Legal Project Management tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2009-04-23://1 2010-03-09T08:47:53Z Thoughts, tips, and discoveries related to the management of legal projects. Movable Type Commercial 4.25 Call For Volunteers: The Project Management Institute's Legal Project Management Community of Practice tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.122 2010-03-09T08:04:44Z 2010-03-09T08:47:53Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston

I've been working with the Project Management Institute on establishing a new "Community of Practice" and recently was informed that the project has received the green light. What excites me about this is that this Community, dedicated to the management of legal projects, will have the backing of PMI, one of the largest professional organizations in the world, and certainly the largest project management organization. 

The PMI LPM CoP will involve PMI members, people who by their membership in PMI have shown a commitment to professional project management. By gathering together PMI members with experience or an interest in the managing of legal projects, we'll enhance the body of LPM knowledge, create high-quality process assets to share with members, and develop high-quality, in-depth, PDU-eligible (and perhaps CLE-eligible), on-line training programs on PM topics of interest to lawyers and legal support professionals. 

We already have a great group of people who have pledged their support and offered their time to this endeavor, but we need more. Below, I've pasted PMI's official "Call for Volunteers." The Call has not yet been posted to the PMI Web site, but I have permission to post it here. For now, if you are interested, please e-mail your contact information, PMI member ID, and a bit about yourself to me at:

pmi-lpm-cop@legalprojectmanagement.info

I'll update this post with a link to an on-line application form, once it is live on the PMI site. 

Please note that you must be a member of PMI to participate in this new community. For more information about PMI, see: http://www.pmi.org/Membership/Pages/default.aspx 

Other requirements are detailed in the "Call for Volunteers," immediately below. 


Call for Volunteers for Legal Project Management Community of Practice Council Leadership Team 

Summary

PMI is seeking volunteers to lead the formation, implementation and success of a brand new virtual community dedicated to promoting the adoption of project management methods, standards and tools within the legal services industry. Each volunteer will have a specific role as identified below and collectively serve on the Legal Project Management Community of Practice (CoP) Steering Committee. The steering committee is responsible for navigating through the requirements to complete the CoP formation process. This committee shall be made up of a group of people who share a concern, or a passion about a topic, and who want to deepen the understanding and knowledge of this area by creating opportunities for interaction on an ongoing basis.

As the community develops and the steering committee evolves from managing formation activities to facilitating the creation of a knowledge networking structure, the role and composition of the steering committee will shift from a stewardship group to the Community Council. When the community has completed the formation process, the amount of time a member can serve on the Community Council is limited to term lengths (measured in years).

The purpose of the Legal Project Management CoP is to provide critical knowledge generation and sharing in this working space for the entire PMI Community to develop a full understanding of project management principles and techniques, and the benefits to be gained from their use within the legal services industry. 

The focus of the Legal Project Management Community of Practice is to create and increase awareness of this community, provide education, exchange knowledge, offer tools and techniques, and enable collaboration "on how to increase the probability and impact of positive events, and decrease the probability and impact of negative events in the project," according to A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide).  

Steering Committee Specific Responsibilities

  • Lead the community through the formation process by participating in meetings, conference calls, leading volunteers, and encouraging participation to complete a CoP specific business plan.
  • Communicate regularly and collaborate closely with PMI staff and volunteer advisors to complete the formation process.
  • Recruit members and subject matter experts to address and fulfill the needs of the community.
 

Community Council Specific Roles

  • Community Manager (leads the Community Council in the formation and implementation of the virtual community)
  • Community Involvement Lead (oversees and monitors the Virtual Community Council selection process)
  • Knowledge Management Lead  (establishes knowledge strategy, leads knowledge content team, and engages SME's)
  • Service Delivery Lead (leads service delivery team in setting activities and milestones to deliver value to stakeholders)
  • Marketing Coordinator (establishes communication processes and procedures and leads others on marketing team)
 

    Duties include:

  • Perform desktop research and analysis in the practice of project management within the legal services industry in order to build a CoP business plan
    • Includes creation of a knowledge content plan on pertinent legal services industry and PM related topics
    • Includes identification of activities and deliverables, and development of resource plan and budget to support their delivery
  • Work with PMI on Marketing and Communications planning and implementation including engaging members in online collaboration (discussion groups, blogs, etc.) and capturing important insights in order to expand the conversation, aiming to share and bring forth knowledge to members
  • Create & moderate CoP events such as webinars

Deliverable(s)

    Deliverables may include but are not limited to the following:

  • Preparation of the business plan for the virtual community
  • Building out content to prepare for launch of the virtual community to the PMI public
  • Ongoing management of the virtual community
  • Analyses, white papers, articles for publications, tools, presentations, webinars, interviews
  • Share project management techniques and approaches, providing ideas, best practices, and actionable advice.
  • Contribution in Blogs, Discussions, Wikis, new or re-prioritization of tactical/strategic initiatives
  • Webinar coordination, volunteer management, measuring performance, ensuring quality is delivered through evaluations
 

Lead Support

Additional volunteers may support the council leads focusing on the day-to-day efforts of the virtual community. The need for these volunteers would be identified in the community business plan, and also on an ad hoc basis to enable flexibility within the community to contribute to the attainment of the organizational goals and objectives. These volunteers will be accountable to the assigned lead. They are appointed by the Council, and not member selected. They may interface directly with the members of the community.  

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

SMEs are individuals that have become recognized through their in-depth knowledge and experience in their chosen field, industry, or area of interest for which the community is focused.

SMEs can participate individually, or they can participate as group. Individual SMEs generate thought leadership and serve as the knowledge creators within a community's domain or practice.  

An SME group can review the submissions for quality and other publishing standards prior to their entry into the PMI knowledge portal. In addition, an SME will contribute credible, relevant knowledge to the community, author articles based on the specific focus of the community, act as a speaker on topics directly related to the community focus, and serve as an active and knowledgeable participant in discussions. 
 

Culture of Assignment

  • As the CoP is virtual community, this role is for a PMI member which can be performed from any location so long as the individual has access to the internet and virtual communication tools
  • This is a community leadership role that is responsible for virtual community operations, including development and sharing of knowledge content
  • The steering team/council consists of multiple members of a team of globally diverse volunteers

Alignment to PMI Strategy

  • Supports the superior practice of project management by bringing forth thought leadership, knowledge and tools

Volunteer Start and End Dates

  • April 2010 until December 31, 2010, and throughout 2011 if desired
  • Initial volunteers in these leadership roles will be asked to serve for a one year term with potential renewal for a second year to ensure the virtual community is launched and functioning effectively and efficiently.  Additional terms of service will be considered as the community evolves.
 

Estimated Time Commitment 

  • The initial time commitment may range from 5--7 hours per week in order to build and launch the virtual community, which is targeted for March 2010. Post-launch, the time commitment may be reduced in order to accommodate the ongoing management of the virtual community.
  • Expect 2 - 5 hrs per week depending on assignment.
  • Potential  2 - 3 days for Seminar/Presentation type assignments (1x per year, travel expenses paid)
  • Expect to attend 3-4 toll free conference calls per month for approximately 1-2 hours each to accommodate formal discussions as well as collaborative, working type sessions.
 

PMI Requirements 

  • As this is a leadership role, volunteers may not be serving in another concurrent PMI volunteer leadership role.
  • The volunteers serving on the Community Council are required to sign PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality Agreements.
  • Members who are determined to have a conflict of interest and/or pending litigation and ethics complaints are not eligible to apply for a Virtual Community Council position.
  • Members can reside and/or work in any part of the world but must be able to fulfill their leadership role by communicating in English.
 

Volunteer Requirements 

Volunteers serving on the Legal Project Management CoP Steering/Council are expected to be knowledgeable about the practice of project management within the legal services industry.

  • Must be PMI members in good standing.
  • Have good project, program and/or portfolio management capability.
  • Abide by the laws, rules and regulations that govern the conduct of our business and to report any suspected violations in accordance with responsibilities provided in the "PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, Terms of Use and Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality."
  • Understand PMI's organizational structure, including the PMI Strategic Plan and the community's purpose within those strategic objectives
  • Understand and commit to PMI's objectives and goals around increasing member value and knowledge delivery
  • Become familiar with PMI's annual program plan and budget cycle
  • Understand PMI's brand platform and how the community supports those objectives
  • Possess experience in leading teams in a virtual environment demonstrating results and progress toward community goals
  • Posses knowledge and understanding of basic nonprofit fiduciary responsibilities, which are PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, Terms of Use, and, Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality
  • Create a positive environment for progress through respect of individuals, credibility, and empathy
  • Recognize and practice diversity awareness within PMI's global community of practitioners
  • Empower others
  • Possess group facilitation skills
  • Be able to stimulate and motivate others to share their ideas and thoughts to engage others
  • Be familiar and support PMI's policies and the Virtual Community Guidelines.
  • No travel is required although opportunities to travel on behalf of the community may exist in regard to leadership development.

Optional:  

  1. If not selected for the Legal Project Management Steering and Community Council, or you want a lead support role, please indicate on your application if you want to be considered for a Subject Matter Expert/Thought Leader role within the community.
]]> A Book, An Old Article, and Plenty of Blawgs: January Kicks 2010 Off to Good Start for Legal Project Management tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.121 2010-01-30T21:47:27Z 2010-01-30T23:03:08Z 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... Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston 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 from Taipei to Taichung.[1] I'd given up waiting for the Amazon Kindle version and broke down and laid out the cash for international shipping for the hard copy. Both the wait and the extra cost were well worth it. The HSR from Taipei to Taichung is only an hour trip, but in that hour I marked up the first few chapters with points that excited me and statements that I may want to challenge. Steven's book will generate enough material to keep me posting for months.

Serendipitously, I also recently stumbled across an article on Legal Project Management published way back in May, 2005, by Roger Quick (currently a Partner at DLA Phillips Fox) in the International Lawyers Network's Bullet"iln" newsletter.[2] I hope to write a short review of his article in the next week or so.

That is if I can keep on top of all the material generated in the blawgosphere. I do not intend to cover every post on every blog in depth, but I thought I'd share some of the past two week's LPM highlights.

Have I missed anything in the past couple weeks? Let me know in the comments.

 

[1] Steven Levy, Legal Project Management: Control Costs, Meet Schedules, Manage Risks, and Maintain Sanity (2009).

[2] Roger Quick & Philip Reed, Legal Project Management, Bullet"iln" (International Lawyers Network), May. 27, 2005, http://www.imakenews.com/iln/e_article000394800.cfm?x=b11,0,w (last visited Jan. 31, 2010).

[3] Jim Hasset, Project Management and Alternative Fees (Part 3 of 3), Legal Business Development, Jan. 20, 2010, http://adverselling.typepad.com/how_law_firms_sell/2010/01/project-management-and-alternative-fees-part-3-of-3.html (Jan. 31, 2010).

[4] Carla Landry, Is It Possible to Turn Lawyers Into Project Managers?...Or Will They Crash and Burn?, Hildebrandt, Jan. 20, 2009, http://www.hildebrandt.com/blog/archive/2010/01/20/is-it-possible-to-turn-lawyers-into-project-managers-or-will-they-crash-and-burn.aspx (last visited Jan. 31, 2009); Greg Lambert, Law Firm Project Managers - Lawyer or Non-Lawyer?, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, Jan. 21, 2009, http://www.geeklawblog.com/search/label/project%20management (last visited Jan. 31, 2009); Richard Stout, The Spotlight Shines on Project Management, Lawdable, Jan. 21, 2010, http://www.lawdable.com/2010/01/articles/litigation-support/the-spotlight-shines-on-project-management/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Lawdable+(Lawdable) (last visited on Jan. 31, 2010).

[5] E.g., Paul C. Easton, The Lawyerification of Litigation Support: Is a Legal Education a Benefit or Just Baggage for an E-discovery Project Manager?, Legal Project Management, Sep. 25, 2009, http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2009/09/the-lawyerification-of-litigation-support-is-a-legal-education-a-benefit-or-just-baggage-for-an-e-di.html#ixzz0e8Va3mcz (last visited Jan. 31, 2009).

[6] Joshua P. Kubicki, Legal Project Management as your GPS (a Basic Overview), Legal Transformation: The Changing Legal Profession, Jan. 25, 2010, http://joshuakubicki.blogspot.com/2010/01/legal-project-management-as-your-gps.html (last visited Jan. 31, 2010).

[7] Rees Morrison, Checklists, practical tools with enormous (under-used) benefit for lawyers, Law Department Management, Jan. 26, 2009, http://www.lawdepartmentmanagementblog.com/law_department_management/2010/01/checklists-practical-tools-with-enormous-under-used-benefit-for-lawyers.html (last visited Jan. 31, 2009)..

[8] Erika Santiago, Explaining E-Discovery To Your Friends & Family, Electronic Discovery Project Manager, Jan. 27, 2009, http://ediscoverypm.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/explaining-e-discovery-to-your-friends-family/ (last visited Jan. 31, 2010).

[9] Mr. Posse, An interview with Scott Gillard and Michael So of e.law Asia Pacific; the spike in e-discovery work in Asia, The Posse List, Jan. 28, 2010, http://www.theposselist.com/2010/01/28/an-interview-with-scott-gillard-and-michael-so-of-e-law-asia-pacific-the-spike-in-e-discovery-work-in-asia/ (last visited Jan. 31, 2010).

[10] Mazy Hedayat, Mashable! Tom's Planner (Web-Based Project Management), The Illinois Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog, Jan. 29, 2010, http://illinoisbankruptcylawyerblog.com/2010/01/29/mashable-toms-planner-web-based-project-management/ (last visited Jan. 31, 2010); Mazy Hedayat, Mashable! Tom's Planner (Web-Based Project Management), Practice Hacker, Jan. 29, 2010, http://www.practicehacker.com/2010/01/29/mashable-toms-planner-web-based-project-management/ (last visited Jan. 31, 2010)

[11] Mr. Posse, An interview with Ron Friedmann of Integreon; the legal paradigm shift, predictive coding, document categorization, and more, The Posse List, Jan. 29, 2010, http://www.theposselist.com/2010/01/29/an-interview-with-ron-friedmann-of-integreon-the-legal-paradigm-shift-predictive-coding-document-categorization-and-more/ (last visited Jan. 31, 2010).


]]> Legal Project Management Blog Featured in the First Episode of the Not The Status Report Podcast tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.120 2010-01-17T12:17:47Z 2010-01-17T13:15:46Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston Cornelius Fichtner (@corneliusficht) featured the Legal Project Management blog in the inaugural episode of his new podcast. Mr. Fichtner is already well-known in project-management circles for his PM PodCast. His new podcast is entitled Not The Status Report (NTSR).  Each week, Mr. Fichtner and Josh Nankivel (who also authors the PM Student blog) "report on and recommend one project management related tool, gadget, website, methodology, blog, game, software, product, or service." 

In NTSR's first episode, Cornelius recommends this blog and highlights my post on project management in legal staffing companies. I appreciate the positive review of this blog and am looking forward to learning about other PM resources that these two dig up in future episodes. Cornelius does complain, however, that I tweet too much ("sometimes as many as 10 tweets in a day"). Ouch. Then again, 10 a day hardly makes me a prolific tweeter. What do you, my fine readers think? How many tweets are too many tweets for one day?

Oh, before I sign off, if you don't have time to catch up on the NTSR podcasts, you can view a hyperlinked list of all prior recommendations:

(Josh and Cornelius, if you guys read this, please consider combining your recommendations on a single page, perhaps using separate columns.)
]]> Ark Conference on Alternative Fee Arrangements Puts Legal Project Management on the Agenda tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.119 2010-01-16T22:59:00Z 2010-01-16T23:44:34Z 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... Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston 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 Theory to Practice
Date: March 10, 2010
Location: AMA Executive Center
Registration Fees:
  • For law firms: 895 USD
  • For corporate counsel: 295 USD
  • 15% early-bird discount for registrations received before February 15th.
Program and On-line registration: 
http://usa.ark-group.com/mp_introduction.asp?ac=834&nc=1&fc=167

If you are not already fans of Mr. Levy's and Mr. Lamb's blawgs, Lexblog and In Search of Perfect Client Service, respectively, then you must not have read them and should add them to your feed-reader forthwith. Also, check out Mr. Levy's new book: Legal Project Management: Control Costs, Meet Schedules, Manage Risks, and Maintain Sanity.




]]> Don't Wait Around to See if your S.P.O.C. Died tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.115 2010-01-13T13:23:00Z 2010-01-13T17:45:35Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston
  Dilbert.com


For both lawyers and project managers, and especially for legal project managers, communication is the single most important skill for success. Communication, however, is more than articulation. The truly great legal project managers I've worked with can not only explain highly technical information to non-experts and create a professional and positive atmosphere in meetings, they also excel at capturing and following up on information. 

There are so many great, affordable applications that can help you with this. I've recently discussed share point and share point alternatives, and I haphazardly maintain a list of project and practice management applications on this site. For ad hoc information capture, I'm a fan of Evernote (can't imagine living without it, actually). With all this technology there is no excuse for not contemporaneously capturing information communicated to you and being able to quickly reference and follow up on it. But in my experience, I've not seen a great improvement in communication from the days when a moleskin notebook was the coolest information-capture technology available. 

This is because good note-keeping and follow-up is a habit. New technology may allow better backup, access from multiple locations, and swift retrieval, but it doesn't really make it any easier for people with poor communication habits to capture information. If you are not in the habit of taking notes, its doesn't matter if you have an iPhone with Evernote on it. Unused, it is no better then the back of an envelope.

Same with follow-up. A cloud-based calendar synced with all your computers and mobile devices is no better than a Day Planner or Hipster PDA if you are not in the habit of checking it. E-mail and text message alerts don't count as "checking," they are at best an extra reminder for when you are focused on something else and, at their worst, an alarm for a new fire you'll have to put out because you haven't been looking ahead.

In my experience, the best communicators have the best communication habits not the best communication tools. They capture important information communicated to them, put it in a system where it can be easily retrieved when it is needed, and they regularly work their calendars and contact lists to not only follow-up on promises, but to excavate new opportunities for proactive communication. Legal project managers could learn a lot from successful sales people about this.  If a salesperson is a reactive communicator, the calls will eventually stop coming in and sales opportunities will dry up. 

The great legal project managers don't wait to be contacted, they take the initiative and poke their contacts now and then to make sure they're still alive.

]]> SharePoint "Killers" tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.112 2010-01-10T14:00:00Z 2010-01-13T17:24:02Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston In a recent post, I showed how SharePoint is a powerful tool for legal and litigation support teams to manage their legal projects.[1] I began using SharePoint five years ago, which is a lifetime in social-media development. In this post I look at a number of applications that may become SharePoint Killers. 

I exaggerate. I say "SharePoint Killer" in the same way folks throw around the term "iPhone killer." These are viable alternatives to the SharePoint platform, giving much of the same functionality, and they will keep/take some marketshare away from SharePoint in the legal environment, but they'll no more kill SharePoint in law firms and corporate legal departments than Android phones will kill iPhones. 

Google Apps

http://www.google.com/apps/

Google Apps seeks to provide a complete alternative to the Microsoft ecosystem. Gmail and Google Calendar replace Exchange and Google offers on-line word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications. The "SharePoint killer" in the apps mix is Google Sites. Google Apps, especially with a premium subscription, is a great suite of products. I love Gmail with Postini and I prefer Google Calendar over Outlook (the only thing I miss from Outlook is being able to specify a timezone when creating events).  Google Docs/Spreadsheets/Presentations are nowhere near a Microsoft Office replacement, but offer superior collaborative editing features.

As for Google Sites, I like it. Google Sites are even easier to set-up than SharePoint sites and the ability to add widgets to your site makes it very extensible. The lack of tight integration with Microsoft Office is an issue if you are a heavy user of Microsoft Office documents (which includes nearly all law firms and corporate legal departments). My main complaint with Google Sites is how poor the integration with other Google Apps is. The fact that you cannot include a Google Doc in a Google Site file cabinet and edit that file by clicking on a link from that file cabinet is just dumb.  I find that opening documents from SharePoint is a bit slow, but at least you can open from and save to a SharePoint document list directly from any Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 application.

Zoho Suite

http://www.zoho.com/

Zoho offers a very impressive range of applications. It seeks to provide small businesses with "cloud" versions of the most commonly used business applications.  The products I've tested are well-designed, but I was disappointed at how poorly they were integrated. For example, you can't create a central contacts database to draw from within all applications, meaning that you have to import from and manually update contacts in multiple applications in the same suite.

 

Practice/Case Management Applications

While practice and case management applications have limited project-management features, they are probably still the best place to manage most traditional legal work. Especially for smaller, less complex matters that do not have large numbers of people working on them. Most firms still use perpetual-license software that they install and manage on their own internal networks. A few of the more popular applications include Lexis Nexis Time Matters, Thomson Reuter's Prolaw, Gavel & Gown Software's Amicus Attorny, and Software Technology Inc's PracticeMaster.

These are powerful applications to be sure. I used to use Time Matters and was a fan. But these tools tend to be slow to adapt to new collaborative technologies and they integrate poorly with mobile devices. The future, I believe, rests with the new SaaS practice/case management solutions, such as Rocket Matter and Clio. These sites do not have robust project-management capabilities and are currently not as feature-rich as locally-installed practice management applications, but they'll work just fine for managing your calendars, client information, time entry, and billing, without overlooking features important to lawyers, such as managing trust accounts. 

The SaaS practice-management solutions I've looked at excel at ease of use and they leverage collaborative technologies such as status feeds and discussions in a way that makes more established practice-management applications look dowdy. Also, like many other cloud-based applications, they seem to offer much better mobile applications for smartphones that will keep you in sync, over the air, when you are on the road.


Project Management Tools Specifically for Litigation Support


Why reinvent the wheel? The following SaaS providers offer feature-rich legal hold and litigation-support project-management applications that you can tie up with your data archive, HR management, and other enterprise systems. Note that these are mainly aimed at managing e-discovery projects. They are not really SharePoint replacements, but offer much more functionality for managing e-discovery projects than most legal departments could build themselves using SharePoint.


Professional Project Management Tools

The following are two full-featured, professional, project-management tools. They are really more competitors to Microsoft's Project Server than they are a replacement for SharePoint. They are not specifically configured for legal or litigation-support work, but they offer the most sophisticated set of project-management tools and might be appropriate for certain litigation-support or legal-project-management-office users. 

Genius Project

http://www.geniusinside.com/

Originally designed as a project-management application for Lotus Notes users, they now offer a Web-bases SaaS version. Disclaimer: Genius Inside is a paid sponsor of this blog.

Serena

http://www.serena.com/

Serena offers a number of project management SaaS offerings, both for traditional project management and for Agile project management. Serena also offers OpenProj for your desktop for free. OpenProj is an open source MS Project replacement.


General Project Management/Collaboration Tools

Personally, these always fall short of my needs, but some lawyers use them. For general team collaboration, I think they can be very useful, but they lack sophisticated project management features and are not tailored for legal use. 

Zoho Projects

http://projects.zoho.com/home.na

I like the direction Zoho is taking their project-management application, but currently it's  features are too basic and its integration with other Zoho and Microsoft products is lacking. Even its touted integration with Google Apps was disappointing when I tested it recently.

Basecamp

http://basecamphq.com/

I first learned of Basecamp in the Technolawyer Community, the publishers use (or at least used to use) it to manage their work and have recommended it. I don't, however, know of any legal or litigation support teams who use Basecamp for legal projects.

Project Open is an open source software system that fully integrates project management with enterprise resource planning (ERP). You can host it on your own servers for free. Project Open also offers an SaaS solution as do a number of third-parties. While it does not have the prettiest interface nor the most sophisticated project management features, it does an impressive job at providing contact management, project management, knowledge management, time-sheet management, invoicing, and human-resource management all in one well-integrated system. 

Unlike most other ERP systems that focus on manufacturers and retailers, Project Open was built for the service industries and therefore is fairly easy to adapt to litigation support and even legal work. The finance and timesheet modules, however, will likely not meet the needs of most lawyers and it would take a lot of effort to customize the tool to specific practice areas. Most lawyers would be better of with practice-management solutions. 

One concern is that although the developers seem active, regularly releasing updates and patches and participating in the lively discussion boards on SourceForge.com, I've spoken with some users and hosting companies that are concerned about the company's long-term viability. Some hosting providers are hedging their bets with other open-source ERP systems such as OpenBravo, which is unfortunate, because I have not seen an open-source ERP system as well-tailored to the service and consulting industries as Project Open.


Conclusion

The above is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive list of team-collaboration and project-management applications for lawyers and legal-support staff. Rather it was mean to point out that SharePoint is not the only game in town and give a glimpse at what other players are offering.

 

[1] Paul C. Easton, SharePoint for Legal Project Management--A Retrospective, Legal Project Management, Jan. 7, 2010, available at http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2010/01/sharepoint-for-legal-project-management--a-retrospective.html (last visited on Jan. 7, 2010).

]]> Social Networking & Project Management (and the blahness of LinkedIn Polling) tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.118 2010-01-10T07:57:49Z 2010-01-10T08:32:32Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston Jason Wade, Sales Manager at iFramework, has posted a simple poll to LinkedIn that asks:

Social Networking & Project Management - is it possible? How often do you check social networking sites using a smart phone?

I'll be more interested in any discussion about this at the poll itself or in the Legal Project Management group on LinkedIn than the results itself.  

I find the whole LinkedIn polling feature to be a bit half-baked at this time. If you want to seek input from beyond your first-degree connections, you have to pay per response (US $0.75 + $1.00 for "seniority," i.e., management), with a minimum payment of $50.00.  Your poll can only consist of a single question with up to five answer choices. 

While your poll will be given a URL for sharing it, you can't easily embed it in other sites, such as your company Web site or blog. If LinkedIn polls receive greater participation from target audiences and if more questions and more sophisticated polling features become available, I can see LinkedIn polls being worth the cost. At this time, however, I'm not seeing the value.

Disagree? Let me know in the comments. 
]]> Virtualizing SharePoint at Fenwick & West tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.117 2010-01-09T13:32:47Z 2010-01-09T14:08:42Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston This is off topic, but given my recent posts about SharePoint for legal project management,[1] I found Mark Gerow's recently article in Law Technology News about virtualizing SharePoint for law firm deployments to be quite timely.[2] Mr. Gerow heads the application development team at Fenwick & West.

Mr. Gerow does not discuss how or why Fenwick & West uses SharePoint. He instead focuses on the benefits of virtualizing SharePoint extranets and the challenges faced and overcome when migrating from physical to virtual servers. The article is refreshingly detailed and should be of interest to law firm IT managers currently running SharePoint on physical servers. 


[1] Paul C. Easton, SharePoint for Legal Project Management--A Retrospective, Legal Project Management, Jan. 7, 2010, http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2010/01/sharepoint-for-legal-project-management--a-retrospective.html (last visited on Jan. 9, 2010); Paul C. Easton, Caselawg: Bringing SharePoint to Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management, January 7, 2010http://legalprojectmanagement.info/2010/01/caselawg-bringing-sharepoint-to-legal-project-management.html (last visited January 9, 2010).

[2] Mark Gerow, Virtualizing SharePoint, Law Technology News, Jan. 08, 2010, http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202437644142&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=LTN&pt=Law%20Technology%20News&cn=20100108&kw=Virtualizing%20SharePoint (last visited on Jan. 9 2010).

]]> Caselawg: Bringing SharePoint to Legal Project Management tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.110 2010-01-07T14:00:00Z 2010-01-06T21:17:59Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston SharePoint is a powerful yet easy to use team collaboration platform. It is very useful to e-discovery project managers,[1]  but it does have a number of out-of-the-box limitations that more demanding users will quickly butt their heads against in frustration. Such users may want to consider Caselawg by Legal Science. Caselawg is a "software and process methodology [for] electronic discovery departments."[2]

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with the Caselawg team who led me through a demonstration of their product. They agreed to answer some question by e-mail that I could share with readers of this blog. 


Tell me a bit about the history of Legal Science? What was the genesis of the idea for your CaseLawg product?

Caselawg was first conceived and designed in 1993 for an employment law firm in New Jersey as a case management application. The genesis of the idea was to use database technology to permit attorneys and staff members to better document case details. Early on, we focused on best practices for tracking and sharing attorney knowledge gleaned from attorney notes (meetings, interviews, file reviews, phone calls etc.)

Later, we integrated our knowledge management experience (notes tracking) with project management theories to create a comprehensive project management solution. Today, Caselawg is a proven process improvement / project management solution ideally suited for the challenges and opportunities presented by electronic discovery. We continue to be significantly motivated to help lawyers define or otherwise document the value they provide (ROI for clients).

What is the primary use of CaseLawg, what are its "killer features"?

Today, the primary use of Caselawg is the tracking, reporting, and management of electronic evidence discovery. Broadly speaking, our killer feature is an integrated process improvement methodology that permits users to measure, among many items, internal versus external costs. Caselawg permits departments to identify and measure effective utilization of resources including staff, vendors, software, and methods. For example, is it cost-effective to process one gigabyte of data in-house? How about 10 gigabytes, 100 gigabytes? In sum, our killer features are: 

  1. proven litigation support methodology for handling electronic evidence;
  2. built in quality control and assurances; 
  3. seamless integration with Outlook, MS Excel and MS Access; 
  4. our menu driven, end-user customization driving continual process improvement.

Is CaseLawg targeted primarily at law firms or corporate legal departments?

Presently Caselawg is primarily used by law firms although we have had notable success with legal departments and providers of electronic discovery.

How many law firms / corporations are currently using Caselawg? Can you list some of your referenceable clients?

There are dozens of law firms, corporate in-house departments using Caselawg. References can be provided upon request.

Who in a law firm are the primary end users of Caselawg?

The primary end users are litigation/practice support members. Recent installs have included lawyers and paralegals as primary contributors.

Why don't traditional project management applications, such as Microsoft Project, and traditional case-management applications, such as TimeMatters and Prolaw, meet the project-management needs of litigation support?

There are two overarching lessons we've learned that support our success. First, a project management solution for the legal market must be flexible. Not all matters need to be documented with the same specificity. Second, technology is not as important as the process. Caselawg integrates our proven methodology with the needs of an individual group ordepartment.

With Caselawg, unlike other options, you have an electronic discovery project management application and methodology that is:

  1. flexible enough to permit the litigation support professional to document his or her project as necessary and

  2. structured enough to measure and track results.

Why did you develop your tool on SharePoint? What advantages does SharePoint provide?

Developing Caselawg on SharePoint has been a tremendous benefit. First, SharePoint is a great platform for providing continual process improvement. Because much of SharePoint is end-user driven, we permit legal support professionals (who are many times very technical) to continually improve Caselawg. This flexibility permits the user to learn from each project and integrate new experiences back into the process. Second, we do not have to recreate or otherwise develop the integration with all that is Microsoft, such as Outlook, Excel, and Access.

In summary, with SharePoint you have:

  1. sate-of-the-art collaboration functionality;

  2. lots of plumbing out of the box such as user interface framework, Windows Services, SQL Databases, Persistence Layers, CRUD UI screens, Security, Workflow engines, File Upload, Deployment Framework etc.; all this is there at your disposal with a few lines of code or clicks in the User Interface, which saves a significant amount of time up front;

  3. unlimited growth using .NET Framework;

  4. a platform that is becoming more and more common across IT infrastructure; 

  5. a platform that allows you to build solutions and not have to focus on things such as: scalability, disaster recovery, performance, interface design frameworks, security and deployment;

  6. a platform that is evolving--Microsoft continues to enhance significant features with version upgrades; and

  7. a very robust platform--with dozens of installs over three years we have had zero support calls.

Is a certain level of project management maturity necessary for firms to get the most out of your product?

No, we have seen success from both ends of the spectrum. The most predictive factor is the degree to which an internal member takes ownership of the implementation.

Do you provide project management consulting and training services so that clients can get the most out of your tool?

Absolutely, as lawyers and litigation support professionals, much of our team enjoys the coaching and evangelizing as much as they enjoy software development. The opportunity to improve the legal operations of some of the most prestigious firms and companies in the country is very rewarding.

What is the biggest barrier to the implementation of project management systems that you encounter in law firms and legal departments?

The largest barrier to a successful or pain-free implementation is trying to do too much too quickly. Our best results are generally found when we incrementally improve a department's process.

What would your ideal customer look like? Who would most benefit from your product?

While we have seen good results from a broad spectrum, a pattern we continue to see are new or relatively new department managers looking to make a strong early impression. Our proven and flexible framework permits any number of objectives to be identified and met, which fits nicely with a new management position.

Who might your product not be ideal for?

Caselawg is very flexible and best used in an environment where all stakeholders are given the broadest opportunity to contribute and to define value for the client. We have had less success in legal environments where a single project manager is looking to micro-manage one or more individuals using a task monitoring tool. We believe placing too much emphasis on task monitoring misses critical opportunities to gain insightful input at all levels. Moreover, Caselawg significantly encourages early adoption because it gives all contributors the opportunity to shine or to look good. In other words, our approach quickly permits users to see that this tool is a benefit to them, not a requirement of them.

Who should readers of this blog contact if they are interested in more information on CaseLawg?

Please contact Harrison Flakker at hflakker@caselawg.com or 866-641-8188.


[1] Paul C. Easton, SharePoint for Legal Project Management--A Retrospective, Legal Project Management, Jan. 7, 2010, available at http://www.url.com/ (last visited on Jan. 7, 2010).

[2] From the Caselawg home page at http://www.caselawg.com/ (last visited Jan. 7, 2010).

]]> Project Management an Important Legal Recruitment Trend tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.116 2010-01-06T22:35:18Z 2010-01-06T23:22:27Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston An article by Anne Jennings, a managing director with Kelly Law Registry, in last week's Connecticut Law Tribune looks at "trends expected to shape legal recruitment throughout 2010."[1] 

In addition to discussing the merits of onshoring services and document review staging capabilities, Ms. Jennings discusses the growing importance of project management capabilities as a competiive advantage for legal staffing agencies:
 
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.


[1] Anne Jennings, Recruiters Move Toward Project Management, Connecticut Law Tribune, Jan. 4, 2010, available at http://www.ctlawtribune.com/getarticle.aspx?ID=35945 (last visited on Jan. 7, 2010).

[2] Id.

]]> Dennis Lamb Predicts that "Project Management" are the Watchwords for 2010 tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.113 2010-01-06T22:06:23Z 2010-01-06T22:12:28Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston Patrick Lamb predicts on his In Search of Perfect Client Service blawg that "[t]he watchwords for 2010 are project management."[1] 


[1] Patrick J. Lamb, Watchwords for 2010? Project Management, In Search of Perfect Client Service, Jan. 5, 2010, http://www.patrickjlamb.com/archives/commentary-watchwords-for-2010-project-management.html (last visited on Jan. 7, 2010).

]]> SharePoint for Legal Project Management--A Retrospective tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.111 2010-01-06T16:59:29Z 2010-01-06T17:31:05Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston
SharePoint has received a lot of buzz in legal and litigation-support communities over the past few years and with good reason. SharePoint provides a decent set of collaboration and knowledge management tools that are easy to implement and simple for end-users to learn. 

I began using SharePoint around five years ago when an IT consultant who was setting up a server for one of my projects asked if I wanted him to set-up SharePoint, a version of which came free with the Windows Server licenses. I had been reading about SharePoint and was interested in checking it out, so I said "sure, go ahead." As soon as it was up and running I became engrossed in learning how to set up and manage team sites and was soon using it to help manage all of my document-review projects. 

The graphical user interface is simple, both for administrators and end-users and requires almost no training. In a way SharePoint is too easy to use. It can quickly grow out of control if you don't have good processes and information-management policies in place. But that is a topic for another post. 

To help you understand the power of SharePoint, I thought I would share what I was able to start doing with it within a week of it having it set-up. 

  • I was able to set-up multiple project-specific calendars and contact lists, which I could link to Outlook and view together side-by-side or, starting with Outlook 2007, overlain. At the time, I was using a Palm Treo (Treo 300 --> Treo 600 --> Treo 680) and was able to synchronize and manage multiple calendars and contact lists on the palms with Chapura's KeySuite. 

  • Before SharePoint, document review manuals were always printed and bound in three-ring binders, organized by section tabs. Every time there was a change in instructions from the client you had to swap pages like a law librarian updating form books.  With SharePoint, for those projects where my team was involved in preparing and distributing the review manuals or where the client was amendable to my converting their MS Word documents, I created on-line review manuals using SharePoint's Wiki-type features. Updates are easier, quicker, and less expensive to make with SharePoint than with paper. 

  • I created on-line datasheets (basically spreadsheets with on-line-optimized views and limited formulas) to manage a great deal of my project information, including:
    • review assignment status and reviewer metrics,
    • paper and electronic-data collection and processing status,
    • rented equipment and furniture,
    • supplies and expenses.

  • The data sheets deserve another bullet point. One of the banes of my pre-sharepoint existence was the sending back and forth of spreadsheets between collection teams in the field and the Project Management staff at the review centers.  Often this information had to be fed one way or another into MS Access databases. Just ensuring that you had the latest version could be a headache. With SharePoint you can have data entered in a central datasheet, on-line. Everyone works from the same datasheet. Some field-team members would still need to use spreadsheets, since they were often collecting from areas with no Internet access and still needed to track what they were doing, but when they got back to the war room at the client site, or their hotel room, they could just synchronize the spreadsheets with the datasheet. Trying to pull together data from multiple datasheets on SharePoint to work on it in one view or to run reports was done in MS Access, which could easily connect to multiple datasheets.

  • I set up checklists with basic workflows built in (e.g., when you click this done, then you get this task and an e-mail is sent to your team leader)

  • I created project-specific announcement lists 

  • I set-up project-specific discussion lists to capture and better promulgate client answers to reviewer questions. Participants could access these discussion lists via a Web-browser or MS Outlook.

  • I created on-line polls to elicit review-team feed back and, after the project, client feedback.

  • RSS feeds could be enabled for all of the above so that changes could be monitored in MS Outlook or a dedicated RSS feed-aggregation application (e.g., Google Reader).

  • E-mail alerts can be set up for nearly any part of a team site, which is popular for mobile managers who are not logged into the team site all day and want to notified of updates on their mobile devices.

  • With the click of a checkbox, I could provide mobile-phone-friendly versions (WAP pages) for just about any page. There was no need to code a second version of the page optimized for mobile devices. 

  • Security in SharePoint is very granular. You can decide who has access to which areas and features. While administering security is pretty easy in SharePoint, Your IT staff or an outside consultant should be involved in ensuring the security of any SharePoint implementation. This is one area where you do need to take time to understand how SharePoint works, including Active Directory, SharePoint user groups, and security inheritance defaults. Also, you'll need to involve your network administrator if you need to limit access so that users can visit only from certain IP addresses. 

All of the above-described functionality was created on a single platform. What was revolutionary for me, however, was how quickly I could set all this up. Using templates it became almost trivial to create a team site for a new project. None of the functionality listed above required looking at any code.  Even the Wiki-type functionality in SharePoint doesn't require you to learn any special mark-up code. All text editing is done with text-formatting toolbars that are immediately recognizable to anyone familiar with word-processing software. 

Initially, SharePoint was only used by me and the team leaders and administrative assistants working with me. Slowly, however, other project managers began to use SharePoint to manage their projects. SharePoint deployments are aided by the fact that you can adopt the bits you want step-by-step. You don't have to find a way to make an on-line version of your spreadsheets and MS Access databases right away. Start with those aspects of the project that most benefits from collaboration and requires little time to set up. 

Client's were slower to jump onto the SharePoint bandwagon. I was surprised, actually a bit shocked, that most clients wouldn't use the team sites. While there were some Gen Y associates at a few firms who "got it" and used the team sites heavily to monitor the work of, and collaborate with, the contract attorneys, most preferred reports by e-mail and teleconference and couldn't be bothered to visit the Web site. Now, they're the clients, so they are, of course, right. I'd provide updates by passenger pigeon if the client is willing to pay for the experts, coop set-up. and poop clean up. Still, it did take me some time to get over my evangelism and frustration at the lack of converts. 

This taught me a valuable lesson. As useful as a tool is to you, don't make assumptions about your client's needs. In the case of SharePoint, the issue is that most attorneys want the information "pushed" to them and they want that information in as few chunks as possible. For most clients this means content-rich, but easy to read, periodic reports e-mailed to them, which they can view on their smartphones. This is one thing that SharePoint won't give you out of the box. 

Generating and delivering context-rich reports highlights why I think SharePoint is not going to put project/case/practice management application developers out of job anytime soon. SharePoint is like a gateway drug for collaboration and knowledge management. After you start using it, you want it to do more. You start craving the harder stuff. Even things that "should" be simple, such as creating a look-up field to pull data from another team site are surprisingly difficult. You can do it, but to make it work requires coding knowledge and a greater time commitment, or the purchase of Web parts or add-on software applications. When you get to this this stage, you should start looking into bringing in an outside consultant.

Recently, I talked to the guys at Legal Science and conducted an interview by e-mail about their Caselawg product. Caselawg is a project-management application for litigation support departments built on the SharePoint platform. I hope to post my questions and their answers later this week.  In the meantime, I suggest you check out their Web site to learn more: http://www.caselawg.com/
 
Of course, over the past five years, the number of on-line SaaS offerings for project management, knowledge management, and team collaboration has increased and SharePoint faces some serious competition.  I'll highlight alternatives to SharePoint in my next post.


]]> Legal (E-discovery Mostly) Project Management Software Lists tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2010://1.104 2010-01-04T03:41:00Z 2010-01-04T19:30:28Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston

UPDATE (1 JAN 2010): I create a separate Web page from this blog post to maintain an updated list of Legal Project Management applications, see:

http://legalprojectmanagement.info/legal-project-management-applications.html


For some time now, Mark Kerzner has provided weekly summaries of information shared on the LitSupport Yahoo Group discussion board at his "Legal Technology" blog. Last month he launched "LitSupport Q & A" that provides this information in a question and answer format as a free service to the litigation support community. One of the first answers published is a list of "EDD Project Tracking Dashboard software."

The list is not meant to be complete as it merely records responses to a question posted to the LitSupport discussion board. There is no way for visitors to post comments or edit the entries and update answers with further information.

Some other sites for listings of project/matter management applications:


If there are other sources that I should have included, let me know in the comments.


]]> Bierce & Kenerson's E-discovery RESOURCE Model tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2009://1.102 2009-12-31T06:00:31Z 2009-12-31T20:31:30Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston Bierce & Kenerson, P.C. share their version of the electronic-discovery process in a recent post to the firm's Outsourcing-Law.com blog,[1] which they refer to as the "Electronic Discovery Resource Model, not to be confused with the Electronic Discovery Reference Model ("EDRM"). Bierce & Kenerson's diagram provides another way of looking at the e-discovery process and may be more user friendly for some lawyers. 

[1] Bierce & Kenerson, P.C., E-Discovery and Legal Process Outsourcing: ESIM Process Design and Choices between Outsourcing vs. Insourcing, Periodical Name, Dec. 21, 2009, available at http://www.outsourcing-law.com/2009/12/e-discovery-and-legal-process-outsourcing-esim-process-design-and-choices-between-outsourcing-vs-insourcing/ (last visited on Dec. 31, 2009).(Note, the title when I originally visited the post was E-Discovery and Legal Process Outsourcing: EDRM Process Design and Choices between Outsourcing vs. Insourcing but some changes were made to the post, including the title.)

]]> Law Librarians Adding Project Management to their Survival Kits tag:legalprojectmanagement.info,2009://1.101 2009-12-29T19:12:28Z 2009-12-29T19:52:41Z Paul C. Easton http://www.linkedin.com/in/pauleaston Carol Watson, Associate Director for Information Technology at the University of Georgia School of Law, refers to project management as a "survival skill" in a recent article published on LLRX.com, a popular Web journal dedicated to the legal research community.[1] Ms. Watson's article provides a high-level overview of standard project management, focusing on defining the project scope, developing a work breakdown structure and communication plan, and closing out the project with a "debriefing" (i.e. a lessons-learned exercise).

I was a bit disappointed that the article doesn't provide examples of law-library projects. Ms. Watson states that "[m]any of the techniques librarians intuitively use are clearly articulated as a formal structure with specific guidelines and regularized vocabulary,"[2] but doesn't share any illustrations of this. Doing so would have given her audience a clearer sense of how the project-management processes she discusses apply to their legal library projects.


[1] Carol A. Watson, Project Management - A Law Librarian Survival Skill, LLRX.COM, Dec. 22, 2009, http://www.llrx.com/features/projectmanagement.htm (last visited on Dec. 30, 2009).

[2] Id.

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