Defining Legal Projects
So, now we know what a project is, what is a legal project? Essentially, a legal project is a project where legal services of some kind are rendered. Although the two terms are not synonymous, the term legal project has become associated with projects that have a specific set of challenges and the project management techniques that we will explore in this post and ones to come can be of specific value on legal projects. A legal project usually involves a fee-for-service arrangement between a client and their lawyer (or firm) for a discrete piece of work that will generally include some combination of research, analysis, and documentation. There may or may not be a dispute involved. Legal projects can be as diverse as patent filings, e-discovery, to performing market research to support an anti-trust claim or market entry strategy. While the scope of legal projects can be vast, they are USUALLY well defined along the lines of what has been referred to as the "iron triangle" — that is, project management is performed under the constraints of time, cost, and quality — just like any other project . In addition to these, however, legal projects also must consider risk. Because the law is always changing, there is potential risk in nearly every judgment that is made. Not only must the lawyers look toward the future, but their clients must as well to anticipate any legal changes that may affect potential outcomes. As an example, a litigation case is a typical project in the legal realm. During the course of the case, attorneys will need to meet deadlines to file court documents, determine the next areas of investigation, give presentations to the court and communicate about the case with the client. In addition, communications will need to be made to agency representatives, expert witnesses, and others as needed. All of these items will need to be planned for and documented by attorneys and paralegals, constant reviewed, updated, and communicated throughout the life of the project. Finally, at the end of the project it will be necessary to debrief the project with the entire team and the client to identify any last minute open issues and look for lessons learned to be shared with future litigants.
Essential Components of an Effective Legal Project
A successful legal project hinges on several key elements. Among those are planning, allocation of resources, establishment of timelines, and involvement of stakeholders. A thoroughly executed plan is essential. So too is the proper allocation of legal and non-legal resources. These include both human and financial resources. The timing of the project is also crucial. Legal projects that lack fixed time-lines or that drift from an established schedule face increased risk of failure. A corollary to timing is the critical importance of involving stakeholders in the project from the outset. Stakeholders typically include attorneys, support staff, clients, and the client’s business units. Careful thought about the specific roles that each stakeholder must play is essential. In fact, without these roles being thoughtfully conceptualized, as few as two or as many as a dozen stakeholders can quickly derail a project.
By way of example, consider a simple internal investigation that involves interviews with witnesses. This is the type of task that is both large enough to require planning and scheduling, while at the same time, relatively simple. Simple internal investigations can be among the more difficult and drawn-out tasks in litigation. Plans need to be developed; dates for preserving the evidence and for making witness interviews have to be scheduled and closely monitored. Inside the law firm, the timing of a witness interview affects the scheduling and involvement of other attorneys and other support staff, including analytical teams and document reviewers. A primary attorney is typically assigned the task of conducting the witness interview. Individual attorneys may be responsible for matters such as tracking down the witnesses and interviewing them. Witnesses may be located in any part of the country or even in foreign countries. If document management lawyers were involved, they may need to have time to review documents or evidence from the client before the interview so that they are able to identify relevant documents for follow-up review. The possible overlap is considerable. Finally, witnesses often need to be "prepped" prior to an interview, whether they are clients, other officers and employees, or third parties.
Because almost all legal work involves multiple stakeholders and because timing is so important, it is essential to make the right choices in who to involve and when. This is the case for purposes of scoping, project planning, scheduling, cost estimates and control, and quality assurance. The project manager should coordinate the resources and assess the project through frequent monitoring and reviewing of the project’s progress. Experienced project managers recognize both the potential for conflict among stakeholders, as well as the normal challenges associated with scope change. Experienced project managers also develop creative ways to address such challenges early.
Legal Project Management Techniques
Understanding legal project management strategies will enable you to allocate resources, regulate budgets, and forecast project progress successfully. Here, we examine some of the most effective legal project management methods: Lean, Agile, and Six Sigma. The methodologies that suit your project will depend on the outcomes you wish to achieve.
Lean, which originated in the manufacturing sector, aims to maximize customer value while minimizing waste. It is about creating more value for the customer with fewer resources by systematically minimizing waste by optimizing processes. This philosophy encourages teams to focus on customer need, value delivery, and the efficiency of every action in an effort to provide the best outcome for the client.
Lean is based on five core principles: Also rooted in the manufacturing industry, the Agile approach is particularly useful in industries that must constantly evolve to keep up with changing consumer demands. Legal firms can efficiently manage projects using Agile by encouraging an adaptive response to change. Some key principles of Agile include: Six Sigma is a data-driven strategy that aims at improving the quality of a process by reducing the chance of error. To identify problems, potential solutions, and areas for improvement, legal project team members use six complementary elements, including metrics, focus, discipline, team work, partnership, and strategies. Six Sigma uses five metrics to improve quality: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC). While it is often mistakenly associated with Lean, Six Sigma is a slightly different methodology. Six Sigma utilizes a more data-driven approach to gain a deeper understanding of the project as it moves forward.
One of the most significant legal project management strategies, Six Sigma is based on two principal realities: All three of the above methodologies can help you develop a comprehensive and highly functional project plan. Legal project managers should always emphasize the big picture when defining project goals. Legal project management strategies, used alongside project management software, help to optimize legal project outcome.
Legal Project Management Challenges
Common challenges that arise in legal projects can be attributed to a number of factors. The most frequently observed are regulatory compliance, budget constraints and technology integration. However, these challenges and others will be explored below.
Regulatory compliance is critical for law firms. Unlike other businesses, law firms could lose their license to practice law if they fail to comply with regulations. Besides the reputation issues, non-compliance comes at significant costs. By outsourcing specific tasks, law firms can ensure regulatory compliance without the need to hire additional personnel. This not only ensures proper oversight, but also delivers expertise as the professionals providing the work or consultation services have relevant competences.
The productivity demands on everybody today are unreal and law firms are no exception. Lawyers are expected to produce more for less at all times. As most law firms are people based businesses with lots of moving parts, it is critically important to have established routines and processes across the team. Not all areas of law are specialized. When employees of small or medium-sized law firms perform legal work outside of their area of expertise, mistakes occur. A poorly drafted legal document will significantly affect the reputation of the law firm. The regular and often scheduled outsourcing of such legal tasks may just be the solution to this problem . Outsourcing helps to ensure more standardized and diligent work.
When law businesses grow, people become as important to the business as clients. Everyday activities such as invoicing and marketing can become cumbersome when handled manually. In this situation, systemization becomes critically important for law firms. Process & Workflow Management will support more efficient operations. Well-managed legal processes will check errors before they impact the schedule or the client relationship. Work Product Sequencing ensures that everyone involved in legal matters (attorneys, paralegals, and clients) are on the same page and are able to communicate with one another when necessary.
Developing the right IT infrastructure is very important for all businesses. Yet, most law firms seem to lag behind other businesses in this area. Since they’re stuck within a traditional mindset, most law firms do not see any value in cloud computing or specialized software. As a result, they use different software for billing, case management, and collaboration etc. This leads to inefficiencies. Many law firms still do not have secure email or document storage solutions. Thus they restrict sharing of documents to unsecured emails or when people are physically present. Some firms have a new document management system or a new practice management system but then do not own the expertise to utilize all the features. As such, they do not deliver the full benefits of the software.
Technology in Legal Projects
Technology can be of significant service to legal project management. Legal project management software, artificial intelligence, data analytics, and e-discovery search engines are changing how projects are conceived, executed, and ultimately delivered.
It is important to have the right tools in place for each project. For example, if a project involves litigation on a broad range of issues, involving thousands of hours of attorney review of gigabytes of documents, a project manager would start with the legal project management software and bring in the right attorneys at the right stages of the project. On the other hand, if the project manager is working on an M&A deal, with a higher volume of non-disclosure agreements, the project manager may find that a document automation tool is more effective and efficient.
Part of preparing for a project is determining the necessary tools and contracting with the appropriate vendors. Some law firms are using a center of excellence model to streamline this process, where the firm will contract with a number of technology vendors, who can be emailed if a project needs a specific service, as well as developing a mechanism by which multiple vendors can be compared based on price and performance.
In addition, it is important to determine whether or not internal resources are available, or if the appropriate training must be provided to help attorneys make the best use of the technology.
Legal Project Case Studies
"Speed" by Patrick Schwerdtfeger highlights the idea that customers want speed in terms of getting their problems solved and lawyers need to apply that in terms of legal projects. One example of this is the "speedy trial" in a lawsuit that the real estate company Axia gathered for a specific project. The project was the bankruptcy of a vendor, and it included a resolution of all claims and issues by the end of a 60-day period. The closing of the deal was done within 70 days from retention to sale of the property. A client survey revealed they were extremely satisfied with the outcome due to how quickly this case was handled by the firm of Shumaker Williams & Moore, and he also states that the company has a retention rate of nearly 100% .
This case study shows the importance of considering the nature of the legal project. This allows for better management of the project from start to finish, and affords you much more perspective on where this type of project can be completed in a given period of time. In this case, the company understood what they needed and then simply asked to have it done as quickly as possible. This speed then influenced the lawyer to ask, "What is this project really about?" This is where differences in the outcomes of a case can be explained, and brings the question back to "What are the five stages of legal project management?" Your case is not going to fall under the "next" category of millions of cases though and needs to be taken seriously.