Hmm, I suppose a LS leader glitch could be happening. Some additional info on what is going on:

When I try to equip a linkpearl, I can't actually act as if I have a pearl equipped. By which I mean I can't display all members or any of the other options you get when you select your currently equipped LS in the linkshell menu. It seems to be behaving as if I don't have a LS at all.

I'm tempted to just create a new LS to see if that will fix the problem. If that doesn't do it, I'm going to report a bug. It is incredibly inconvenient not to be able to communicate in LS chat.