Legal Project Management
Encyclopedia
Legal project management is the application of the concepts of project management
to the control and management of legal cases or matters
. Practitioners of legal project management apply it to the mechanics and business of providing legal services rather than to the substantive legal work itself.
Legal project management modifies project management techniques and practices to fit the legal world and attorneys. Many project management core items such as requirements, gates
, or post-delivery stages have no significant equivalent in the legal world. In addition, the project managers of legal cases are generally attorneys, often senior attorneys or attorneys-of-record in the case, rather than full-time trained project managers. Thus legal project management must fit a world of “accidental” project managers, highly independent workers, and the various constraints imposed by the business of law as well as its practice.
Legal project management is becoming increasingly common especially in law firms working under alternative fee arrangements
such as fixed or flat fees, cost limits, and success bonuses. Such cases require management of schedule, risk, and cost in a more rigorous and measured manner than firms have practiced in the past. However, legal project management is also becoming an accepted discipline for law departments and firms using hourly billing faced with the need to be more efficient in the delivery of legal services.
Legal project management meets traditional project management particularly in the area of electronic discovery
. E-discovery in particular has a set of regularized, repeatable, and measurable practices and has been subject to great cost-control pressure for the past few years, making it a specialty within law amenable to traditional project management. The practice of legal project management varies from the schema in Steven Levy's book to law-firm-specific regimens such as Seyfarth Lean to corporate initiatives such as Cisco’s core-and-context approach to legal work.
Project management
Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to achieve specific goals. A project is a temporary endeavor with a defined beginning and end , undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value...
to the control and management of legal cases or matters
Legal case
A legal case is a dispute between opposing parties resolved by a court, or by some equivalent legal process. A legal case may be either civil or criminal...
. Practitioners of legal project management apply it to the mechanics and business of providing legal services rather than to the substantive legal work itself.
Legal project management modifies project management techniques and practices to fit the legal world and attorneys. Many project management core items such as requirements, gates
Stage-Gate model
A stage–gate model, also referred to as a phase–gate process, is a project management technique in which an initiative or project is divided into stages separated by gates. At each gate, the continuation of the process is decided by a manager or a steering committee...
, or post-delivery stages have no significant equivalent in the legal world. In addition, the project managers of legal cases are generally attorneys, often senior attorneys or attorneys-of-record in the case, rather than full-time trained project managers. Thus legal project management must fit a world of “accidental” project managers, highly independent workers, and the various constraints imposed by the business of law as well as its practice.
Legal project management is becoming increasingly common especially in law firms working under alternative fee arrangements
Alternative fee arrangements
Alternative fee arrangements , in the practice of law, occur when payments to a law firm are based on a method other than billable hours....
such as fixed or flat fees, cost limits, and success bonuses. Such cases require management of schedule, risk, and cost in a more rigorous and measured manner than firms have practiced in the past. However, legal project management is also becoming an accepted discipline for law departments and firms using hourly billing faced with the need to be more efficient in the delivery of legal services.
Legal project management meets traditional project management particularly in the area of electronic discovery
Electronic Discovery
Electronic discovery refers to discovery in civil litigation which deals with the exchange of information in electronic format . Usually a digital forensics analysis is performed to recover evidence...
. E-discovery in particular has a set of regularized, repeatable, and measurable practices and has been subject to great cost-control pressure for the past few years, making it a specialty within law amenable to traditional project management. The practice of legal project management varies from the schema in Steven Levy's book to law-firm-specific regimens such as Seyfarth Lean to corporate initiatives such as Cisco’s core-and-context approach to legal work.