Trust Is Earned. Legal Privilege Helps Protect It.

Why integrated professional services require both collaboration and careful stewardship.

When clients come to Aintree Group, they rarely arrive with a problem that belongs to just one profession.

A business owner planning succession may need legal advice, accounting expertise, financial planning and taxation strategy.
A family preparing an estate may require lawyers, accountants and advisers working together to protect both their assets and future generations.
Someone navigating a commercial dispute may need legal, taxation and financial advice delivered in a coordinated way.

Life doesn’t happen in silos, so neither should professional advice.

Business owners increasingly expect their accountant, lawyer and financial adviser to work together. When advice is coordinated, decisions tend to be more strategic, risks are identified earlier and clients spend less time acting as the go-between.

That’s why Aintree Group has built an integrated professional services model, bringing together accounting, tax, legal, wealth and business advisory services, for advice that is collaborative, practical and focused on long-term outcomes.

Although, as multidisciplinary firms become increasingly common, an important question arises:

How do we preserve legal privilege while enabling professionals to work together for the benefit of the client?

What is Legal Privilege?

Legal privilege is the fundamental right of a client to protect confidential legal communications with their lawyer from disclosure.

The protection exists so clients can speak openly and honestly, allowing lawyers to provide complete and effective advice.

When Legal Privilege Is At Risk

Legal privilege developed at a time when lawyers typically delivered legal advice independently. Today’s integrated service models raise important questions about how privilege should apply when multiple professionals contribute to supporting the client.

The Victorian Law Reform Commission is currently conducting a study to determine whether legal privilege should evolve to better reflect modern models of service delivery, including whether additional protections should apply for integrated legal assistance services.

These integrated services promote justice through addressing clients’ complex and interrelated needs. However, their integrated structure may have an adverse effect on clients’ ability to rely on legal privilege. The two requirements of legal privilege; confidentiality and the dominant legal purpose; are particularly difficult to establish in this setting.

Although the review focuses on community legal assistance services, the broader principles are relevant across the professional services sector.

The Reality of Modern Professional Services

Increasingly, clients expect their advisers to work together. Rather than engaging multiple firms, many clients now seek integrated professional services that bring disciplines together under one roof.

This integrated approach reflects the way clients experience real life: complex challenges rarely fit neatly within the boundaries of a single profession.

And there is a bounty of benefits.

Benefits for our clients:

Your advisers work together rather than in isolation.

Your accounting, legal, wealth and business advisory professionals collaborate behind the scenes, ensuring every recommendation supports your broader objectives rather than solving one issue in isolation.

You don’t need to explain your circumstances multiple times.

With one connected team, your advisers share relevant information and context, saving you time and reducing the frustration of repeating your story to multiple professionals.

Tax, legal and commercial issues are considered together.

Business decisions rarely fit neatly into one discipline. By considering the financial, legal and commercial implications together, we help you make more informed, well-rounded decisions.

Risks are identified earlier.

A collaborative approach helps uncover potential issues before they become costly problems, giving you the opportunity to address risks proactively rather than reactively.

Advice is more practical because each discipline understands the others.

Our specialists work with an appreciation of how their advice affects other areas of your business and personal affairs, resulting in solutions that are practical, coordinated and easier to implement.

Benefits to service providers:

Enhances service quality.

Enables providers to identify and manage complex client needs and risks that are otherwise difficult for any single professional to navigate, and to develop a coherent and managed response.

Increase capacity to recognise interconnected issues.

When professionals from different disciplines work in integrated ways, they can increase their capacity to recognise interconnected issues.

Discourage the need to re-enter legal system.

By stabilising the client’s underlying circumstances, integrated legal assistance services may reduce the likelihood that people will re-enter the legal system with recurring problems.

Your Privacy is Paramount

We understand that the information you share with us is sensitive and personal. Our team operates under strict professional and legal confidentiality obligations, with appropriate safeguards in place so your information is only accessed and shared internally when necessary to provide seamless, integrated advice.

The Commercial Perspective

One significant example is Commissioner of Taxation v PricewaterhouseCoopers [2022] FCA 278, where the Federal Court examined whether communications involving lawyers and accountants within a large multidisciplinary professional services firm attracted legal professional privilege.

The decision reinforced an important principle: legal privilege does not arise simply because a lawyer is involved in a communication.

Instead, courts will closely examine the dominant purpose of the communication.

Where lawyers and non-legal professionals collaborate, organisations must be able to demonstrate that confidential communications were created for the purpose of obtaining or providing legal advice. Where commercial, accounting or other non-legal advice serves its own independent purpose, privilege may not apply.

The case highlights the importance of careful governance in multidisciplinary firms, and demonstrates why legal privilege continues to evolve as professional services become increasingly integrated.

What This Means for Aintree Group

Unlike traditional firms where professionals operate in isolation, Aintree Group was intentionally built as an integrated professional services firm.

Our lawyers, accountants, financial advisers and business specialists work collaboratively to see the whole picture, delivering better outcomes.

That collaboration is underpinned by robust governance, professional independence and a deep respect for the confidential relationships that sit at the heart of legal practice.

As multidisciplinary professional services continue to evolve, so too must the legal frameworks that support them.

Courageous Custodians of Our Community

At Aintree Group, one of our guiding values is being Courageous Custodians of Our Community.

Being custodians means more than delivering technical expertise.

It means protecting our clients’ confidence, respecting the trust they place in us and ensuring their legal, financial and commercial affairs are managed with integrity.

We welcome the Commission’s consideration of these issues and recognise the importance of ensuring legal frameworks continue to reflect modern professional practice.

At Aintree Group, we believe collaboration and confidentiality are not competing priorities. They are both essential to building stronger businesses, stronger families and stronger communities.

Have Your Say

The Victorian Law Reform Commission is inviting submissions on its Legal Privilege and Integrated Legal Assistance Services Consultation Paper until Monday, 3 August 2026, before presenting its final recommendations to the Victorian Attorney-General in 2027.

While the review is focused on integrated legal assistance services, the issues it raises are increasingly relevant to the broader evolution of multidisciplinary professional services across Australia.

Let’s Bring Your Advice Together

Whether you’re growing a business, planning for the future or navigating a complex decision, our team is here to provide coordinated advice that supports your goals. Contact us today to start the conversation.

This is general advice only and has not been prepared with your individual situation or needs in mind. For personalised advice, we highly recommend that you seek professional guidance from a qualified adviser.

Trust Is Earned. Legal Privilege Helps Protect It.

Why integrated professional services require both collaboration and careful stewardship.

What is Legal Privilege?

When Legal Privilege Is At Risk