As the legal community increasingly accepts the importance of legal project management, providers of continuing legal education courses fill the void left by law schools and training programs,which typically do not cover this topic. For lawyers looking to learn more about legal project management and meet their state's CLE requirements at the same time, I've compiled a short list of CLE courses focused on legal project management.
I'll post additional course as I come across them. Please post of any you know of in the comments.
The In-house Attorney As Project Manager
Format: audio, podcast
Organization: Association of Corporate Counsel
Host: West LegalEdcenter
Date: 21 October 2009
Description:
Given today's economic challenges, in-house counsel are forced to do more with less and have to watch the company's bottom line, by approaching transactions, compliance matters and other legal projects with a practical and focused mind-set, befitting that of a project manager. Key project management skills can be adapted by in-house counsel to enhance efficiencies and improve results including team work, defining project goals and objectives, specifying tasks, identifying resource needs, developing budgets and timelines, and implementing controls to stay within a project's critical path. This session will discuss project management fundamentals and in-house counsel will explain how they have applied project management skills to their work. Practical tips and user-friendly techniques that attendees can immediately apply will be supplied.
Credits: 1.25 hours
Accreditation:
podcast: AK, AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, ME, MO, NC, ND, NH, NV, NY, OK, PA, UT, VI, VT, WVon-demand: AK, AZ, CA, CO, FL, GA, IL, IN, ME, MO, MS, NC, ND, NH, NV, NY, PA, UT, VI, VT, WI, WV
eDiscovery Project Management Principles and Processes
Format: audio, podcast
Organization: KPMG
Host: Law.com CLE Center
Date: 21 October 2009
Description:
- The primary challenge of PM is achieving all the project objectives while adhering to project constraints
- First hand experiences with PM tools and techniques
- More predictable and manageable E-discovery undertaking
Credits: 1
Accreditation: AK, AZ, CA, IL, ME, MO, ND, NY, PA
ESI International's State-bar-approved MCLE Courses
ESI International is better known for its project management training than its continuing legal education courses. Their courses will provide more in-depth and standards-based project management training. They are also one of the only organizations I know of that have courses on specific aspects of professional project management, such as earned value management, which are eligible for MCLE credit. They have over 51 courses currently accredited by the Pennsylvania and Virginia State Bars. I'm not going to list them all here and many deal with contracting, negotiation, and other cross-over areas. Some more "pure" project management course offered include:
- Applied Earned Value Management Systems,
- Cost Estimating,
- Earned Value Management Fundamentals,
- Project Management for Contracting Professionals,
- Source Selection: The Best-Value Process
Note that the earned value courses are accredited in Pennsylvania, but not Virginia. To see the list of courses visit:
If you are not licensed in Pennsylvania or Virgina, be sure to check with your state bar before writing their courses off. You state bar may have provisions for self-applying to have a courses credits applied to your state's requirements. For more information on which courses meet the requirement of your state, view: http://www.esi-intl.com/public/classroomtraining/academiccredits.asp#cle
If you don't need the CLE but are interested in learning more about e-discovery project management and tools or services that support it, you may want to check out the free Webinars offered by Fios and Exterro. See my posts on these Webinars for more information:
Fios Webinar Promotes Project Management in E-discovery
Fios Presents a Webinar on Litigation Project Management
Exterro to Discuss E-discovery Project Management for Law Firms
Exterro Shows How to Apply Project Management to the EDRM
As e-discovery and other litigation tasks move more and more in-house, it's becoming even more important for legal practitioners to have a broad knowledge base in not only the law, but also in technology, and in the business of managing people, processes, and projects.
You're right about law schools coming up short in this arena -- today's graduates are underprepared to face a market where they are asked to not only master the art of litigation, but also the science of legal project management.
I think that project management has the potential to be one of the most transformative developments in the legal space, with the potential to revolutionize, or at least update, that gold standard of legal process management, the Electronic Discovery Reference Model.
Great post, Paul!
Hi,
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