Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending Saturday, August 28, 2010. Toby Brown examines and graphs out the commoditization of legal work in a recent post to 3 Geeks and a Law Blog. He notes that while "legal project management is a first line of attack to adjust the delivery model to lower cost levels..., LPM will probably not reduce delivery costs enough to maintain positive margins as this is merely providing service with the same basic model - only more efficiently."Rees Morrison shares his thoughts about the Textron litigation group's Six Sigma initiative in...

The increasing importance of project-management skills to legal and legal-support careers is a common theme on this blog.[1] I was happy, therefore, to see this observation corroborated in Jerry Kowalski's new report for Managing Partner magazine, Navigating the Perfect Storm: Recruiting, Training and Retaining Lawyers.[2] The report, which serves as a law-firm-HR guide for the "Great Recession," includes project-management among the competencies law firms must acquire in the new economy. Jerry Kowalski is the principle and founder of Kowalski & Associates, a law-firm-management consultancy. Mr. Kowalski was gracious enough to share his thoughts on the lessons learned from the global recession,...

Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending Saturday, August 14, 2010. In a post to his Legal Business Development blawg, Jim Hassett discusses how focusing on short-term wins can help overcome resistance to change when promoting project management in the legal environment. An article on Law 360 by Julie Zeveloff points out that more law firms are getting on board with project management. She quotes liberally from a number of familiar names in her article: Jim Hassett, Susan Raridon Lambreth (Hildebrandt Baker Robbins), Ben Barnett (Dechert LLP), Patrick Lamb (Valorem Law Group), and Margaret ("Meg")...

Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending Saturday, August 07, 2010. Pamela H. Woldow, a Principal at Altman Weil, discusses how law firms can use legal project management to become more efficient in a recent article published in the Legal Intelligencer (subscription required).Jerome Kowalski discusses how the increasing use of alternative fee arrangements will require law firms to recruit candidates with, and provide training for, project management skills in a post to his Kowalski & Associates blog announcing his new book: Navigating the Perfect Storm:  Recruiting, Training and Retaing Lawyers in the Coming Decade (Ark Press). Jeff Steve shares his observation...

On November 1st, the Canadian Bar Association will host its first conference on focused on the topic of legal-project management.  Title: "Project Management for Canadian Lawyers"  Format/Location: Live Conference. Hyatt Regency, Toronto. Cost: Free for OLP members. 79 USD per telephone line for non-members.  Organizations: The Canadian Bar Association Description: The CBA is pleased to offer its first conference on Project Management for Canadian Lawyers.  Many lawyers struggle to estimate how long a legal mandate will take or how much it will cost. Project management methods have been used successfully for many years to answer these questions in corporations, consulting firms and...

According to the recently released results of the Cowen Group's Critical Trends Survey for the second quarter of 2010, 65% of corporate respondents and 69% of law-firm respondents say that legal project management has increased in importance.[1] Over 53 corporations and 117 "major law firms" participated in the survey. Hopefully this translates into the LPM job growth predicted by earlier Cowen Group surveys,[2] the Project Management Institute,[3] and The Posse List.[4]  [1] Cowen Group, 2010 Q2 Critical Trends Snapshop, http://www.cowengroup.com/researchcenter/quarterly/2010-Q2.php (last visited August 6, 2010). [2] Paul C. Easton, Cowen Group: It's a Hot Job Market for E-discovery Project...

Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending Saturday, July 31, 2010. Steven Levy posted part 7 in his series on how to build a budget before you know the work involved on his Lexician blog. In this post he discussed two common strategies you should avoid: (1) guessing and (2) over promising, under delivering. In another post he discusses the importance of vision to project success.Beth Flynn of the Ohio State University Leadership Center discussed the effects of "energizers" and "sappers" on a team in guest post to David Bilinsky's Thoughtful Legal Management blog. Michael Hyatt discusses...

If there is some all-knowing, all-seeing deity out there entering my every step into the Book of Life, I wish said deity would give me access to its pages now and then to assist with my time entry duties. The money I spent, time I labored, and pain I endured in testing, configuring, and managing time-tracking systems should have earned me such a boon. Tracking time is a necessary evil for Legal Project Managers, especially if they are practicing attorneys. Even if you do not bill by the hour, it is still important to track your time to understand how long tasks...

In an article posted to its Career Central Web site, the Project Management Institute lists the legal sector as one of the hottest job sectors for project managers right now.[1] TextThe short blurb points out that while project managers looking for work may not have considered the legal industry, there is "increasing demand for their skills as players in the legal field adopt project management methodologies to more efficiently deliver services and control risk." It goes on to quote Adam Seskis, Senior Vice President of Epiq Systems, who discusses how effective project management can "win cases and trim costs."The article includes...

On August 17th, the Organization of Litigation Support Professionals will host a presentation on "common sense project management," presented by Jane Gennarelli, a principal of Magellan's Law Corporation.Title: "Common Sense Project Management" Format/Location: Teleconference. Cost: Free for OLP members. 79 USD per telephone line for non-members.  Organizations: The Organization of Legal ProfessionalsInstructors: Jane Gennarelli, a principal of Magellan's Magellan's Law CorporationDate: Tuesday, August 17, 2010, 7:30 to 9:30 A.M. United States 10:00 a.m. Pacific; 12:00 Central; 1:00 EasternDescription/Agenda: [T]his webinar...will discuss the typical reasons that litigation projects get "broken" -- why there are cost overruns, why deadlines are missed, and why quality expectations aren't met -- and [will] outline...