WHAT IS LEGAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT?

In its simplest form LPM is defined as, ‘the application of the concepts of project management to the control and management of legal cases or matters.’ A more detailed definition of legal project management is that, ‘Legal project management provides a structured approach to planning, pricing and managing legal work that will bring a law firm's service delivery model in line with the changing expectations of its clients.’ The latter definition provides more detail of the intention when a law firms decides it's going to use legal project management techniques.

LPM has become increasingly important in the last few years because of the significant changes that are affecting the legal market. Perhaps the most significant of these is that clients are driving down costs by encouraging alternative fee arrangements (AFA). These are most commonly fixed fees arrangements, although there are many other types of AFA. Essentially what clients are looking for from AFA is more certainty and transparency around costs and the bills that they have to pay. In the UK there have also been a number of other changes that have affected the legal market, and which have put LPM firmly in the spotlight. These include:

• • Acquisitions and investment: there have been a number of law firm takeovers and mergers in recent months. These transactions have ranged from the local to the international in scope and size.

• • Regulatory changes: the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has moved to an ‘outcomes focused’ as opposed to a ‘rule based’ approach, which includes the implementation of its own risk-assessment processes along with the requirement for law firms to adopt something similar to manage their own risks.

• • Alternative Business Structures (ABS): the SRA is also responsible for licensing ABS's, organisations that can offer legal services without being wholly owned by lawyers – the much talked about ‘Tesco law’

• • Legislative changes: the Legal Aid Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (LASPO) is currently making its way through parliament with one of its themes being to lower the cost of litigation, including a proposed ban on referral fees in personal injury cases.

• • Rise of the fixed fee: as previously mentioned there is no doubt that fixed fees are becoming much more widespread. In response to increased demand by clients.

Another trend that has brought LPM to the fore is law firms that are either reacting to the increase in fixed fee arrangements or are proactively trying to jump ahead of the curve. This is increasingly important in today's legal climate where much effort is focussed on effective risk management.

HOW CAN LPM HELP?

In their article ‘Adopting Legal Project ManagementFootnote ¹’ Woldlow and Richardson break LPM down into five cascading elements which are:

• • Collaborating with the client to set project objectives and scope;

• • Building the project plan (which includes identifying phases and tasks, the project team and stakeholders, building the budget, creating a communications plan and analyzing risks);

• • Executing the plan as a framework for legal work;

• • Monitoring progress;

• • Undertaking a post-project review with both the project team and the client.

Put together, these steps or techniques form the basis of LPM. Using LPM techniques to manage matters as projects, can help manage them more effectively, through scoping the work properly at the outset and by breaking matters down into different stages, much like you might manage an internal project. Doing so means that law firms can charge for the work completed at the different stages of the project, on the basis that they work has been completed. Using a project management technique to manage a fixed fee matter also means that if something happens that is ‘out of the scope’ of the work covered by the original quote, a change request or a revised quote has to be raised. Anyone who has ever worked on a project will understand how important change requests are, in formally capturing a change and ensuring it is taken forward. Change requests also ensure that the wider organisation is aware of the additional work and can look at the costs involved, either at that stage of the project or for the project/matter as a whole.

LPM can also help alleviate wider commercial concerns. Take, for example, the often quoted pressure of needing to deliver “more for less”, a concept which knowledge and information professionals have been dealing with for some time. For many law firms the only way this can be achieved is by either discounting rates, writing off some time completely or finding a way to meet the client's real needs in fewer hours at standard rates. Applying project management techniques to matter management should give fee-earners a much better chance of achieving the latter. The key for law firms is to identify what the client really wants and then build a framework which optimises the delivery of this and provides tools for managing the trade off between the effort required, given the matter scope and the time and budget.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS?

In addition to the obvious benefits of managing a matter by breaking it down into chunks and providing a structure and tools around which a project can be managed, there are other less obvious, but just as useful benefits from using LPM. These include the following:

• • Improved communication between the client and firm. Using legal project management techniques to run matters as projects ensures that things are kept under control and reduces the prospect of any unwelcome surprises when a law firm bills a client.

• • Demonstrating business value more easily. By being able to clearly show how much each element within a matter costs, firms are able to show what value the client is getting from them. LPM also enables law firms to pitch more accurately for work.

• • Longer/stronger relationships, putting clients at the heart of the process by involving them in the scoping of work means that law firms can focus better on client needs and deliver what they want rather then what they think they want.

• • Improving the predictability of fees and costs and therefore the ability to reduce write offs. Running matters as tightly defined projects, where the matter is deconstructed into individual tasks means that the most appropriate member of staff does the work for each task and there is therefore less chance of time being written off. It also ensures that costs are properly worked out ahead of the client being billed.

• • Reducing risk, by highlighting what needs to be done and when. This ensures that all team members know what is expected of them and what the client is expecting them to deliver and at what stage.

Ultimately clients value services which are delivered in a cost effective way and within a structure that allows them to observe what is happening, including any potential problems. LPM can potentially offer all these benefits, though unfortunately it is not simply a case of putting LPM into practice. There are a number of challenges that need to be addressed.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES?

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing proponents of LPM is a firm's culture. LPM is not a ‘one size fits all’ concept. Just as some technologies work in particular firms but they might not work in others, the same can be said of LPM. How well it can be applied depends very much on the culture of the firm and what the firm has decided its approach to LPM is going to be. Some firms may decide that a sweeping firm-wide, full rollout of LPM is best, whilst others may try a series of pilots to determine where and how, it is going to work best. Whatever approach is taken it needs to be one that delivers the greatest value and benefit.

Another significant challenge for law firms, that are considering rolling out LPM, are fee-earners. Any law firm contemplating using LPM needs to think carefully about what the expectations are, in terms of the fee-earners work. It is equally important for fee-earners to be involved in the design and configuration of any tools that they will use to manage matters. If fee-earners find the tool to be counter-intuitive or cumbersome, then they are unlikely to use it. Developing LPM tools in collaboration with practice groups that want or need LPM, is also important This way they will be able to provide feedback on their user-friendliness.

HOW CAN LAW LIBRARIANS GET INVOLVED?

If law firms are actively looking at how they can apply LPM techniques to the way they manage matters, and ultimately how effectively they manage a client, then what are the opportunities for law librarians, knowledge managers and other information professionals? Tjaden, in his article “Legal Project Management for Law Librarians – Are you on board?Footnote ²” highlights 8 areas where he believes law librarians have a role to play. I've summarised some of these with additional thoughts below:

• • Education/current awareness. Law librarians are well versed in monitoring sources of information so a good starting point if your firm is considering Legal Project Management, is to begin monitoring news sources and journals for mention of Legal Project Management. This will stand law librarians in good stead if a firm decides to use LPM and will show the firm how important law librarians can be in the information gathering process.

• • Pitches and tenders. If law librarians are not already involved in the pitch/tender process then they should be! Law librarians already work closely with both fee-earners and marketing teams so are in a great position to help find, organise and manage the information that goes into a pitch. Clients have for awhile, asked for knowledge and information services capabilities to be included within pitch documentation and this will continue under LPM. However, increasingly, clients may also ask for knowledge or library managers to attend pitches so that they can explain their approach to knowledge management and the services that they are able to provide.

• • Supporting and developing resources produced in collaboration with practice groups is a key area for law librarians and knowledge managers. As more firms look at LPM, more clients will ask what resources they can have access to. For matters that are open for awhile this might involve creating guides and building wikis and other collaborative platforms that are made available to the client. Ultimately it depends on the type of matter and the length of time it is open.

• • Creating and maintaining checklists. As Tjaden suggests, the library/knowledge management department is the ‘natural keeper’ of checklists and other documents that encourage best practice by fee-earners. As a result, law librarians should work with practice groups to identify and organise these checklists together with a means to manage them.

• • Managing precedents and other know how. This is already a role for many law librarians and will become more important if law firms decide to use LPM, as fee-earners will need quick access to precedents and standard forms that are essential to the matter they are working on. Using and populating a system that manages these documents should be a key role for law librarians.

• • After action reviews. One of the most important aspects of LPM is that the work undertaken by fee-earners and the firm can be reviewed more effectively, given that as part of LPM, a matter is broken down into bite-sized chunks of work. ‘After Action Reviews’ are an area that knowledge managers have been working with for many years and this is sure to develop.

• • Delivering training which is focussed on achieving client and business outcomes. Training is an important element of any law librarian's role and it becomes even more important when it involves providing training to clients. This training could take many forms, including in-house training, online training (including webinars and similar formats) or more traditional seminar style training. There should be lots of opportunities for librarians and knowledge managers to become involved in the development of a training programme for clients as part of an LPM matter.

• • Understanding new technologies. I'd also argue that new technologies will have a role to play in LPM. Wikis, which have been used by law firms and law librarians for many years, can be a great way to manage both projects and complex documentation. Law librarians often manage intranets, which might become a place where LPM matters are managed via a dashboard or other views. Another role for law librarians might be in evaluating and training fee-earners on how to use LPM tools. For those law librarians who have a more technical role or whose work is focussed on knowledge management, another role might be in administering the software that manages LPM. However this is a developing field and although the tools and offerings that are available have improved, law firms shouldn't buy into the idea that a tool will solve all the LPM issues. As Woldow says in her blog post Footnote ³on the subject, “Software tools support efficient lawyering, but it is extreme magical thinking to suppose that some push-button silver bullet can convert inefficient work into efficient work” Woldow goes on to say that, ‘…LPM and its technological support tools are about how legal project are planned and managed. What is practised and delivered will always remain up to the lawyer.’ This is definitely important to remember, not just when thinking about technology solutions for LPM, but for any other project that involves fee-earners. The technology you're providing is only an enabler of better working practices; ultimately it's down to the fee-earner as to how efficient these working practices will be.

• • Management of internal projects. One of the benefits of being involved with LPM is that the principles of project management will apply equally well to internal projects, such as the development of new tools for use by other teams. Law librarians will have unique and useful skills to bring to internal projects that involve anything technical or involve the organisation and management of content.

Given the growing importance of LPM within law firms, it is important that anyone who works within our field has a basic understanding of what it is and how it will affect how fee-earners work. I hope this article has shown that there are some opportunities for law librarians if firms do decide to use LPM. In my opinion LPM is here to stay and we need to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities it presents.