Legal Project Management

                                                      

Project management has long been used by different businesses to earn more profits through efficiency and predictability. How law firm can protect profits with the use of project management and their client can benefit from improvement in predictability of budgets and schedules in fix fee arrangement as well as in billable hour matter. This is an emerging field for project management.
Even I have worked as lawyer in law firm and I understand the difficulty of applying such tools in in legal field where almost each case, client, opponents and their clients are different.
But when I worked as a in-house legal officer, corporate client demands and expects definite answers and timeline from lawyers and they hate unpredictability specially when legal matter is critical for business future and there I understood the importance of systematic and disciplinary approach. for legal matters , It is always assumed as time taking process and final lawyer’s bill as surprised.  http://www.mmmlaw.com/assets/files/article_318.pdf  in this article, Author has mentioned very interesting thing that the “Lawyers are accidental Project Manager” as every legal engagement is a project with a fixed goal and limited duration but lawyers rarely embrace their role as a project manager and most lawyers embrace their responsibility to get a good legal result for their client but that is where interest ends. the process is a necessary evil to achieving substantial results. achievement will feel far less if it is not completed timely.

Nine steps can be followed to solve common problems problems by legal project management
1.Set objectives and Define scope
2.Identify and scheduled activities- Break the matter down in smaller task, that can be better budgeted ,scheduled, staffed and managed.
3.Assign task and manage the team
4.Budget guesstimating-Estimating and controlling cost with careful tracking,constant communication and early adjustment on task level
5.Alternative plans before problem occurs.
6. Managing and maintaining quality
7. Manage client communication- it is important to understand clients expectations and meet those objectives.As the project progresses circumstances change so need to report progress to them member and stakeholders.
8. Time-line,possibly in the form of Gant chart, which identifies projected timing of the task and interdependence among the task.
9.Negotiate change orders and be careful with scope-creep.

There is ERM Legal solution legal industry focused project- management Applications serves as a work space for matter and project managers during the scoping, planning budgeting and execution phase of the matter.

These skills are specially very much in demand therefore now days there is Law-MBA hybrid course offered and there are various position in fortune 500 companies as Legal Project Manager

As per one of the referred article “A recent American Lawyer Media Legal Intelligence survey found that firms that use legal project management report more productive client relationships, improved communication, greater cost predictability, and other benefits.”

There is lot of potential to use, develop PM tools to improve efficiency of the legal matter and disputes

References

http://www.legalbizdev.com/files/LPMsolutionsBx.pdf

http://www.legalbizdev.com/files/LPMgrowingBx.pdf

http://www.ermlegalsolutions.com/?page_id=10

http://www.mmmlaw.com/assets/files/article_318.pdf

2 thoughts on “Legal Project Management

  1. I like that you applied this to your field of expertise. I hadn’t considered that lawyers were project managers!

    Since many lawyers work case-by-case, often with very specific and inflexible deadlines, I could absolutely see project management standards and tools being helpful. In particular, the gantt charting, resource allocation, task assignment, and budgeting could all be rolled out through existing enterprise resources (Microsoft Project). Depending on the scale of the firm, this could also help with tracking billable hours, seasonal hires, or a myriad of other data-based decisions. The question is – would a law firm spring for a dedicated project manager? or consider raising the salary of an office manager to be comparable for attracting an experienced project manager? It would certainly be an interested in precedent to set.

  2. This is a thought out and well-written post.

    I find your point of viewing lawyers as PMs to be very interesting.I think this concept can be applied to different fields as well. For instance, a practitioner’s office can learn a thing or to from or be considered a project management site. Careers in healthcare are often concerned with driving down cost which is one of the biggest responsibilities of being a PM. Collaborating to provide service for patients or customers is the main focus of healthcare. This is also the main objective for PM. It is nice to see that the knowledge skills and abilities of PM can be applied to a number of different fields. No wonder successful PMs are a hot commodity at this time as these skills are transferrable.

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