Next Stage Legal Project Management: Future-proof your Matter Management

By Globe Law and Business

Corporate legal teams and law firms have made significant investments in their legal project management programmes over the past few years. It is time to take stock and, more importantly, envision future interventions. What are the decisive strategies and actions to expedite the value creation of those programmes?

In this book, an international group of 27 experts comprising private practitioners, in-house counsel, technologists, legal operations managers and legal management consultants offer unique perspectives and insights to help you take your legal project management programmes to the next stage. Topics covered include:
•Methodology;
•People management;
•Communication and interaction;
•Data and performance; and
•Implementation of legal project management programmes.

Written by practitioners for practitioners, this title will benefit General Counsel, legal COOs, managing partners, practice leaders and other executives running legal services delivery teams who have initiated legal project management programmes and seek new ideas and inspiration for more value creation. Practical and illustrative examples, case studies and many shared experiences direct the reader towards the next level of proficiency in legal project management – future-proofing your matter management.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Globe Law and Business
• Release date: Mar 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781787424197

Book preview

Consulting editor

Ignaz Fuesgen

Managing director

Sian O’Neill

Next Stage Legal Project Management: Future-proof Your Matter Management is published by

Globe Law and Business Ltd

3 Mylor Close

Horsell

Woking

Surrey GU21 4DD

United Kingdom

Tel: [phone]

www.globelawandbusiness.com

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY, United Kingdom

Next Stage Legal Project Management: Future-proof Your Matter Management

ISBN 9781787424180

EPUB ISBN 9781787424197

Adobe PDF ISBN 9781787424203

Mobi ISBN 9781787424210

© 2021 Globe Law and Business Ltd except where otherwise indicated.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying, storing in any medium by electronic means or transmitting) without the written permission of the copyright owner, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 5th Floor, Shackleton House, 4 Battle Bridge Lane, London, SE1 2HX, United Kingdom (www.cla.co.uk, email: [e-mail]). Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

DISCLAIMER

This publication is intended as a general guide only. The information and opinions which it contains are not intended to be a comprehensive study, or to provide legal advice, and should not be treated as a substitute for legal advice concerning particular situations. Legal advice should always be sought before taking any action based on the information provided. The publisher bears no responsibility for any errors or omissions contained herein.

Table of contents

Introduction

Ignaz Fuesgen

smartvokat GmbH

Part 1. Methodology

A competency framework: propelling the value paradigm

Aileen Leventon

Law Strategy Coach

Start with your processes: building a foundation for legal project management

Karen Dunn Skinner

Gimbal – Lean practice

management advisers

LeanLegal® Academy

Waterfall, Agile or hybrid?

Ignaz Fuesgen

smartvokat GmbH

Evolving legal project management through legal design

Jasmin Bejaoui

Reinvent Law

Sebastian Schaub

Baker McKenzie

Part 2. Talent and team

Team diversity and intercultural competence

Jeanne-Mari Retief

CALIBRICS

Professional skills required in legal project management

Nina Gramcko

Oliver Hofmann

Noerr LLP

Legal project management: a space for multiple intelligences

Anna Marra

International Institute of Legal

Project Management

Effective leadership for high-performing legal teams

Todd Hutchison

Curtin University and

Edith Cowan University

International Institute of

Legal Project Management

Balfour Meagher

Part 3. Communication and interaction

Communication as a success factor in legal project management

Anna-Katharina Horn

reThinkLegal GmbH

The art of listening

David Skinner

Gimbal – Lean practice

management advisers

LeanLegal® Academy

Legal project management collaboration platforms

Larry Bridgesmith

Accelerate Insite LLC

LegalAlignment LLC

The power of workflows in legal project management

Christian Schuhmann

Julien Weiler

smartvokat GmbH

Part 4. Data and performance

Task codes and key performance indicators

Kevin Bielawski

Lann Wasson

Husch Blackwell LLP

Costing and fee models

Jim Hannigan

Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP

Risk management

Julie Mathys

Naomi Thompson

Exigent Group Limited

Artificial intelligence and legal project management

Dries Cronje

Deep Learning Café

Part 5. Implementation

Legal project management procurement and delivery: law firm vs in-house

Helga Butcher

LawAdvisor

Change management in legal project management

CJ Nicastro

S&P Global Inc

Teams with purpose: defining purpose, OKRs and motivators

Karol Valencia

WOW Legal Experience

Lawcus

eID

Collaboration: the congruency between legal project management and business development

Anshoo Patel

Mitchell Sterling

Blank Rome LLP

About the authors

About Globe Law and Business

Introduction

Ignaz Fuesgen

smartvokat GmbH

1.Background

On 2 July 2020, a warm summer day in Germany, an email arrived from the commissioning editor of Globe Law and Business, with the nervously awaited confirmation that this book project had been approved. In the midst of a global pandemic massively affecting people personally and professionally, with high levels of tension and angst caused by uncertainty, ever-oscillating COVID-19 restrictions and a gloomy economic outlook, this was exciting news indeed. The journey had started a few months earlier with phone calls and emails reaching out to various colleagues across the globe. The mission: to solicit the idea of a book on legal project management (LPM) that would be distinct from existing LPM publications. Many colleagues immediately and enthusiastically responded, volunteering their time to contribute to the project.

Why write about LPM? In recent years, it has become one of the buzz words of our times. A new generation of clients is critically interrogating the value of client service delivery. Matter scoping and progress measurement, budget compliance and learning from previous matters are cornerstones of a proactive and forward-looking practice and department management approach, and advances in legal technology have inevitably supported the evolution of LPM-infused matter management.

Thanks not least to some of the contributors to this book, capable and dedicated LPM resources have been established in many corporate legal departments, law firms and alternative legal service provider (ALSP) units.

It is fair to say that LPM has become a widely accepted umbrella term for applying project management principles and techniques to all kinds of matters, legal and compliance alike. To a remarkable degree, legal process management has been woven into the fabric of LPM.¹

2.Why now?

Many excellent books by esteemed colleagues and seasoned practitioners have been published on the topic of LPM in the past decade.² They have shared practical checklists and tips focused on promoting the idea of introducing LPM to the legal profession. So, why publish another one?

2.1 The legal profession has moved on

Today, the majority of legal practitioners in private practice and legal departments accept the need to apply at least some elements of LPM – the Why is no longer disputed. However, many practitioners struggle to envisage the next steps (the How) to increasing the returns yielded by the initial introduction and implementation of LPM. 2021 feels like the right time to take stock and, more importantly, to envision future developments. What are the decisive strategies and actions to expedite the value creation potential of LPM programmes?

This book is written and compiled by practitioners, for practitioners. The authors include lawyers, technologists, legal operations managers and legal management consultants, offering unique perspectives and insights to help take LPM programmes to the next level.

General counsel, legal COOs, managing partners, practice leaders and other executives running legal services delivery teams who have initiated LPM programmes, will benefit from new ideas and inspiration for greater value creation. Practical and illustrative examples, case studies and many shared experiences direct the reader towards the next level of proficiency in legal LPM – future-proofing everyone’s matter management practices.

2.2 The new dimensions of legal service delivery

Ongoing efforts to harmonise legal regimes across national boundaries and a strong drive towards virtual workforces – thanks not least to the COVID-19 pandemic³ – have resulted in the need to emphasise communication (including intercultural communication), diversity and remote collaboration.

Although legal matter management is still mostly dependent on national professional standards and regulations and local legal market conditions, knowhow transfer and team collaboration occur nowadays in an entirely barrier-free, collaborative environment, powered by Microsoft Teams, Zoom and the likes. Virtual teams have become the norm. With a new appreciation of digital opportunities, a recognition of skills beyond legal expertise has emerged, resulting in blended, virtual teams comprising legal, technical and management expertise.

These new perspectives are all reflected in the present title’s particular focus on communication, collaboration and data, framed by methodology and implementation.

In particular, the book acknowledges aspects of cultural diversity, brought about in many instances by remote collaboration. Authors from Europe, the United States, Africa and Australia with a broad range of educational and technical backgrounds, share their views. Some chapters have a bias towards the author’s jurisdiction, but are nevertheless invaluable for cross-border comparisons and compelling insights; all will assist in the effective exchange of best practice in the industry and cross-pollination within the global legal community.

Figure 1. A slide from the #bigLPMidea virtual meetup talk given by Jasmin Bejaoui and Sebastian Schaub

3.More than a book

The need to engage with colleagues on this book project opened the door to alternative formats for sharing insights and experiences … and the idea of the #bigLPMidea virtual meetup series was born. Seven Zoom-based meetups were scheduled for the period November 2020 to January 2021, each featuring two to three authors talking about their big LPM ideas – the ideas that would become the focus of their chapters. Limited to two slides and 15 to 20 minutes of presentation time, each meetup participant had an opportunity to participate, raise questions, interrogate concepts or otherwise comment.

A microsite⁴ featuring the announcement and registration for the virtual meetups was set up and eventually complemented by a YouTube channel⁵ hosting all recorded meetups under the same name, and a Twitter account.⁶

In addition, authors Julien Weiler and Christian Schuhmann launched a microsite to publish a Legal Workflow Canvas, available for download free of charge under a Creative Commons licence.⁷

4.Thank you

I would like to express heartfelt thanks for the support and commitment demonstrated by my co-authors: Jasmin Bejaoui; Kevin Bielawski; Larry Bridgesmith; Helga Butcher; Dries Cronje; Nina Gramcko; Jim Hannigan; Oliver Hofmann; Anna-Katharina Horn; Todd Hutchison; Aileen Leventon; Anna Marra; Julie Mathys; CJ Nicastro; Anshoo Patel; Jeanne-Mari Retief; Sebastian Schaub; Christian Schuhmann; David Skinner; Karen Dunn Skinner; Mitch Sterling; Naomi Thompson; Karol Valencia; Lann Wasson; and Julien Weiler. My thanks also to Globe Law and Business, and in particular Sian O’Neill and Katerina Menhennet.

Considering the adverse circumstances of COVID-19 restrictions, my gratitude and appreciation for each and everyone’s contribution couldn’t be any greater.

Let us all remind ourselves: we cannot stop change, but we can all be part of the change transforming the legal profession. This book project is another small stepping stone towards better future legal service delivery – no more and no less.

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1 Karen Dunn Skinner discusses the relationship between legal project and process management in her chapter, Start with your processes: building an efficient foundation for legal project management.

2 See, for example, the following titles: Steven B Levy, Legal Project Management: Control Costs, Meet Schedules, Manage Risks and Maintain Sanity , American Bar Association, 2016; Jim Hassett, Legal Project Management, Pricing, and Alternative Fee Arrangements – What Firms Are Doing , LegalBizDev, 2013; Douglas B Richardson and Pamela H Woldow, Legal Project Management in One Hour for Lawyers , American Bar Association, 2014; Susan Raridon Lambreth and David A Rueff Jr, The Power of Legal Project Management: A Practical Handbook , American Bar Association, 2014; and Susan Raridon Lambreth, Aileen R Leventon and David A Rueff Jr, Implementing Legal Project Management: The Legal Professional’s Guide to Success , CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.

3 Ignaz Fuesgen, A silent (r)evolution – introducing Legal Project Management through the COVID-19 backdoor, LinkedIn article. Available at: www.linkedin.com/pulse/silent-revolution-introducing-legal-project-through-ignaz-fuesgen/ .

4 See: www.biglpmidea.com .

5 See: www.youtube.com/channel/UCdyeJ-aWhLASWxHeA41zzjw/videos .

6 See: https://twitter.com/BigLPMidea .

7 See: www.legalworkflowcanvas.com .

A competency framework: propelling the value paradigm

Aileen Leventon

Law Strategy Coach

1.What is the paradigm for legal value?

The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘paradigm’ as a typical example or pattern of something; a pattern or model. What is the paradigm for the practice of law? Is it the same for the process of delivering legal services? And how do value and legal project management (LPM) figure into this question? In this chapter we discuss how LPM practices serve as the foundation through which legal services provide value to clients.

Legal education and law practice have traditionally emphasised deep expertise as the source of value, so that a client’s circumstances are viewed through the lens of the legal issues.¹ This is an incomplete vision insofar as it does not place the client’s definition of a successful outcome, and the client experience, at the centre, which a project charter with a clear scope of work would achieve.² Nor does the lens of legal expertise address the competencies required of those participating in client service delivery. The solution is an LPM competency framework and related assessment tools, which together with legal expertise will advance the legal value paradigm.

Legal services provide value when they meet a client’s business objectives at a fair price in a timely and efficient manner for quality legal work, and the client receives useful and timely information about the progress and cost of the matter.³ Limited by legal ethics and legality, the client’s business objectives anchor both the legal strategy and the definition of a successful outcome.⁴ Clients have business opportunities, requirements and challenges; rarely do they have purely legal problems. While client circumstances raise legal issues, legal work is a means to an end and coexists with other disciplines that are relevant for responding to business needs, such as finance, accounting, human resources and technology. The discipline of project management harnesses the work of the legal team to assure laser focus on delivering quality service and legal advice that produce a business outcome in the legal market in which the client operates.

2.Legal representation as a means to a business end

Lawyers often speak of legal solutions that reflect their skill and contributions to the representation of a client. But a legal solution based on an analysis of the law and its application to the facts does not always equate to effective legal advice. Legal services provide value when lawyers understand that their role is to enable a client to contribute to the organisation’s bottom line in its unique business context.

Some examples illustrate this point. Business deals such as acquisitions and strategic alliances benefit from the experience of lawyers who advise on structures and create documentation that allocate risks among the contracting parties. Nevertheless, the purpose of the business deal is to generate revenue, enter a new market, or improve the financial condition of the client. Lawyers celebrate the closing of the transaction as the major milestone; when in fact the closing date is just one point on the trajectory of the business deal. Good documentation with appropriate risk allocation and other protections are means by which the client achieves the business goal of paying an advantageous price for an asset to achieve a target rate of return.

Although lawsuits manifest themselves as legal events, the status of defendant or plaintiff in a proceeding is a symptom of an underlying dispute that could not be resolved by negotiation. Even when a file seeks to establish a legal principle apart from the outcome between the litigants, the resolution is nevertheless a business outcome. Similarly, regulatory matters arise out of fulfilment of, or non-compliance with, the requirements of a public policy reflected in legislation or administrative actions. Although some regulation may fail to accomplish its goals or be unduly burdensome, clients must address regulatory challenges as part of the business environment in which they operate.

These examples illustrate business activities in which legal work is an input and important legal artifacts are created to benefit the client. Quality legal work addresses legal risk with business implications and also documents business requirements, concurrently deploying the expertise, insight and judgement of experienced and effective counsel. When a matter is handled well, the legal team provides value as it enables the business to meet its objectives.

3.Law as a business

Over the past 40 years, as the practice of law has morphed from learned profession to big business with high growth rates, the paradigm for the delivery of legal services has shifted. New business models have emerged with the rise of global mega-firms, expanded corporate legal departments⁵ and alternative service providers.⁶ The legal industry is also experiencing disruption through technology, litigation funding, new governance structures and other forces. New entrants, particularly the accounting industry, have embedded project management in their professional services model, and take a more systematic approach to delivering segments of legal services.

As the forces of the ‘business of law’ have taken hold, professional management in both law firms and law departments has emerged. When properly deployed and empowered by leadership, these allied legal professionals support and enable the advancement of the new legal value paradigm. Lawyer-leaders, such as general counsel and law firm managing partners, recognise that a law degree does not necessarily qualify one to manage a multi-million-dollar organisation.⁷

While legal education focuses on learning how to think like a lawyer by identifying issues, conducting research and engaging in a unique form of critical thinking, analysis and advocacy, a law school graduate does not typically have skills in quantitative and financial analysis or established business and management techniques. In addition to these skills, successful managers and innovators use design-thinking methodologies, understand the need to be market-driven, are comfortable with taking risks and excel at execution of strategic and operational plans. Effective managers lead with empathy; successful advocates are known for their command of language and reason. These are radically different skill sets – the need to embrace a broader range of competencies in legal organisations has created the need for a new category of positions in law firms and law departments.

Rather than leaving organisational management in the hands of other lawyers, the law practice paradigm is shifting so that law firm leaders and general counsel now draw from a cadre of professionals leaders with legal industry domain expertise as well as relying on lawyers with practical business skills. The result has been the emergence of the legal operations function in law departments⁸ and the entry of those without law degrees to senior management level in law firms.⁹ These allied legal professionals focus on the price and cost of legal matters and provide the infrastructure for the legal team to provide timely and efficient quality legal services. They further enable legal value when they are responsible for:

• advancing the use of appropriate technology;

• supporting staffing and resource-allocation decisions;

• reporting and monitoring the progress of legal matters during their life cycles; and

• handling the overall portfolio of work for particular clients.

Infrastructure support is necessary but has not been sufficient to meet the high bar for creating legal value for clients. LPM capabilities provide the bridge.

The law is still a learned profession, with significant study and learning requirements, and adherence to professional standards and ethics, in order to be called to the Bar. The co-existence of law as a business and law as a profession has created a tension in law practice – for both the buyers and sellers of legal services – and an accompanying value discussion. Effective LPM is central to securing the legal value paradigm.

4.Prerequistes for effective LPM

Frameworks on LPM have been developed all over the world.¹⁰ Although the details may differ, LPM enables lawyers to foster their relationship with existing and prospective clients by giving clients more confidence that their matters are ‘in control’. Clients appreciate communications that reduce disruption of executive time and keep costs on track. Legal skills, judgement and experience are assumed, so project management is core to the client experience. Law firm management – with a focus on profitability and partner compensation – prize the budgeting and monitoring intrinsic to LPM that promote better practice economics.

At their core, all LPM frameworks pose five broad questions which legal team members must be able to answer in a manner that is commensurate with their role in order to be both effective and efficient:¹¹

• Why are we handling this matter for this client? Why is it important to the client? What is the business goal of the legal work?

• What work will accomplish the goal and what work will specifically not be done? For example, is this a litigation matter or a mediation session with settlement on parallel tracks, or will we take a scorched earth posture? Is this an asset or a stock deal?

• When must work be done and in what sequence? What are the hard deadlines, and what timing is uncertain or dependent on unknowns? What are the milestones and key dates in our timeline?

• How do we manage the work based on constraints and requirements such as budget, strategic importance, client mandates or risk management protocols? What does our work plan look like?

• Who is involved in the work and what are their roles and responsibilities? Who is esponsible for the actual work, who supports that person, and who must be consulted or informed about status and decisions?

Communication is central to all these questions and all LPM frameworks.¹² Frameworks include tools and templates that provide suggestions on the type and format of reports, their frequency, the topics to be covered, and the types of recipients. While the roadmaps for reporting are useful, they do not adequately address how a project manager should communicate with members of the legal team to ensure that the matter successfully meets the requirements of the legal value paradigm.

Figure 1. The CLOC LPM framework

Source: © Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. All rights reserved, https://CLOC.org.

Often a legal project manager is expected to have difficult conversations about gaps in staffing, performance against budget and compliance with outside counsel guidelines. To be an effective project manager in a legal organisation, more than knowledge of all these topics is needed. Project managers derive their authority from the project sponsor, who usually provides a clear backstop when difficult issues emerge in the course of the project – scope creep, stakeholder engagement and so forth. By contrast, legal project managers derive their authority from the lawyer in charge of the matter, who may be the lead working lawyer or client relationship partner. Given the governance structures of law firms and their underlying business models, the mechanism for engaging a project sponsor as a backstop is weak at best in most firms. Oftentimes, LPM is an organisational initiative under the direction of the chief financial officer, chief client or practice management officer or director-level manager designated by the managing partner. Although lawyers may appreciate the value and impact of LPM, their willingness to integrate and adhere to sound LPM practices in their work is inconsistent. The lack of an individual project sponsor who is accountable for a matter, such as one would find in traditional project management, does not arise in legal matter life cycle management. This results in significant dilution of the power of a legal project manager to lead change and propel the legal value paradigm.

Lacking positional power, project managers are most effective when they exert influence.¹³ Legal project managers are in a more tenuous position because they also lack control over the members of a legal team. Consider the challenges when there is the need to address how a matter is handled when there is a budget overrun, staffing issues, or a change in client relationship management or key stakeholders. All require uncomfortable conversations without authority. Successful legal project managers build relationships that foster trust and promote the right actions. They have soft skills in addition to the vocabulary, knowledge of tactics and technology, and mastery of tools and templates. Behavioural attributes and attitudes round out the knowledge and experience required of an effective project manager.

‘Legal project manager’ has only emerged as a job description in the last ten years. The role is not well understood and competencies are not yet well articulated or established. None of the existing LPM frameworks provide baseline guidance on the specific knowledge, skills and behaviours that should be expected of a legal project manager. This deficit may be addressed by developing a formal LPM competency framework that identifies the foundational qualifications and professional development required of a legal project manager. Use of the framework would provide a detailed blueprint to enhance the legal value paradigm through the institutionalised deployment of legal project managers.

5.Towards an LPM competency framework

A competency framework lays out the essential elements required to achieve excellence in the performance of a discipline. It contains a common vocabulary to set a standard that may be used to assess and monitor the knowledge, skills, behaviours, attitudes, expertise and attributes of people with a particular role in an organisation.¹⁴ A workplace assessment performed under an LPM competency framework would provide both the individual and his or her organisation with a roadmap on expectations, performance criteria, training and development needs, as well as career progression criteria. Adoption of a competency framework requires considerable effort because it requires substantive integrity, user acceptance and industry adoption. Implementation needs all the energy and patience associated with an organisational change management initiative.

An LPM competency framework would enable both the legal project manager and his or her employer to better communicate on performance expectations and facilitate a constructive dialogue about specific strengths, weaknesses and gaps in capabilities. For example, a legal project manager may have great depth of knowledge about creating schedules and gantt charts, but lack experience in communicating the events and dependencies that affect timing and milestones for a matter. Or the legal project manager may have significant knowledge and skill acquired through many years of success in the manufacturing industry, but lack the behavioural charactistics that enable him or her to adapt to the unique culture of a law firm or legal department. An even more challenging example is the legal project manager who thrives in a corporate legal operations role and then assumes a position in a law firm. That individual has knowledge, skills and behaviours in the legal industry, but may lack knowledge about operational and cultural norms in a law firm, which is a distinctly different type of legal organisation.

In formulating a competency model for legal project managers, starting points are the competency frameworks for:

• an effective lawyer; and

• a generic, non-industry-specific project manager.

After evaluating these sources, the LPM competency model should be contextualised to address the unique nature of the legal industry and particular roles in legal organisations. A useful competency framework must be more than than a theoretical model. It also requires supporting tools for assessment and implementation. In order to persuade users that it is relevant and valuable to its users, sponsors of an LPM competency framework must create a business case and execute a communication strategy.

5.1 Lawyer competencies

The competencies expected of lawyers is evolving as market forces have caused significant shifts. An effective lawyer has always had to demonstrate a deep expertise in the substantive law. Over the past 15 years a number of alternative lawyer competency models have been formulated.¹⁵

For the purpose of developing an LPM competency model, the Delta Model v.3 is an excellent reference point.¹⁶ It addresses the attributes required for the 21st-century lawyer and is based on research that considers the perspectives of lawyers, clients, law students and legal educators. Members of the working group responsible have also developed a design tool based on the Delta model to extend the framework to a broader universe of legal professionals; they have created an interactive tool that weights the elements of the model to ensure it is contextual and customisable for many positions in the legal industry.

The Delta model development team has conducted qualitative research to support its work. Their findings show that clients expect their lawyers to have knowledge of business operations, business fundamentals, data analytics and project management capabilities. And whether a lawyer has knowledge of business and operations, and/or the law, the Delta model also requires him or her to be personally effective.

Customisation is necessary for the LPM competency model to be useful for employers and LPM practitioners. There are many legal professional roles that require project management comptencies but not necessarily to the same degree. The Delta model design tool helps weight and allocate competencies based on the role of the pratitioner. How deep, for example, does a lawyer’s knowledge of LPM need to be? It may depend on the seniority of the lawyer or whether he or she is a client relationship partner or a subject matter specialist. Consider the following: