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WHY LPM IS HERE TO STAY AND THE LAW FIRM MANAGER’S ROLE IN ITS EVOLUTION

Adopting Legal Project Management

BY PAMELA WOLDOW AND DOUGLAS RICHARDSON

The legal project management (LPM) wave continues to wash across the face of the legal profession, gathering momentum and flowing outward from first-adopter AmLaw 100 firms to large first-follower firms and now, increasingly, to smaller firms across the country. LPM clearly has emerged from its infancy and established itself as a trend, rather than a fad, one that seems likely to transform both the form and substance of law firm-client relationships. This viral vogue is the result of law’s “new normal” – dramatic changes in legal service delivery that place an unprecedented premium on improving the efficiency, predictability and cost management of legal services.

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WHY THIS? WHY NOW?The genesis of the LPM trend has been thoroughly documented, by us and many others. In short, economic imperatives have accelerated clients’ use of techniques to predict, reduce and control the largest component of their budget: outside legal spend. The use of convergence programs, RFPs, value-based billing and various forms of alternative fee arrangements is increasing exponentially, and has begun trickling down from the domain of big firms serving big clients to smaller firms feeling increased client pressures for cost-effectiveness and predictability. Regardless of size, firms promising these results now must deliver on those promises, which is a thorny challenge because traditionally firms have not much concerned themselves with measuring the costs of providing service and therefore lack internal metrics on which to build budgets and plan profitability. Enter legal project management.

WHAT IS LPM?Stripped to its essence, LPM is a logical sequence of activities in which a law firm and its clients first agree on objectives and the scope and value of service. The firm – collaboratively with the client – then prepares an action plan and budget, develops critical work paths and performance metrics, tries to anticipate and limit unpleasant surprises, carefully monitors progress (especially actual to budget) and then translates lessons learned into even greater future efficiencies. LPM is scalable to the task; that is, depending on the project being managed, LPM can look deceptively simple or fiendishly complex. There are various LPM approaches and methodologies, some adapted from such industrial project management systems as Six Sigma, Lean or Kaizen, some decidedly law-specific. In our quest to demystify

LPM for greater lawyer acceptance, we break LPM activity into five cascading steps:

1. Collaborating with the client to set project Objectives and Scope.

2. Building the Project Plan (which includes identifying phases and tasks, the project team and stakeholders, building the budget, creating a communications plan, and analyzing risks)

3. Executing the Plan as a framework for legal work

4. Monitoring progress, and 5. Post Project Review with both the project

team and client.

However undertaken, LPM implementation requires coordinated effort within a law firm to introduce and position the initiative, build buzz and buy-in, train various performers in hands-on LPM skills, develop supporting tools and systems, coordinate LPM with the firm’s knowledge management function and both institutionalize and fine-tune LPM over time. Today, most firms are, so to speak, in LPM adolescence, while many are just taking initial baby steps. The face of LPM will look very different two years from now.

GETTING STARTEDLegal administrators typically play a key role in guiding tactical approaches for rolling out and then socializing LPM. If the firm’s goal is to establish a strong business development lever, rapid deployment, and PR blast, many firms find that a “horizontal approach,” that is, broad scale immersion into LPM basics that crosses practice lines and disciplines, works best. This approach is often carried out in an intensive flurry of 101-level workshops at the partner level. Several years ago, for example, Dechert gained extraordinary market

LPM will never be a one-and-done deal; it has to remain a

continuing firm priority, one that will demand continuous

improvement as LPM best practices evolve and LPM becomes the

accepted way of doing business throughout the legal profession.

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leverage through this approach, sparking a rash of catch-up efforts by other large firms. More recently, McGuireWoods used this approach to unify its many offices and practices following rapid growth through a series of acquisitions and lateral hires. If, on the other hand, the need for LPM is growing out of particular practice area or specific clients, the legal administrator may want to recommend the “vertical” approach, which builds on developing training and implementation efforts keyed to the actual people who will be teamed on projects. The vertical approach has the treble benefit of: a) Allowing a firm to pilot LPM efforts rather than

diving in firm wideb) Focusing initial LPM training where it may

create the most immediate and tangible utility and return on investment, and

c) Bringing together the actual project players for hands-on training that will result in immediately usable processes and protocols.

Generally speaking, we have seen a drift toward vertical approaches in the last year (including programs that wrap clients into the workshops to foster “alignment” and forge improved communications). For smaller firms, the vertical approach is easier on the budget, allows the firm to target LPM toward clients who most actively demand it, and phases in LPM more gradually as a change management benefit.

AN UPHILL BATTLEFirms and legal administrators entertaining a foray into LPM must expect considerable push-back, especially from senior lawyers accustomed to and happy with the status quo. In the course of conducting scores of LPM training workshops for all lawyer levels, we have heard the same change-resistant refrains over and again:• “It’s just another fad. It’ll blow over.”• “I’m a lawyer, not a project manager. I’ve

practiced successfully for years without all this mumbo-jumbo and consultant-speak.”

• “My clients either don’t understand or aren’t demanding LPM, so why should I learn a whole new way of practicing?”

• “I don’t have time to master a new learning curve and then expend all the extra time required to use all these new procedures.”

• “It’s software and IT-stuff, all numbers and metrics that will encroach on my legal judgment and devalue my years of experience.”

• “My practice is too unpredictable to be forced into rigid processes and procedures.”

This resistance means that a firm administrator serving as point person for LPM planning and implementation must expect to expend a lot of time and effort securing powerful long-term support from senior management, building buy-in throughout the firm and dealing forthrightly and respectfully with resistance. LPM’s implications for day-to-day legal practice are so sweeping that it’s advocates and implementers can never assume that LPM will be embraced by all with open arms, or that LPM’s inherent logic and common sense will make an LPM initiative self executing. Someone has to push for change … and keep pushing, powerfully and convincingly. Frankly, LPM implementers also must expect that a certain percentage of firm lawyers will simply never get with the program. They should understand that their efforts will gain firmer traction and long-term buy-in if first targeted at practices and practitioners that are clamoring for it. Legal administrators should take an active role in identifying first-adopters, folding them into the implementation process, and supporting them as vocal LPM champions. This target cohort should include high-potential future firm leaders and opinion leaders.

Legal administrators should take an active role in identifying

first-adopters, folding them into the implementation process, and

supporting them as vocal LPM champions.

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TAKE ME TO THE WATERSLPM implementation should never be taken lightly, even if the firm is tip-toeing into the waters using pilot projects. When a firm commits to implementing – or at least exploring – LPM, law firm administrators are bound to find themselves active at the interface between diverse interests and stakeholders: firm leadership, practice group/client team leaders, practicing lawyers, the firm’s professional development experts, its marketing staff (to capitalize on the business development benefits of proclaiming the firm is LPM-proficient), budget analysts and financial managers, the IT function, alternative fee arrangement committees, possible software vendors or developers, knowledge management experts and perhaps external LPM implementation consultants. Wow! Those are a lot of players to coordinate. Firms will not be able to get by with simply going through the motions of implementing LPM as a PR gambit; clients are more interested in what LPM delivers than in its nomenclature, and they will punish firms that cannot deliver the predictability and control that LPM promises. As we’ve often said, implementing LPM is itself an exercise in LPM. Here are the top eight action items that legal administrators will need to effectively initiate and implement LPM:

1. Assembling a highly-visible multi-disciplinary team of committed stakeholders with clearly-defined roles and responsibilities and authoritative leadership

2. Developing a clear vision of how deeply and how broadly the firm will dive into LPM in the long term

3. Spelling out tactical priorities about where best to focus initial LPM efforts (e.g., specific practice groups, client teams or offices)

4. Allocating dedicated “PTM” resources – that is, adequate people, time and money near-term and long-term

5. Clearly delineating phases, tasks and timeframes

6. Creating clear metrics and processes for measuring progress, tracking budgets and evaluating ROI

7. Making sure they have sufficient power and discretion so the effort does not succumb to inertia, resistance or lack of direction, and

8. Focusing on how early-stage learning and experience will be translated into continuous process improvement as the firm’s LPM implementation and expertise both mature.

Big firm or small, senior legal administrators are instrumental in the process of planning LPM implementation, rolling it out, coordinating the efforts of diverse contributors and taking responsibility for the initiative’s continuing momentum. That said, we caution against making the legal administrator or executive director the sole or primary point person in implementing LPM. First, it can be a huge job that makes huge demands on an administrator’s already overtaxed time. In large firms, we frequently see the appointment of a separate LPM guru or task force charged with LPM planning and almost totally dedicated to implementation. In smaller firms that don’t have the resources to add someone exclusively with LPM responsibility, the tasks are often dropped on the shoulders of the legal administrator. In that case, responsibilities should be at least temporarily reallocated so that LPM is not competing with other job priorities.

WON’T WE NEED TOOLS?There is no question that to some degree LPM implementation depends on tools and dashboards that aggregate, organize and permit open access to all relevant forms of project information – scope, team, phases and tasks, metrics, communications, etc. Predictably, such tools have improved over the past several years, and the legal administrator now has more choices among external vendors offering LPM software that can be integrated into existing systems or for developing more tailored LPM solutions that fit within a firm’s legacy systems.However, legal administrators should not buy into the common knock on LPM: that it’s basically nothing but a mechanistic succession of software-driven quantitative data entries and number crunches. That is flat-out wrong. Although the

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tasks of budgeting, tracking and managing to budget are indeed facilitated by software tools and templates, these tools are the tail on the dog, not the dog.

WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUNThe key challenge for any firm is to help develop a consistent, yet flexible LPM approach that can be used effectively by a variety of lawyers in different practice areas. LPM implementation eventually must extend to all (or mostly all) lawyers and timekeepers, and it must be built into the continuing professional development of present and future generations of “home-grown” associates, lateral hires and partners in all disciplines. In short, for legal administrators and non-lawyer professionals in HR, IT, finance, and professional development, the challenge of initiating, implementing and institutionalizing LPM will never be a one-and-done deal; it has to remain a continuing firm priority, one that will demand continuous improvement as LPM best practices evolve and LPM becomes the

accepted way of doing business throughout the legal profession. �

about the authors

Pamela Woldow, general counsel at Edge International, has a career history that includes roles as a practicing attorney, senior in-house counsel and

consultant to major law firms and legal departments worldwide. The ABA has designated her as a “Legal Rebel” – a change catalyst leading innovation in the practice of law. You can contact her at pwoldow@edge-international.com.

Following his early career as a large firm litigator and federal prosecutor, Edge International Partner Douglas Richardson’s experience has spanned

over 25 years of diverse consulting and coaching experience, with particular emphasis in legal leadership, organizational communications, team development and Legal Project Management (LPM).

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