call the “cliff event,” the moment when months or years of accumulated silence erupt into a crisis that can undo the partnership entirely. The triggering event is often small on its own. But it carries the weight of every conversation that came before it and those that never happened.
Why Small and New Law Firm Partnerships Need to Be Particularly Mindful
As we all understand, attorneys are trained to advocate, negotiate, and counsel clients through high-stakes decisions. But the skills that make someone an excellent attorney are not the same skills required to navigate the interpersonal dynamics of partnership. And the profession’s culture of competence and composure makes admitting uncertainty about a partnership dynamic feel like admitting weakness.
In my work, I see this most clearly in women-led law firms. The relationships that power these firms are often rooted in genuine friendship and a shared vision for building something different in the legal profession. That relational foundation is a tremendous strength, but it can also become the very reason hard conversations get postponed. When the relationship feels foundational, the instinct is to protect it from strain. And protection, in practice, often looks like silence.
Four Patterns Hiding in Plain Sight
Across law firm partnerships of small- and medium-sized, four patterns consistently emerge beneath the surface of “fine” partnerships.
Unexamined assumptions. Do you and your partners have the same answer to “What does success look like for our firm?” If you hesitated, you have just identified an unexamined assumption. One partner may want to scale, hire associates, and build a brand. Another may want low overhead, high margin, and a predictable practice. A third may believe business development is the job, while a fourth considers it a distraction from billable work. Nobody is wrong. They are just building four different firms under one roof. Until the conversation happens, everyone is relying on assumptions and hope, managing around the misalignment as the gap widens.
Uninitiated conversations. All “equal partnerships” have inequality. One partner brought the clients. Another does the invisible work that keeps the firm running. Someone’s contribution is celebrated while someone else’s is simply expected. That is not the problem. The problem is when nobody talks about it. Silent scorekeeping makes a strong foundation impossible, because you cannot build alignment on top of resentment everyone is pretending does not exist. Healthy firms do not eliminate inequality. They name who is carrying what. They adjust based on reality, not the “we’re all equal partners” story they wanted to believe.
Untracked contributions. How many hours did your partner spend last month training the new hire? Managing the website redesign? Handling the HR complaint? If you do not know, you have an untracked contributions problem. When only billable hours are captured, the message is clear: that is what counts. One partner on track to bill 1,800 hours is thanked for keeping the lights on. Their colleague, who has taken on the responsibilities of managing partner and administrative partner without the titles, is on track to bill 1,200. If non-billable work matters to the firm’s success, track it as consistently as billable work. Without complete data, contribution conversations become subjective, and silent scorekeeping creeps in.
Unclear authority. Can you approve your paralegal’s vacation request without consulting your partner? What about a $3,000 marketing spend? If you are not sure, and your partners are not sure either, that is a decision boundary problem. Every choice becomes a calculation: “Should I ask or just do it?” Either way, it creates tension. You are either the bottleneck or the one who “goes rogue.” Clear decision guidelines are not about power but about protocol, and protocol keeps the firm moving forward while protecting the relationships that sustain it.
The Partner Who “Keeps Questioning Everything”
There is a dynamic that surfaces repeatedly in partnerships operating under fake harmony: one partner begins raising concerns, and the others characterize them as difficult. Edmondson’s research illuminates why. In environments that lack psychological safety, the person who speaks up is not heard as the one seeing clearly. They are heard as the one disrupting the peace. Their observations get reframed as complaints.
But often, that partner is the canary in the coal mine, sensing something real before anyone else is aware of it or willing to name it. The healthiest partnerships do not silence this voice. They create structured spaces where all perspectives are heard without blame. Dismissing difference fractures partnerships. Naming differences allows them to see clearly.
Getting the Truth on the Table
If you recognize your partnership in any of these patterns, act. Do not wait for the cliff event. Initiate the conversation you have been postponing. Name the assumption you have been operating under but have never confirmed. Ask your partner(s) whether you still want the same thing.
Some law firm leaders can get the truth on the table on their own. Many cannot do so. The same dynamics that prevent honest conversation also prevent partners from initiating it. When the culture of a partnership has settled into avoidance, it often takes a neutral third party to create the conditions for truth-telling. And when that happens, the first job is getting every partner to view the firm as an entity of shared stewardship rather than as individuals vying to get their needs met. The question shifts from “Is this fair to me?” to “What does the firm need from us?” That shift sounds subtle. It is not.
However you get there, the cultural shift that follows is what matters most.
Edmondson’s research demonstrates that psychological safety is not a fixed trait. It is a climate that leaders can build. When partners experience the value of naming what is real, even once, the threshold for candor lowers. The firm begins to develop a tolerance for imperfection: for raising half-formed ideas, for admitting mistakes without fear of judgment, for asking the question everyone else is thinking, but no one is voicing.
The most fragile partnership may be the one that looks fine because its leaders have stopped asking whether it actually is.
References
Baron, Josh, and Rob Lachenauer. Harvard Business Review Family Business Handbook: How to Build and Sustain a Successful, Enduring Enterprise. Harvard Business Review Press, 2021.
Edmondson, Amy C. The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. John Wiley & Sons, 2019.
Edmondson, Amy C. “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams.” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2, 1999.
Tracy Callahan (tracy@touchstonelegalresources.com) is the founder of Touchstone Legal Resources and a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association. She works with women-led law firm partnerships to surface unspoken issues and cultivate a culture where candor strengthens both the firm and the relationships that sustain it.
