Project Management an Important Legal Recruitment Trend

There is a growing need for project management services across corporate legal departments and law firms nationwide.... For those firms without a paralegal manager or similar employee to take on large document review projects, specialized recruiting agencies offer experienced legal project managers to accommodate.

 Just as a paralegal manager might easily serve as project manager on large discovery and document review projects, a dedicated project manager with solid legal acumen can step in to undertake those same last-minute, short-term assignments. While a contracted project manager typically bills at a lower rate, this approach also keeps paralegal managers focused on core tasks that no one else could readily step in to complete.

Another trend in project-based legal recruitment involves trial consulting and presentation services. Law firms and corporate legal departments have benefited for years from the strategic advantage of contracted document review project teams. Now savvy recruitment firms can place experienced trial consultants that provide comprehensive support for litigation, as well.

Services range from pre-trial preparation, trial presentation and courtroom set-up, to creation of demonstrative graphics and war room configuration. Trial consultants utilize trial presentation software and other leading technologies to present the most persuasive, visually telling case possible before a judge and jury. ^[2]

I think Ms. Jennings's second point, about the trend towards recruiting agencies involving trial consulting and presentations services, is especially on the mark. 2009 has seen a number of large e-discovery service providers (some of which, such as Kroll Ontrack/Trial Graphix), have trial presentation subsidiaries as well) acquire or team up with legal staffing agencies. This will continue into 2010 and we'll see the maturing of end-to-end e-discovery services. 

I disagree, however, with Ms. Jennings's characterization of "onshoring for legal document review and discovery" as a new trend for 2010. Long before Kelly was fully in the doc-review game, legal staffing agencies such as Compliance Staffing (now part of the Vedior Group of Companies) were staffing and staging document reviews and maintaining fully-equipped review facilities. What is new is that the legal hiring freeze has led to large numbers of unemployed attorneys in lower-cost locations, making "farm-sourcing" and setting up permanent review facilities in secondary and tertiary cities in the Midwest and the South more practical than it was even a few years ago, when it was difficult to build and maintain a deep pool of contract attorneys in such locations.  

My prediction is that farm-sourcing and off-shoring will go hand-in-hand in 2010. The big e-discovery companies are not only teaming up with domestic staffing agencies, but also offshore legal service providers. Strategic partnership that allow clients to choose from a range of sourcing options and blended on-and-off-shore services will come out on top.