Almost before their eyes, the seemingly bumbling Coalition vessels, that a moment ago had been struggling to maintain their own firing lanes, shifted suddenly, and melted into groups of two or three ships. Shield patterns overlapped each other, and the vessels maneuvered in close to one another.
Now, I'm not sure how we've done it at TRF, but in the Expanded Universe novels, vessels were able to shield lap one another if they had all their shields focused in one direction, as seen in the end of the Spectre of the Past novel. Whereas, if ships had shields covering their entire bulks, then the shield overlap would become a shield interference, as seen in the assault on Black Nine Shipyard in Tyrant's Test.
The main difference is that in overlapping, the shields act as multi-layers. If a ship loses it's shields, the shields from another ship will still protect it before enemy fire impacts it's hull. In an interference zone, the two layers still work, but if enemy fire impacts the interference zone, then the shields will multiply the blast yield radius, creating a much bigger and concentrated explosion then if it was just a normal shield repulsed explosion.