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Legal Operations, Legal Project Management, Uncategorized

Ethics in Legal Operations: A Legal Project Management Perspective

November 13, 2024 l3g4l_0p3r4ti0ns Leave a comment

Legal operations is not often considered in parallel with ethics. But, ethics and the professional standards by which lawyers must operate in any jurisdiction, are a perfect blueprint for the scoping of a legal operations, and more specifically, a legal project management strategy.

As legal operations professionals we are behind the curtain when it comes to the functioning of a global legal practice. There is, of course, an assumption that BigLaw knows better and therefore does better in all operational respects. However, we only have to look at the DEI data, legal press and sometimes even the tabloid press to know and understand that law firms are filled with human beings – the very same kind who populate all other industries and sectors and can be prone to temptation, greed and self preservation.

In legal operations we see the books and records of account, the firm’s time keeping practices and the multiple heads in the room with their clocks ticking. We know the talent in the room and we have a pretty good understanding of the relative contributions. Those in legal operations should have a detailed grasp of processes outside the room. We therefore understand the value (or not) of the handful of lawyers in attendance with their meters running.

The operations team sees the poor time narratives – that no-one can understand and that invariably get rejected at billing stage. We see the wholesale review and remediation of time entries by people who don’t understand the work being done. Yet those same people do sufficient ‘fixing’ to get the bill paid.

In legal operations we see the firms’ data on diversity. We see the quality of the data and we see the interpretation of the data. Typically, a legal operations function will run non-bias training and programmes and will respond to RfP questions on diversity and inclusion. In operations we will know how it is…as well as how it should be.

In legal operations, you will likely witness practices that run close to the line. Law is a competitive environment but success needs to sit on the right side of both the legal and moral line.

An issue riddled with ethical questions

Timesheet remediation is a very common practice in law firms. Nowhere in legal work are ethics and legal operations more intertwined. To get a bill through an e-billing system, the narrative and time code must be correct. The criteria for charging (maximum heads in the room for example) need to be met.

If the bill is rejected, who is going to fix it and how? Can a junior analyst or operations graduate with no legal experience, be tasked with amending the narrative? How will they know what it should say in order to reflect the actual activity, rather than an activity that will satisfy the e-billing algorithm? If the time entry goes back to the lawyer who recorded the time should they be time recording for fixing their own mistakes? Are they incentivised to fix the time entry if they are subject to billable hours targets and can’t record the time? If they aren’t incentivised and don’t fix the entry, will the firm just end up writing off the time?

If an operations team has to manipulate the time recording data to capture data requested by a client, should the cost of doing that go back to the client? Or is the client right to assume that the law firm is collecting sufficient data points to provide the information required?

These are all important questions, and for many firms, the starting point for their legal project management strategy. But legal project management is the opposite of timesheet remediation. Timesheet remediation on any scale should be completely unnecessary if the matter is being managed effectively. In this post we look at the relationship between ethics in legal service delivery and an effective legal project management strategy.

The relationship between legal operations and ethics

The relationship between legal project management and ethics is an important one. The Solicitors Regulation Authority, the American Bar Association, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe – each has a code of conduct with which its admitted and practicing lawyers must comply. Those rules of professional conduct align with a number of the key principles of legal project management.

In England and Wales, solicitors are required to demonstrate competence in core project management principles. A practicing solicitor must:

“Initiate, plan, prioritise and manage work activities and projects to ensure that they are completed efficiently, on time and to an appropriate standard, both in relation to their own work and work that they lead or supervise”

Section D, Solicitor Competence Statement

Whilst the Statement of Solicitor Competence doesn’t expressly reference legal project management skills, the LPM skill set is very evident in the language of Section D. Solicitors in firms with dedicated legal project management functions, and those without, need to understand what legal project management is. They must also understand the ethical considerations that should be applied in delivering legal services.

Lawyers must be aware that whether or not the firm for which they work, offers them the support of a legal project management specialist, they each carry a professional responsibility to ensure the appropriate oversight and management of their matters.

The Project Management Institute implemented a Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility that applies to all of its members but represents a good base line for legal project managers. The latter however, must also have knowledge of the relevant code of professional conduct that applies to lawyers in the jurisdiction in which the legal services being managed, are delivered. These are standards set for our lawyers and should be the standards against which, legal project managers deliver projects.

Where confidence in the role of the legal project manager is often lacking, demonstrating a clear understanding of the rules of professional conduct that apply in the jurisdiction of enrolment, can go a long way to building credibility in both the individual and the role. Any LPM candidate not able to connect topics such as scope of work, pricing, communication and quality of work to the code applicable to the lawyers they support, should raise a red flag with recruiters and law firm partners alike.

Let’s look at some examples

In the UK, the Solicitor Competence Statement (SCS), introduced by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), outlines the skills and competencies necessary for solicitors to effectively perform their roles. The SRA also maintains the Code of Conduct for Solicitors. Both the competencies contained in the SCS and the behaviours outlined in the Code of Conduct can be mapped to the LPM competencies of scoping, pricing, communication and quality.

A similar mapping exercise can be made to the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

Scope

Solicitors Regulation Authority of England &Wales

Scoping is a key aspect of the legal project managers role. The scope of a legal matter is the work that is required in order to reach the client’s expectations and outcomes. To be able to do this adequately, it is essential to test and discuss your understanding of those expectations, with the client. It is not only what your firm does that is important, but also the cost of each work stream and the time required to complete it.

Law firms have historically relied on their standard form of engagement letter to agree a scope of work and the scope is often contained in just a short paragraph of that letter. That may not be sufficient to clarify the full scope of instructions in a way in which both lawyer and client are, and remain aligned.

Whilst client and lawyer may often believe they both understand the nature and detail of a mandate, this often turns out to be misconceived when the invoice is raised. The responsibility for aligning expectations of the engagement lie entirely with the law firm, whose professional responsibility it is to ensure that there is no ambiguity in connection with the instructions. Your legal project management team should be helping to clarify those instructions and the clients objectives by preparing a sufficiently detailed scoping document, comprehensive scope of work or scope agreement. They should also establish a point of contact within the client organisation authorised to provide instructions throughout the mandate and continually test those instructions against the established scope and objectives. To do this competently, your LPM must understand the attributes, needs and circumstances of the client.

ABA Model Rules 1.2(a) and 1.0(e) support the preparation of a detailed scoping document and at very least, require something more substantive than a line or paragraph in the engagement letter:

Rule 1.2(a) “Subject to paragraphs (c) and (d), a lawyer shall abide by a client’s decisions concerning the objectives of representation and, as required by Rule 1.4, shall consult with the client as to the means by which they are to be pursued. A lawyer may take such action on behalf of the client as is impliedly authorized to carry out the representation. A lawyer shall abide by a client’s decision whether to settle a matter.”

Rule 1.0(e) “Informed consent” denotes the agreement by a person to a proposed course of conduct after the lawyer has communicated adequate information and explanation about the material risks of and reasonably available alternatives to the proposed course of conduct.”

Notwithstanding the codes of conduct in place in both the UK and US, firms still regularly scope a complex piece of work across a handful, or less, of workstreams. For example, the retainer is established based on something like:

Preparation/matter set up	[£][$]25,000
Due diligence	[£][$]$75,000
Transaction documents	[£][$]50,000
Completion	[£][$]20,000

Fee proposal

Work begins, notwithstanding that it may be unclear whether the [£][$]170,000 fee is indicative, or a quote. The client will rely on it being the latter and will believe that they have certainty. The law firm will commence work relying on its ability to revisit the indicative price, once the scope and objectives have been established to their satisfaction. None of the competencies or codes, whether PM or legal, have been fully complied with. The words ‘quote’ and ‘proposal’ are used interchangeably without attention to the meanings of and differences between those words.

A proper scope of work can substantially improve recovery for a law firm by providing a realistic documented roadmap to completion that can’t later be challenged for uncertainty. Similarly, out of scope work can be clearly identified and also scoped and budgeted in order to ensure the firm isn’t undertaking work for which it will not get paid.

Where recovery improves, the role of the legal project manager becomes more credible and carries economic value for the firm. Testing clients for materiality levels, need for tax advice, competition analysis, access to data, and appetite for warranties and indemnities, can both impact the cost of delivery but also inform the legal team in a way that allows them to drive efficiency. A more efficiently delivered legal matter will provide a bottom line boost.

Pricing/budget

Legal project management, through the scoping exercise, encourages the elaboration of tasks included within the service delivery. This allows for time estimations and the identification of resources before the work begins.

Whilst customary fees are relevant and can be helpful in formulating a price, LPM discourages the ‘finger in the wind’ approach to pricing as well as the use of general estimates derived from prior experience. Neither approach calls for the consideration of the complexity of the matter being priced, relevant timescales or limits, the skills of the lawyer, or the type of fee arrangement (e.g. contingent fees). Each of these things can negatively impact the ability to recover time on the clock if they aren’t properly accounted for in the pricing model.

If a fee proposal rather than a fee quote has been provided, the legal project manager should begin to track and report the accruals to the client (in the interests of properly accounting to clients) from the start of the work. The legal project manager must also however, track and manage the delivery team to ensure timescales are met and resource requirements are sufficient to ensure that the quality of the work is adequate.

ABA Model Rule 1.5 aligns and supports the principle of proper accounting but also imports a requirement for the delivery of a detailed budget at the beginning of an instruction:

“(a) A lawyer shall not make an agreement for, charge, or collect an unreasonable fee or an unreasonable amount for expenses. The factors to be considered in determining the reasonableness of a fee include the following:

(1) the time and labor required, the novelty and difficulty of the questions involved, and the skill requisite to perform the legal service properly;

(2) the likelihood, if apparent to the client, that the acceptance of the particular employment will preclude other employment by the lawyer;

(3) the fee customarily charged in the locality for similar legal services;

(4) the amount involved and the results obtained;

(5) the time limitations imposed by the client or by the circumstances;

(6) the nature and length of the professional relationship with the client;

(7) the experience, reputation, and ability of the lawyer or lawyers performing the services; and

(8) whether the fee is fixed or contingent.

(b) The scope of the representation and the basis or rate of the fee and expenses for which the client will be responsible shall be communicated to the client, preferably in writing, before or within a reasonable time after commencing the representation, except when the lawyer will charge a regularly represented client on the same basis or rate. Any changes in the basis or rate of the fee or expenses shall also be communicated to the client.

(c) A fee may be contingent on the outcome of the matter for which the service is rendered, except in a matter in which a contingent fee is prohibited by paragraph (d) or other law. A contingent fee agreement shall be in writing signed by the client and shall state the method by which the fee is to be determined, including the percentage or percentages that shall accrue to the lawyer in the event of settlement, trial or appeal; litigation and other expenses to be deducted from the recovery; and whether such expenses are to be deducted before or after the contingent fee is calculated. The agreement must clearly notify the client of any expenses for which the client will be liable whether or not the client is the prevailing party. Upon conclusion of a contingent fee matter, the lawyer shall provide the client with a written statement stating the outcome of the matter and, if there is a recovery, showing the remittance to the client and the method of its determination.”

Communication

One of the most frequently levied criticisms of law firms by their clients is a lack of information or insufficient communication, particularly in connection with the accrual of the billable hour. Incomplete information can also be an issue with law firms telling clients only what they think the client wants to hear and not what they need to hear in order to make informed decisions about matter strategy.

Legal matters have grown in size over the last couple of decades. The teams deployed by law firms to handle such large and complex matters have also grown and increasingly large and complex client stakeholder groups are often also evident.

The SCS and SRA Code of Conduct deal with the basics.

It is the responsibility of the legal project manager to formulate a communications plan and share it with the delivery team to ensure that all lawyers in the delivery team are able to comply with their code obligations.

The ABA Model Rules set similar expectations for communication. Model Rule 1.4 requires that:

“(a) A lawyer shall:

(1) promptly inform the client of any decision or circumstance with respect to which the client’s informed consent, as defined in Rule 1.0(e), is required by these Rules;

(2) reasonably consult with the client about the means by which the client’s objectives are to be accomplished;

(3) keep the client reasonably informed about the status of the matter;

(4) promptly comply with reasonable requests for information; and

(5) consult with the client about any relevant limitation on the lawyer’s conduct when the lawyer knows that the client expects assistance not permitted by the Rules of Professional Conduct or other law.

(b) A lawyer shall explain a matter to the extent reasonably necessary to permit the client to make informed decisions regarding the representation.”

The ABA Model Rules go further and consider confidentiality (in Model Rule 1.6) and internal communications (in Model Rules 5.1 and 5.3). This anticipates an adequate communications plan which should also take into account the parties involved and the information to which they should have access. With the adoption of collaboration software and virtual deal spaces, an appropriate communication plan that documents more than a working parties list, is essential to ensure that confidentiality is maintained but also that the right people have the right information at the right time to enable the matter to be delivered efficiently, the client to be kept informed and the relevant codes of conduct complied with.

A comprehensive communication plan also plays into budgeting and scoping. If regular update meetings are necessary, these will need to be budgeted for to ensure the firm is covered for costs.

Quality

Note the references to quality above. Whilst the principles of legal project management do not include any separate process of quality control, legal project management can direct quality outcomes where lawyers and legal project managers apply the relevant code with a view to competent delivery of services. Black box thinking, checklists and documented budgets all drive process improvements across service delivery through a continuous lookback, review and improve approach.

Lesson summary

By making the connection between the discipline of legal project management and the ethical and other standards expected of lawyers, the benefit for your firm can be twofold.

A legal project manager who is also a qualified solicitor or lawyer will be subject to the same standards as all lawyers within the organisation. Applying the principles of legal project management as a means of meeting those practice standards will encourage all lawyers to adopt LPM principles across the work that they do, as well as the work that is supported by a dedicated LPM. This should, and in all likelihood will, have a positive impact on the quality of work that your lawyers deliver. Furthermore, where the adoption of legal project management principles has been met with resistance across your organisation, the application of the discipline in order to meet the standards, lends a certain credibility that may well have been overlooked by those more resistant to change and can be a positive boost to your legal operations strategy.

This article however, describes aspects of LPM that require knowledge and experience that can only be derived from consistently delivering complex matters and developing an understanding of the resource group, the skills of the lawyers, the risks that the client may face and the ability to comprehensively communicate at a senior level, both internally and with senior stakeholders. It is neither a junior nor admin role and treating it as such will result in frustrated lawyers, clients and legal operations staff.

There is a strong argument in the world of legal, for project managers to be drawn from a cohort of practicing attorneys and solicitors. They will come to the role with credibility and the ‘grey hair’ to enable them to direct a transaction or matter. If the matter is budgeted and managed, and transparent lines of communication put in place for the life of the matter, the client experience will improve. Managing resources against a detailed scope with built-in contingencies will improve recovery. Applying an innovative mindset to the way a matter is delivered (including how matters are priced and how time is recorded) will improve the lawyers’ experience.

A successful legal operations team should include a very lean but experienced LPM team. Administrators, fixing timesheets and manipulating billing data to close the gap to real time financial reporting, should be very few or eliminated altogether. Your LPM strategy should be mapped against the code of conduct governing the lawyers delivering the work. The work undertaken by your LPMs should be delivered consistently, across all matters, proportionately to the instruction.

Include project management in your scope of work. Anything that doesn’t fit into the drafting, advising, and negotiating line items of the time sheet, is in all likelihood, project management. Essential meetings to deliver materiality, client expectations, approaches to warranties or indemnities, expectations on timing, or to share regulatory deadlines, are all legal project management. Information should be shared once, but memorialised and retained somewhere obvious and accessible.

Once legal project management is defined and scoped in this way, it is much easier to show that where the work is undertaken by a qualified lawyer, even if they are a dedicated legal project manager, it is work that can, and always has been charged at strategic lawyer rates.

The legal project manager’s framework for success should follow the relevant code of conduct and provide a high standard of:

scoping
communication
pricing, budgeting and financial reporting
quality

Legal Operations, Legal Project Management

Building a Legal Operations Team

October 18, 2023 l3g4l_0p3r4ti0ns Leave a comment

recruitment lettering text on black background

man in black suit jacket sitting beside woman in brown long sleeve shirt

woman in black long sleeve shirt had a job interview

person in white long sleeve shirt holding a clipboard with resume

Whilst many international law firms have some form of legal operations function or legal project management office (LPMO) within their organisation, not all do. Some will have established something akin to an LPMO, operating as an extension of their business finance teams and offering some level of client relationship management and/or profitability analysis for larger client accounts. These are often very effective functions focusing on client value, and through strong and mature connections, they can establish enduring trusted advisor relationships. They don’t generate any revenue – nor should they – but they generate goodwill and help to build business.

For those firms who don’t have an LPMO or a financial management and client engagement team but are keen to build one in response to enquiries about legal project management (LPM) from clients and increasing complexity in legal mandates, how should they start?

There are three parts to the implementation of an LPM initiative:

people – roles and responsibilities
resources – the tools and skills necessary to support project management in a law firm
steps necessary to establish your new team

This post considers Part 1 – the team and looks at the people and roles that will be necessary when beginning your firm’s or legal department’s LPM journey. The important thing is that this is not about developing a new service line or revenue stream. LPM is all about service excellence and ensuring that, notwithstanding significant changes in the world of legal service delivery in the last decade, you can provide real value to clients at the same time as ensuring that you remain profitable. You might also improve your lawyers’ experience at a time when retention is becoming harder and you need more and more from your people.

LPM is something that you do already. But, doing it well and having a clear and defined approach to LPM can provide a huge competitive advantage. Nevertheless, if you get it wrong, you can end up with a large and very expensive administrative team adding little more to your business than you might find you are getting from a well thought out generative AI approach in a year or two. In the modern world of BigLaw though, competitive advantage is necessary and approaching legal project management as your ‘service excellence’ initiative will drive the right behaviours for both lawyers and legal project managers. It’s the only way to adapt to a new world of complex transactions and litigations, managed and volume services and global regulatory advice. Higher profit is not the only objective – transparency; better client experience; and better lawyer experience will all increase goodwill and market share. If you are ready for the challenge, then read on. If you think that your LPM or legal operations teams aren’t quite hitting the target for you, then you might find some tips here that will help you pivot to ensure your LPM team is delivering value and not simply costly admin.

women colleagues gathered inside conference room

Director or Head of Legal Operations

Perhaps the most important member of your new LPM team is your lead, head-of, or director. This should be a senior lawyer – someone who has practiced law for some time and therefore, at least in the context of one practice area, understands the ‘how’ of legal services. At the very least, a non-lawyer head-of LPM should report to a lawyer partner sponsor…someone with skin in the game and who sees the value in establishing an LPM team. That sponsor must be someone who will be able to identify and support the new team’s objectives and will be the mouthpiece for the new initiative. Without that direct nexus to the practice that they will support, none of your new LPM team will be empowered to manage. Needing a lawyer at the helm can be a contentious view. A look at any of the well known and accepted project management methodologies, and speaking to their experienced practitioners will return a generally held view that a project manager does not need to be experienced in the field in which he or she is project managed.

Law is the exception. There are cultural reasons and credibility reasons. Both can make it very difficult for a legal project manager to manage a legal matter unless they can speak the right language. There is also the risk factor – if a legal project manager spots a spike in the financials during due diligence and the local counsel team flags a ‘compliance issue’ as the reason, there is a list of questions that the LPM will need to ask to determine whether the work is in scope, out of scope or within the agreed range of materiality or acceptable risk. If the LPM doesn’t know what questions to ask then the legal team are likely to pick up work that the client doesn’t want doing and may not pay for. Under the heading of ‘compliance and regulation’ that could be enough of a mistake to wipe out any upside from simply delivering the matter better and more efficiently using LPM principles.

That all said, there are some very strong potential lead candidates that you might find amongst the Big Four or those with a corporate finance background, with many years’ exposure to the types of global complex transactions and disputes that Big Law deals with in the ordinary course. Those candidates will speak the language and will be competent in cascading that knowledge through the LPMO and to the lawyers. So there are options. But, suffice to say, this will be your most important hire and will be the difference between success or a very expensive fail.

Legal Project Managers

You will also need some legal project managers. Getting this right is the hard part. These are the people responsible for infiltrating your business and building credibility with both your workforce and your clients. You will need to both identify the right kinds of people and equip them with the tools necessary to do their work within your law firm culture and infrastructure. That means they will need to understand your people, your financial measures and your compensation models.

The legal project manager could be an existing member of the legal team and in fact, it will have been your lawyers who have historically managed your matters as part of their legal services delivery, prior to the establishment of your LPMO. One of the objectives though, of setting up an LPMO, is to ensure that the only role of the LPM on a matter is the project management, so that the LPM is able to effectively support the legal team without the distraction of prioritising a piece of drafting or a negotiation session. A complex legal matter is typically more successful in achieving profit objectives and client satisfaction when an LPM is responsible for:

drafting and agreeing a detailed scope of work
managing budget against actuals and anticipating and responding transparently to project changes
tracking the performance of each group of lawyers and the engagement from the client team and providing suitable and constructive feedback
managing and responding to stakeholders
managing communications; coordinating meetings; and capturing and sharing matter information
designing processes and supporting, where relevant, the production of playbooks and providing or coordinating guidance and training on process and negotiating positions

You may already have lawyers who do this very well. The nuance brought by an LPMO or a LPM initiative is that the project management becomes a role within the service delivery team and not just activities undertaken in part or in full – off the end of the desk.

Coordinators/Analysts

Small to medium sized firms with a limited budget may only have one or two LPMs supporting the whole firm. Here, the LPM will need to take a more hands-off and advisory role but can still service a number of the firm’s larger matters provided they are supported by an analyst or legal project coordinator. Even larger firms will need to provide some support to their LPM team, either in the form of coordinators or analysts or members of the administration team. This could be a paralegal or experienced legal secretary with a good understanding of the firm’s infrastructure and an internal network that supports troubleshooting and navigation of the firm’s systems and protocols. Again, there is much to be gained from promoting people within the firm into these roles because they will already understand the firm’s culture, financial priorities and potentially have existing client relationships.

Other skills and roles

Change management – this is a large part of a successful LPM initiative and shouldn’t be underestimated. It’s a skill that will be essential in your LPM lead, but there will be an element of change management required from each of your LPMs. Your LPM initiative will require your lawyers to operate differently, use new systems, follow new processes, communicate differently and defer to a matter manager.

Training – law students are now provided with some high level LPM training but by no means enough to equip them to manage large teams and complex processes whilst still trying to hone their legal skills and understanding. Therefore, a big part of many LPM initiatives is to cascade that project management knowledge and understanding across all legal teams. There are different ways of approaching this. External coaches can be expensive and it’s also costly bringing together large groups of lawyers and taking them away from their fee earning activities. Many firms rely on an element of one to one learning as a direct result of including an experienced LPM on the matter team. The challenge with that approach is that the lawyers may not see any value in what the LPM has to teach and there needs to be a level of respect for the skills and experience that the LPM is bringing to the organisation. The second challenge is that you will only bring an LPM to your most complex matters and so you are limited in terms of who can and will be reached on a one-to-one basis. It is therefore essential that, if training and development in LPM skills is to be part of the legal project manager’s role, then finding the right people to fill LPM roles is critical – they will be required to teach and their audience will be tough.

Process improvement – this is a discipline, distinct from LPM but I have included it here principally because it is the legal project managers who are sitting in the matter teams and have a direct view of the challenges of delivering a particular matter to a particular client and therefore the opportunities for process improvement. Absent that bird’s eye view it’s difficult to see how an independent process improvement specialist could gain enough access to an in-flight matter, or sufficient time with the busy lawyers delivering the work, to enable the process improvement to happen. As with all of your LPMO roles, it will be important to the initiative’s success to establish, first and foremost, how each of your new team members will actually be able to fulfil his or her role effectively. This is a further attestation of the importance of having a senior and experienced lawyer leading your LPM initiative.

Innovation – most modern law firms are keen to appear progressive when it comes to technology. Innovation is more than just knowing and understanding what technology is available – it’s about looking to the horizon and around corners and spotting opportunities to improve the bottom line or engage with more, new clients. It’s difficult to hire well in innovation. Sometimes, there may be no-one better placed than your lawyers and your LPMs to spot new opportunities. Innovators in any sector, including the law, need to understand how that sector operates now and, perhaps more importantly, where its limitations lie – and that understanding can only come from experience. Combined experience and curiosity for the new and experimental can be rare.

The importance of getting it right

Putting the wrong people in post, or expecting individuals to fulfil too many of the roles mentioned above, can spell the end for your LPM initiative. Expecting too many roles from one person will result in their failure. More importantly however, that failure will result in a lack of, or no buy-in from lawyers to the new ways of operating.

Keep it lean. Define roles before you go out to market – especially now. The dawn of generative AI will impact ‘middle management’ far more than other parts of your organisation and that includes your project management teams. Establish what you want them to do and move the work to them – all too often we see LPMs brought into law firms only to discover a new keenness from lawyers to do the LPM themselves, leaving the LPM in the wings waiting patiently for a scrap of work to be sent their way. The result? Unfulfilled LPMs picking up admin that you can’t recoup from your clients.

Remember, you don’t need a partner with responsibility for legal operations, a Director of Legal Operations, a Head of Legal Operations, Legal Operations leads and a vast array of ‘managers’ covering LPM, technology, pricing and data analytics. That kind of structure gives you lots of managers with nothing (or very little) to manage. Your lawyers won’t know who to engage with. You need a senior and experienced (in law) strategic lead who can set the agenda for the firm with the sponsorship of an engaged partner (or partners) and then a lean but talented collection of do-ers (LPMs; technology attorneys and perhaps pricing or costs lawyers). Your strategic lead should be able to supervise, manage and set the direction of your legal operations or service delivery function in a way that delivers valuable support to your lawyers. Partner buy-in and sponsorship will be crucial to the success of the function and function head.

Resources and recruitment

person holding silver pen signing photographers signature

Recruiting is a long process. We’ve included some resources to get you started:

Example-job-description-Director-of-Legal-Project-Management Download

Example-job-description-Legal-Project-Manager
Download

Example-job-description-AnalystLegal-Project-Co-ordinator Download

Finding the right talent can be difficult. Project management certifications aside, almost anyone can describe themselves as a legal project manager, whether they have managed the delivery of a complex legal matter, improved or digitised a service delivery process, increased your recovery, or not. Bear this in mind when your recruitment team tells you that you can employ an LPM for less than the cost of a junior to mid level associate and consider what, if anything, that candidate can do with sufficient credibility to impress those associates enough to persuade them to make use of your new Legal Operations team. Candidates anticipating a lifestyle role should consider a different profession – supporting the service delivery of a complex or multi-jurisdictional matter requires lawyer hours.

To find out more about how legaloperations.co.uk can help you in your search, contact us at info@legaloperations.co.uk. Our experts have extensive knowledge of the market, with experience both in practice and all aspects of legal operations. We can therefore take on much of the hard work finding you candidates that will make a positive difference to your legal operations.

In Part 2 – resources we will take a look at some of the tools and resources you will need to get started with your LPM initiative. Remember, there is no magic to good project management – just structure and proactivity and a willingness to take the time to set each matter up for success before you lift your pen and start drafting your advice.

Legal Operations, Legal Project Management

Legal Project Management

Legal project management ‘products’ – reality or fantasy?

October 10, 2023 l3g4l_0p3r4ti0ns Leave a comment

A recent article on the productisation of legal project management caught my eye – LPM as a ‘product’ is a concept that has been talked about by professionals in the industry for some time but it’s a concept I still struggle to grasp. For the most part, LPM as a ‘product’ has been used as a justification for charging for it. But, whether we talk about ‘productising’, ‘product offerings’ or ‘service offerings’, my advice to legal practitioners, partners and their clients would be to remain cautious. There is a much stronger value proposition sitting behind LPM.

As is well established, legal project management is simply the management of legal projects using a combination of project management principles best suited to the legal sector. Legal project management isn’t even a service of itself – not in the true sense. Rather it is the means by which the legal service is delivered effectively and efficiently. So, without goods or services, it’s difficult to understand what there is that might be productised or marketed, separate to, or distinct from the legal services being procured.

To look at it a different way, there is nothing in legal project management that can be marketed and sold independently of the legal advice being provided. And legal project management has always been part of legal service delivery – transactions would never complete and litigations would never conclude if someone wasn’t in charge and steering the ship. So, whilst LPM still remains a relatively new concept, all we have actually done is extracted a necessary part of legal services delivery, found a group of professional who are particularly good at leading, and attached a label to that part of the legal work that sits inextricably around, but distinct from the advice, drafting, negotiation and research done by a collection of lawyers in a complex matter.

So, now we have established that LPM has always been there – charged at strategic hourly rates and rarely, if ever challenged as a non-chargeable activity by clients (financial management being excluded) we can stop calling it out as a value add and start to show clients that by bringing in professionals to do it, we can push the price point down a little – after all, absent a competent legal project manager, the decisions on how, when and by whom the work will be done, will be left at a very senior (and expensive) level.

What is actually meant by LPM ‘products’?

The reality is that when we allude to LPM ‘products’ we are actually talking about progressive and creative legal products – certainly, at least, when we talk about the kinds of ‘products’ that might be used as differentiators for a law firm. These types of things might include hotlines with triage capability to help ease the burden for lean and over-stretched in-house legal teams, managed services or digitised due diligence, document review or disclosure services. There is a small but highly effective collection of technologies that clients welcome because they force transparency. Technologies such as collaboration tools (for the design and build of virtual deal spaces), workflow automations (to manage diligence and disclosure); document automation (for managed services and volume contracting),… the list continues but each is a better way of delivering a legal product that already exists. None is an LPM ‘product’. Even ‘products’ like the regulatory toolkits and interactive platforms built for hosting technical regulatory advice in complex and fluid regulatory regimes are ‘legal’ and not LPM products – not withstanding that the ‘how’ of the delivery of those kinds of legal projects will be coming from a legal project manager supported by a strong and technically sound Legal Operations team.

LPM ‘products’ for private practice lawyers are simply good legal project management principles. Tools and templates prepared by LPM teams including standardised matter plans, project plans, financial reporting templates, stakeholder maps and scopes of work are all formalised or codified operating models or parts of operating models. Those things aren’t LPM products – they are simply the first step in the effective launch of any LPM initiative in private practice.

Solving user problems and doing things better and more efficiently is process improvement and service excellence – it isn’t product development. As such, getting clients to pay for your efforts isn’t a problem – you are simply presenting them with a more cost effective legal service that takes advantage of technology and good and experienced management from people hired to actually manage.

That all said, applying a problem solving mindset of the kind that drives those in product development to produce saleable and in-demand products, is exactly what your LPM team should be doing.