Legal Project Management: Thoughts, tips, and discoveries related to the management of legal projects.

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Law Firm PM Watch: Duane Morris on How LPM is Key to AFA

By Paul C. Easton on April 22, 2010 10:00 PM | 2 Comments | 1 TrackBack
"Having more lawyers who are better at managing projects to a budget is the only way [alternative fee] arrangements will gain traction." In the second of an occasional series in on how law firms are implementing process/project management techniques, Gina Passarella of The Legal Intelligencer speaks to Daniel J. Sheeran, chief financial officer Duane Morris LLP about how the firm uses project management to take advantage of the increasing popularity of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs).[1] I've written before about the importance of project management to AFAs [2] and I've discussed Duane Morris's use of litsupport-specific project management applications.[3] This article...

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Project Management the Panacea for Troubled Law Firms?

By Paul C. Easton on April 10, 2010 7:45 PM | 1 Comment | 1 TrackBack
According to Jordan Furlong in a recent post to his Law21 blog, project management is the closest thing there is to a panacea "[f]or a profession suffering from aggravated clients, shrinking revenues, competitive inertia, archaic business practices and system waste."[1]  "If it could cure cancer and direct an Oscar-winning movie, it could hardly be a more attractive proposition," he gushes. Rarely has someone made me feel less geeky for running this blog. Ah, but then comes the kick in the teeth: "[Y]et, with few ... exceptions, there's not much enthusiasm for [project management] among lawyers and law firms--there's an odd reluctance to...

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A Book, An Old Article, and Plenty of Blawgs: January Kicks 2010 Off to Good Start for Legal Project Management

By Paul C. Easton on January 31, 2010 5:47 AM | 2 Comments | 1 TrackBack
A lot can happen in two weeks. Due to a number of positive and negative work-related and personal challenges, I've not posted for a couple weeks. In 2009, that wouldn't have been an issue. There just was not a great deal of news and analysis of legal project management on a month-to-month basis. If January is any indication, however, 2010 looks to be a much more exciting year for those interested in the subject. I was put back into a writing mood this past Friday as I started reading Stephen Levy's book, Legal Project Management, on the high speed rail...

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Ark Conference on Alternative Fee Arrangements Puts Legal Project Management on the Agenda

By Paul C. Easton on January 17, 2010 6:59 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
On March 10, 2010, the Ark Group is hosting a conference on alternative fee arrangements (AFA) at the AMA Executive Center in New York, New York. On the agenda is a one-hour "problem-solving session" titled "Project Management and AFA's: Achieving Cost-certainty for the Firm, Enabling Cost-certainty for the Firm's Clients." The session's co-presenters are Steven B. Levy (company profile / LinkedIn), Principal at Lexician and a prolific writer and speaker on the topic of legal project management, and Patrick J. Lamb (company profile / LinkedIn), a Partner at Valorem Law Group.The details of the conference are as follows:Alternative Fee Arrangements--From...

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The Importance of Project Management to Attorney Job Satisfaction

By Paul C. Easton on December 2, 2009 11:47 AM | 1 Comment | No TrackBacks
Jeremy, a mid-level associate at a large New York law firm (Firm A), thought he had a bad cold. One night while toiling on a brief due in a week, his condition worsened. "I couldn't breathe, and I thought I was going to pass out." He called the partner, notorious for working her teams hard even in the absence of deadlines, and told her he was seriously ill, and that he thought it best to leave. She told him to "tough it out," and stay to finish the brief. Jeremy stayed all night and left the office the next morning....

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LPG Says Project Management Crucial to Performance-based Pay

By Paul C. Easton on November 18, 2009 7:57 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
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...

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Eversheds Cites Project Management as Key to Winning Tyco Business

By Paul C. Easton on November 9, 2009 2:21 AM | 1 Comment | 1 TrackBack
In a recent press release announcing a two-year contract with Tyco, Eversheds cites Project Management as central to the success of this relationship.[1] The firm's focus on metrics and project management is driven, I would argue, by the fixed-fee arrangement it has with Tyco. As I've recently discussed, adoption of legal project management will be driven by the move towards alternative billing arrangements.[2]Here is the section of the press release that pertains to legal project management: With an emphasis on transparency, control and metrics, in the past two years, the contract has achieved by way of example, a 27% reduction...

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When Data Collides with Legal Decisions

By Paul C. Easton on November 7, 2009 4:12 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Seth Godin recently posted on a topic that any legal project manager shouting like a madman in the wilderness can take to heart: even when good data exists, it may be ignored by decision makers.[1] It takes more than data to overcome habit, prejudice, and hunches.  Data is much easier to come by in the Internet age. It may not feel that way when we consider legal work, but as Steve Barret points out in a recent post to the Legal Business Development blog, there is a lot of data that firms capture about legal work (especially time data) that...

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Firms Must Base Fixed Fees on Sound Data, Not Guesstimates

By Paul C. Easton on November 6, 2009 9:54 AM | No Comments | 1 TrackBack
As I have noted in prior posts, project management standards are likely to be adopted by law firms lockstep with fixed-fees billing. In a recent guest post to Jim Hassett's Legal Business Development blog, Steve Barrett, former CMO at Drinker Biddle, discusses "three prerequisites to success in implementing alterative fees," which require a level of project management maturity that most firms have yet to achieve. These are: systems to "screen and approve all off-hourly deals and monitor them as they progress";tools to "rigorously [analyze] the financial outcomes of their past alternative fee client matters, either separately or taken as a whole"; andthe discipline of tracking cost histories...

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Legal Project Management is Key to Fixed-fee Billing

By Paul C. Easton on August 31, 2009 10:14 AM | 2 Comments | 4 TrackBacks
Working in Taiwan as an American attorney provides an interesting perspective on the practice of law in the United States. I'm always amused by the debate over "alternative billing" that flares up from time to time in the States. In Taiwan, fixed-fee billing is the norm, not an alternative lifestyle. Taiwanese legal consumers expect fixed-fee billing and are, generally, uncomfortable with hourly billing. This has required that I give increased focus to building models based on past time and expense records to improve the accuracy of my estimates.Project Management standards and methodologies provide powerful, well tested tools for planning, tracking,...

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