What is Legal Project Management?
Whilst Jackson Pollock is world famous for his abstract art, it’s safe to say that everyone who looks at his work will see something completely different. The reality is that Legal Project Management (LPM) is much the same; it means something different to every law firm and pretty much everyone you speak to. It can mean anything from a simple method of managing your matters more closely, to something more formal which you proactively use as a selling point to add value and to retain your most important clients.
Finding something that works for your firm, fits with your firms’ culture, maximises your expertise while complementing the experience you have already, and at the same time exceeds (or even meets) the expectations of your clients, can often lead to wasted time and effort. Some of the most prominent US law firms such as Seyfarth Shaw LLP are leaders in this field but have been at it for many years.
Here are just some of the possibilities which spring to mind:
Internal offering: invisible to clients but a step change in matter management
- Resourcing models tailored to the various transaction types
- Capturing time recorded against individual pieces of work (and phases) and comparing actuals to expectations to identify improvements for future work
- Closely managing fee estimates against the work type and resourcing profiles
- Tracking progress against scope and time estimates.
Client facing: proactively marketed as a value add service to all of your clients
- Proactively tracking changes to the scope of work you have agreed with your client throughout the transaction/job and the introduction of regular opportunities to discuss these with the client to prevent issues such as “bill shock” later on.
- Managing and mitigating risks
- Regular formal progress reporting to confirm you are going to deliver to the client expectations but also to ensure the client is still content with progress, allowing you to set expectations throughout the job.
External offering: demonstrating your LPM expertise & sharing experiences
- Produce case studies to demonstrate successes no matter how small.
- Managing resource availability and allocation to cater for the type and value of work will allow you to offer increasingly competitive fixed fees.
- A formal approach and methodology maximising in-house experience and expertise will allow you to demonstrate your formal LPM credentials.
LPM Toolbox: tried, tested & approved support & guidance for your legal teams
- Carve out your own Prince2 methodology for legal projects, tailored specifically for your legal matters and the types of client you work with.
- Introduce legal process improvement to streamline your working practices and to maximise efficiency gains.
- Introduce standard templates to cater for specified types of work which incorporate service level agreements determined by the volume and value of the client work.
- Define service level agreements with a grading structure to reflect what degree of LPM you offer for everything from high volume, quick turn-around, multi-matter work to large pieces of complex litigation which could take many years
- Ongoing review of all transactions/jobs following completion will allow you to refine and continuously improve your LPM offerings.
While I am not advocating applying Prince2 in its purest form, some of the key principles of are always a useful guide to considering how you will bring matters under tighter control:
- Learn from experience
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Manage by stages
- Manage by exception
- Tailor to the environment