Recently in Law Firms Who Get It Category

Legal Project Management is the cover story of the summer issue of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association's quarterly publication CCCA Magazine.[1] In this feature, Michael Rappaport shares legal project management insights gleaned from lawyers from a number of Canadian and U.S. corporations and law firms, as well as a number of legal project management experts, some of whom have been discussed on this blog in the past:Brian Armstrong, Exec. V.P. and General Counsel of Bruce PowerMarc-André Blanchard, Chair and CEO of McCarthy Tétrault LLP [2]Darryl Cruz, Partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLPMichael Fekete, Partner, Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLPSteven Levy, Principal of Lexician [3]Joachin...

In a post to this blog last month, I highlighted McCarthy Tétrault's home-baked project management system.[1] I concluded that post questioning why the firm didn't highlight its project management savvy on its Web site, which I saw as a lost marketing opportunity. While I doubt that my post had anything to do with it, I note that the firm's Web site now has a page showcasing its LPM expertise.[2] On this page, the firm explains its project management approach: The basic premise behind our approach is that to give our clients what they're asking for, we must manage their mandates...

In part 8 of his series on legal project management on his Legal Business Development blog, Jim Hassett reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun and highlights McDermott Will & Emery's Deal Dashboard as evidence that legal project management has been taking place under the radar well before it became a buzzword in the last year or so.[1] McDermott describes the Deal Dashboard in a brochure available from the firm's Web site: McDermott is using basic project management tools to reengineer the way it does deals to streamline the M&A process, reducing inefficiencies and costs. We have implemented the Deal Dashboard,...

"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...

Not sure how this one slipped past me. At the beginning of this month, American Lawyer posted a six-minute interview with J. Stephen Poor, Managing Partner of Seyfarth Shaw on how Six Sigma is working out for the firm.[1] There's not much we haven't heard before about Seyfarth Lean in this video, but one interesting nugget is that Seyfarth Shaw is rolling out a client feedback mechanism modeled off of the ACC Value Challenge that is tied to Seyfarth Lean, which will go out to all the firm's clients. Bill Henderson provides more detailed notes on the video on a post to his Legal Profession...

Jim Middlemiss reports in the National Post [1] that the law firm of McCarthy Tétrault has launching its own home-baked project management system. 18-months in development, the system is intended to help the firm's lawyers "with planning and estimating legal projects."The Microsoft Excel-based system builds "on information in the firm's knowledge-management centre, which includes precedents and checklists lawyers use when carrying out legal tasks" and consists of two parts: One allows lawyers to create a customized work-plan template. Lawyers use that to agree with clients on how they will proceed on a matter.... The second is a staffing tool, a database of the...

Another sign that Legal Project Management is coming of age (or at least coming out of the wilderness): Dechert LLP is has begun a firmwide initiative to train every partner and associate in legal project management (LPM), eschewing specific process-improvement methodologies such as Six Sigma in favor of teaching the "concepts of project management and the tools to implement [them]." Gina Passarella writes about Dechert's LPM initiative in a recent article published in The Legal Intelligencer. It is the first in a series by that publication "examining how individual firms implement project/process management techniques to make lawyers more efficient."[1].Dechert has retained Pamela H....

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...

Owners of successful businesses are generally adept at controlling costs, managing risk, verifying quality, and increasing proficiency. When it comes to their legal matters, however, that is not always the case. The main reason law firms have been slow to adopt project management and process efficiency best practices, I believe, is that clients haven't demanded it. This is changing, especially with the recession causing companies to cinch their belts even tighter and looking for new areas to squeeze out inefficiency. Smart business owners are not only pressuring outside counsel to lower bills and offer alternative billing options, they are also...

Seyfarth Shaw is featured in the cover story of the current issue of iSixSigma Magazine.  Lisa Damon, Managing Partner; Andrew Perlstein, Partner; and Carla Goldstein, Director of Strategic Management, discuss the firm's Seyfarth Lean program.[1]  Seyfarth Lean is the firm's adoption of Six Sigma methodologies to the practice of law.This is the most detailed explanation of Sayfarth Lean that I've seen to date and is well worth a read for any firm considering Six Sigma. I took away two tips for successfully implementing Six Sigma in a law firm: adopting a less statistics-heavy training for attorneys, and making sure that implementation is a top-down, firm-wide initiativeFor the...