Lary Port, a founding partner of Rocket Matter, a practice management SaaS solution,
recently spoke about legal project management at
MILO Fest [1], a "a conference for Mac-Lovin' Lawyers and their families."
[2] His talk was entitled "Running an Efficient and Error-Free Law Firm" and its goal was "to delve into the world of project management, applying techniques long known in manufacturing and software industries such as Agile Software Development to the practice of law."
[3] He has posted the presentation's slides to
SlideShare[4].
The slides do not have much text, which is an indication that Mr. Port is a good presenter, but which also means that only a limited amount of the presentation's content is available. That said, I was able to scrounge up some interesting tid bits, enough to make me hope Mr. Port will re-present his talk as a Web cast in the near future.
I found it interesting that in one slide,
[5] where he breaks down a "typical" work week for lawyer, that it adds up to only 50 hours. Nice to know Mr. Port has a sense of humor. In the very next slide, he highlights the claim that by changing one hour of non-billable, administrative work per week to billable time, a lawyer can increase annual revenue by 12,500 USD.
[6] He doesn't state his hourly rate assumptions in the slide, but I'm assuming he is using a rate of 250 USD per hour with two weeks off per year. (Vacation? He
does have a sense of humor.) Change that to two hours a week and you get 25,000 USD more in annual revenue.
[7] The slides then suggest that one way to minimize non-billable administrative work is to minimize errors and that project management can help you minimize errors.[8]
However he defines a project, Mr. Port talks about how Agile project management can be applied to legal work.
[12]
I've noticed a growing interest in the Agile methodology among lawyers. Proponents argue that it is better suited to legal work than traditional project management as represented by the standards promoted by the Project Management Institute. I've covered these arguments in the past.[13] My knowledge of Agile project management remains cursory and I would like to have more content from Mr. Port's speech. There is not much that can be gleaned from the slides about Agile legal project management, making me wish Mr. Port posted a transcript of his talk along with the slides.
The remainder of the presentation focuses mostly on applying the principles of Agile and GTD to the practice of law with
RocketMatter, a Web-based practice management application. I've been meaning to sign up for a demo RocketMatter account since reading about it in a
TechnoLawyer Community newsletter some time back, but haven't gotten around to it. So I appreciate the screen shots in the presentation. It is also good to know that RocketMatter is developed by someone who values project management and promotes GTD.
Mr. Port's presentation slides have certainly piqued my interest. Since I'm half the planet away from any location where he'll likely present, I might have to reach out to him and beg for an interview.
[1] Lary Port, Address at MILOFest 2009 (Nov. 6, 2009)(slideshow available on Slide Share at http://www.slideshare.net/rocketmatter/running-an-efficient-and-error-free-law-firm (last visited Nov. 13, 2009)[hereinafter Port Presentation; see also Larry Port, Software as a Service Has a Big Presence at MILOFest 2009, Rocket Matter Blog, http://www.rocketmatter.com/blog/software-as-a-service-has-a-big-presence-at-milofest-2009 (last visited Nov. 13, 2009)[hereinafter Port Blog].
[2] Milofest.com, What is MILOfest?, http://www.milofest.com/what-is-milofest (last visited Nov. 13, 2009).
[3] Port Blog, supra note 1.
[4] Port Presentation, supra note 1.
[5] Id. at slide 3.
[6] Id. at slide 4.
[7] Id. at slide 5.
[8] Id. at slides 6-7.
[9] Paul C. Easton, Defining "Legal Project Management", Legal Project Management, http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2009/04/what-is-legal-project-management.html (last visited Nov. 13, 2009).
[10] Port Presentation, supra note 1, at slides 19-25. See also David Allen & Co., http://www.davidco.com/
[11] David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity 37 (2001).
[12] Port Presentation, supra note 1, at slides 9-15.
[13] Paul C. Easton, Defining "Dialexia Throws Down the Gauntlet: Agile versus the EDRM and PMI PMBOK", Legal Project Management, http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2009/09/dialexia-throws-down-the-gauntlet-agile-versus-the-edrm-and-pmi-pmbok.html (last visited Nov. 13, 2009); Paul C. Easton, Another Agile Project Management Blawg, Legal Project Management, http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2009/09/another-agile-project-management-blawg.html (last visited Nov. 13, 2009).
Hi Paul:
I'm very appreciative that you took an interest in my talk. It's a little different, so I'm glad to see it resonate with you.
The slides follow the Presentation Zen philosophy and really only are there to support my words. I would be happy to do a webinar for those of you not able to attend in person.
FYI, you were dead-on with the math:
Slide 3 is based on an hourly rate of $250/hr. This is data compiled from the Florida Bar’s 2006 Economic Survey.
Slides 4 and 5 are hypothetical exercises to show the annual increase in revenue if you can recoup 1, then 2 billable hours per week. Calculation is based on 50 weeks per year.
You’ll notice, if you do a little math, at a rate of $250, that each minute you save a day equals approximately $1000 annually (good rule of thumb to think about).
LP
I think investing in good project management is worthwhile and lets people and businesses make big savings in the long term. It also increases customer satisfaction when nothing goes wrong with their service/product.