LPG Says Project Management Crucial to Performance-based Pay

The Law Firm Group (LFG) at Citi Private Bank^[1] cites project management skills as important for successful fixed-fee billing and performance pay systems. In a recent article pubished in The American Lawyer,^[2] Dan DiPietro,^[3] advisory head of LFG discusses how client demands for lower legal bills and fixed-fee billing is forcing firms to move away from lockstep, seniority-based pay and advancement systems and towards performance-based systems.

 

One of the four key elements of a successful attorney-performance program, according to the article, is the adoption of "a more sophisticated approach to work allocation that takes into account client goals and fee arrangements, as well as lawyer availability, rate, skill set, and career path."^[4] To take advantage of this new, more flexible law-firm staffing model, the article notes that "utilizing professionals who understand project management will be important. The managing partner of a top-half Am Law 100 firm that has more than seven years' experience with fixed-fee billing recently told the LFG that project management resources have helped the firm improve its bottom line."^[5]

 

This further supports my observation that project management will be adopted lockstep with fixed-fee billing.[6] The article reminds us that hourly billing is part of an ailing ecosystem. As two-tier, seniority-based, pay systems go the way of the dodo, more flexible and complex systems will evolve in their place. Project management savvy is critical to a firm's ability to thrive in this new environment.

 

Does your firm have project management in its DNA or is it doomed to suffer the curse of all lumbering dinosaurs unable to adapt to change--extinction?

[1] Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group Web site, https://www.privatebank.citibank.com/our_services/law_firms.htm

[2] Dan PiPietro, Lisa Keyes, Laura Saklad, The Shifting Associate Paradigm, The American Lawyer, Nov. 17, 2009, http://www.law.com/jsp/tal/PubArticleTAL.jsp?id=1202435524399&The_Shifting_Associate_Paradigm&slreturn=1&hbxlogin=1 (last visited Nov. 18, 2009)

[3] Harvard Law School, Executive Education, Faculty, http://www.law.harvard.edu/execed/faculty.html

[4] PiPietro, supra, note 2.

[5] Id.

[6] Paul C. Easton, Legal Project Management is Key to Fixed-fee Billing, Legal Project Management, Aug. 31, 2009, http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2009/08/legal-project-management-is-key-to-fixed-fee-billing.html (last visited Nov. 18, 2009).