Legal Project Management: Exploring the ground in the management of legal projects
If we could sum up what left us in 2020, Mike Tyson hit the nail with his famous phrase. "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." The pandemic certainly caused structural changes in the way of work that had a cross-cutting impact on all industries including the legal services market.
The decline of the hourly billing model, the culture of constancy and the eruption of models such as the Delta Lawyer, have shaken the foundations of a conservative and adverse market to change that has suffered a forced landing in the world of innovation.
Much has been said about legaltech and the push of the digitization processes of legal teams, however, little has been said about the "human dimension of innovation" where we find disciplines of the business world such as the management of legal projects or Legal Project Management (LPM), a land little explored by law professionals.
As a historical reference, we will only say that the LPM began to permeate the legal market during the 2008 economic crisis, where customers needed greater control over the prices and immediate response of their lawyers. According to Anna Marra, Legal Project Management Global Advisory Council (LPMGAC) of the International Institute of Legal Project Management, "it is a body of knowledge, techniques, tools and skills specific to the project management and adapted to the legal environment"[1]
Imagine that we need to manage a building megaproject in which different areas of a client, several contractors and supervisors interact, which also has an unremovable date of delivery of different buildings in different places. Let's see a real case: in 2019, the Peruvian government created a special legal regime that allowed the installation of a PMO (Project management office), something never before seen in the execution of public works in Peru, which successfully played the role of coordinating with the hundreds of contractors the strengthening and construction of the sports infrastructure in the country for the celebration of the Pan American and Parapan American Games in Peru. The intervention of the PMO was key to meeting the deadlines and the event was a success.
Now let's change the term "construction" to "services"? Of course I do! Lawyers are aware of the challenge of managing legal services provided by a legal management to another area of the organization (internal client) or by a law firm to an organization or natural person (external client). How do you do that? The answer is in the LPM.
Although the use of LPM is well developed in jurisdictions such as the United States and northern Europe, Spain and Latin America are not left behind. In the hands of the NewLaw and ALSPs that have broken in with disruptive innovation models like Alsterthe use of the LPM to manage all its issues provides an invaluable value not only for the end user, but for the entire team in charge of a particular project.
Different flavors for various palates Waterfall PM, Lean Six Sigma or Kanban?
There is no need to marry only one of these formulas, all of which bring advantages depending on the physionomy of the matter to be dealt with:
- The traditional PMBOK or waterfall approach is better adapted to complex and long-standing issues with a large number of tasks; it consists of defining the objectives, scope, planning, implementation, progress monitoring and review.
- Lean Six Sigma brings as a slogan to reduce costs and eliminate everything that does not add value to the user. Examples are strategies to reduce response time and excessive internal bureaucracy.
- Kanban is the best working method, due to its apparent simplicity and visual component. Very useful for daily or weekly task planning, both in its "upstream" and "downstream" variant.
The right method and tool will depend on the objective (improve time frames, improve profitability, create new legal products, improve sales, etc.). The LPM allows the incorporation of management tools to lawyers to make decisions with a comprehensive look at the current goal and a long-term strategic vision.
With regard to lawyers it is often said that "it is better a bad agreement than a good judgment" but what if we reformulate that phrase and say "any planning is preferable to the best of agreements"? To investigate, plan, set deadlines and costs and then manage the events that occur during the execution of a project are skills that the LPM inserts into the legal world. In this sense, the main attribute of the LPM is that it brings methodology to lawyers to enhance their managerial skills, which is a differentiating element because it is the key tool for turning ideas into realities.
For this reason, we see with enthusiasm and expectation that in recent months the interest of both Latin American law students and lawyers has grown in learning more about this paradigm shift that is the LPM. Under the umbrella of the Legal Operations, that according to the CLOC (Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) and as stated by Eugenia Navarro in his article What are the Legal Operations? June of last year for Expansion: "Project management is a planning-based work culture, helps to find indicators of improvement, to measure times and to establish the best teams for each case"[2].
LPM has come to stay, what do you expect to put it into practice? In Alster We accompany you on this path to the continuous improvement of your business or legal management.
If you need more information about LPM and how to apply it to your company, Contact us.
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[1] https://www.annamarra.es/lpm
[2] https://www.expansion.com/blogs/navarro/2020/06/16/que-son-las-legal-operations.html