Legal Project Management - "coming of age"
However, although LPM resource can cut costs and boost efficiencies, adoption of the role has been surprisingly slow.
All lawyers are project managers in a sense, and around 10% to 20% of their time is estimated to be spent on project management. An LPM takes this a step further, separating out the organisation and operational project management aspects at a lower cost and to giving the lawyers the freedom to focus on delivering their expertise. The development of LPMs has been driven by clients’ growing demand for efficient and effective legal delivery, which translates to getting more value for money from their external legal advisers.
The role of legal project managers
The value and importance of LPMs in ensuring timely and cost-effective delivery is easily demonstrated in complex, multi-jurisdictional projects. For example, LPMs within Vario, Pinsent Masons’ alternative legal services offering, have recently been involved as part of an integrated 80-strong Pinsent Masons team that assisted a major international airline in its multi-jurisdictional litigation. Five LPMs worked alongside specialist legal teams from 15 different workstreams across 18 locations to coordinate non-legal activity. They assisted in the complex disclosure exercise as part of the litigation, which required the collection and reviewing of 30 million documents from dozens of systems and custodians. Together, the team made 30 production deliveries on schedule. The LPMs worked seamlessly not only with the international multi-disciplinary internal team at Pinsent Masons, but also with a large number of external service providers and experts. A direct result of the LPM team’s work was an estimated 36% cost saving for the client. In addition, around 2,067 hours of lawyer time were made available to provide expert legal advice.LPMs can have this significant impact because they have the specialised skills and knowledge to assist on a wide variety of legal projects, combined with the ability to apply the principles, processes, practices, and the best tools and techniques of project management. The philosophy of the LPM is to ensure the right resources are undertaking the right activities, at the right time and in the right way.
In practice, this means LPMs can aid lawyers and clients with strategy development, planning and scoping, managing budgets and resources, tracking progress, and providing clients with cost control and transparency throughout a project’s lifecycle. LPMs can either get involved throughout a project’s entire lifecycle, or provide bespoke support or solution for specific stages of the project.
Control and transparency for clients
The benefits of deploying LPMs are not limited to cost savings, and their role goes far beyond the ‘admin’ function – a common misconception among lawyers and clients. What really adds value is the LPMs’ ability to support a fully transparent approach by providing clients with control and information on budgets and progress at any given point of the project. In doing so, they are able to effectively address budget hits in legal matters and work with legal teams and clients in overcoming unexpected challenges.A widely reported pain point by lawyers is that once a project has started, they often become too busy with the matter to track against the estimated costs to ensure accurate reporting. LPMs not only can help lawyers put budgets together in the initial stage, but can also track against these at a required frequency, such as weekly or monthly. This ensures clients are put in a position where they know exactly where they are at against budget and the scheduled progress. It is helpful to clients to manage their onward budgets, and to know exactly why if their external lawyers overspent on the matter.
Whenever a complex issue unexpectedly comes up during a project and causes a spike in costs exceeding the budget of that particular section, the LPMs can provide the client with a detailed explanation on why and when the overspend is happening. They put clients in possession of information and control so clients can make a decision at each point in time with the information or report provided. Sometimes, LPMs can add value by assisting legal teams and clients in readjusting the budget, or by making changes in different sections or developing a new strategy to keep the project within budget.
In a recent case, Pinsent Masons acted for a major supermarket retailer on a complex and high-value software licensing litigation. As part of the e-disclosure exercise, a core project team of nine LPMs and e-data consultants worked with a document review team of 26 lawyers on the collection and review of 56 million documents. With a challenging deadline set by the court, the LPMs significantly reduced the amount of time lawyers spent having to manage non-legal work, enabling a 15% cost saving to the client and freeing up 511 hours of lawyer time for decision making on complicated documents and matters such as privilege and commercial sensitivity.
The LPMs, alongside the inhouse expert e-data consultant, advised the client and legal team on the e-discovery strategy and technical aspects of the process and managed all operational aspects of the e-discovery set up, review and delivery process, alongside coordinating multi-functional teams and the e-data supplier.
Another area of focus for the LPMs in this case was providing regular time and resource analysis to ensure deadlines were met and resources managed effectively by using a centrally accessible MS project planner, and creating weekly reports on cost and progress which were sent to the client to ensure effective monitoring and controls were in place.
Other benefits of LPMs
Having a team of LPMs based in different time zones and with a global reach is essential in delivering timely services to lawyers and clients. The Vario LPM team, for instance, are located strategically in Australia, Dubai and the UK, and have a proven track record in managing projects and providing support to projects of a global nature around the clock.In addition to the benefits to clients, LPMs are also playing an increasing role in making sure the wellbeing of lawyers and support staff in a law firm is looked after.
The LPMs, given their daily interactions with all the legal teams involved in a project, can often detect the different engagement level of lawyers and other members involved in a particular project and provide the support and care for the team in emotional ways as well as handing the organisation framework around them.
With businesses and lawyers paying more attention to promote a healthy work environment and improve workplace wellbeing, the additional value LPMs can add to not only clients but also lawyers themselves should not be overlooked.