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

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Jerry Kowalski on the Importance of Recruiting and Building LPM Talent

By Paul C. Easton on August 28, 2010 3:42 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
The increasing importance of project-management skills to legal and legal-support careers is a common theme on this blog.[1] I was happy, therefore, to see this observation corroborated in Jerry Kowalski's new report for Managing Partner magazine, Navigating the Perfect Storm: Recruiting, Training and Retaining Lawyers.[2] The report, which serves as a law-firm-HR guide for the "Great Recession," includes project-management among the competencies law firms must acquire in the new economy. Jerry Kowalski is the principle and founder of Kowalski & Associates, a law-firm-management consultancy. Mr. Kowalski was gracious enough to share his thoughts on the lessons learned from the global recession,...

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Cowen Group Survey: Legal Project Management Has Increased in Importance

By Paul C. Easton on August 6, 2010 3:59 PM | No Comments | 1 TrackBack
According to the recently released results of the Cowen Group's Critical Trends Survey for the second quarter of 2010, 65% of corporate respondents and 69% of law-firm respondents say that legal project management has increased in importance.[1] Over 53 corporations and 117 "major law firms" participated in the survey. Hopefully this translates into the LPM job growth predicted by earlier Cowen Group surveys,[2] the Project Management Institute,[3] and The Posse List.[4]  [1] Cowen Group, 2010 Q2 Critical Trends Snapshop, http://www.cowengroup.com/researchcenter/quarterly/2010-Q2.php (last visited August 6, 2010). [2] Paul C. Easton, Cowen Group: It's a Hot Job Market for E-discovery Project...

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The Chasm Between IT and Legal Widens

By Paul C. Easton on June 20, 2010 9:00 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
According to a survey conducted by RecommindRecommind, an e-discovery-tool vendor, the disconnect between IT and legal is getting worse:  While legal and IT have been historically disparate, the exponential increase in content creation and the rising complexities and risks of eDiscovery and regulatory scrutiny have inexorably linked the needs and responsibilities of each department.... Recommind's survey reveals that communication between legal and IT has become decidedly worse in 2010.[1] It seems years of hand-wringing on this issue is doing little to move these two camps closer together. But, as I've discussed before, the growing trend of legal-project management provides our best...

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Indiana University Maurer School of Law Offers Project Management Course

By Paul C. Easton on May 14, 2010 1:13 AM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
Legal education has been getting a bad rap recently for failing to properly prepare students in today's environment where clients are less willing to foot the bill for training lawyers how to practice law. In addition to practical legal skills, there have been calls to better prepare law students with business skills, including project-management skills.[1]Therefore, I was happy to come across a proposal for a Project Management for Lawyers course to be taught for the first time at Indiana University this fall by Professors William Henderson and Carole Silver at the University of Indiana Maurer School of Law.[2] The course will focus "on teamwork and project...

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PMP = Promotion, More Pay?

By Paul C. Easton on May 6, 2010 9:44 PM | 2 Comments | 1 TrackBack
While folks have strong opinions about the worth of PMP certificates to employers,[1] it seems they bring value to the employees who hold them. According to the 2010 Global Knowledge/TechRepublic IT Skills and Salary Survey, salaries for PMP and other business-improvement and project-management certifications increased from 2009.[2] One interesting finding is that employers are increasingly looking for people possessing a good mix of business and process improvement skills. If you already have a PMP, the addition of Six Sigma credentials make you particularly marketable. Linda Leung, reporting on the survey for Global Knowledge, writes:  The average salary of this year's survey respondents who...

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Magic for Muggles: Embedding Analytical Power Into Everyday (Legal) Work

By Paul C. Easton on April 21, 2010 10:25 AM | 4 Comments | No TrackBacks
Smart Planet published an interview[1] with Jeanne Harris this past Monday discussing her new book, Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results, [2] which she co-authored with Tom Davenport. The book follows their Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning.[3] Analytics at Work is intended for a broader audience than Competing on Analytics and should be palatable to lawyers who want to improve their analytical capability.In the interview, Ms Harris expresses her skepticism about the value of real-time data and discusses the importance of bringing the power of information technology to bear on business decisions. About the current push for real-time data, Ms Harris says:  [T]he emphasis on...

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Law Firm PM Watch: Seyfarth Shaw--Six Minutes on Six Sigma

By Paul C. Easton on April 18, 2010 10:00 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
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...

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Cowen Group: It's a Hot Job Market for E-discovery Project Management

By Paul C. Easton on April 16, 2010 4:27 AM | No Comments | 3 TrackBacks
It look's like one of The Posse List's predictions for 2010 is proving is coming true: e-discovery project management is becoming a serious career choice. According a survey by The Cowen Group, a litigation-support staffing agency, the e-discovery job market is heating up.[1] E-discovery project managers are in particular demand:  The Project Manager will gain greater prominence in the industry due to the increasing size of datasets and heightened concern around controlling cost, limiting risks, and guaranteeing outcomes.Managers of legal technology departments from 160 organizations (78 law firms, 47 corporate legal departments, and 35 vendors) responded to The Cowen Group's survey....

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Project Management Experience Can Help You Get Into Law School

By Paul C. Easton on April 15, 2010 8:14 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks
I've been going over the recently leaked and just recently released U.S. News & World Report Law School Rankings and enjoying the annual brouhaha over their validity and the negative effect they supposedly have on U.S. legal education. It was the last place I expected to find something related to legal project management, but then I came across this interesting tidbit in an article on how to get into Northwestern University: [W]e almost exclusively try to enroll students who have some post-undergraduate full-time work experience --ideally at least two to three years of it.... There are many reasons that we like to see prior...

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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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