Legal Project Management Applies to Legal Departments and Firms of Every Size

Why do I have to change? What has always been done has worked, and it works for me.

That is true. However, what does it mean for things to be working? This reflection leads us to consider that change should not happen merely for the sake of change. A good starting point is to learn about the methodology for planning, organizing, and managing resources that a team of attorneys can rely on, and from there make a decision. Legal Project Management is not a philosophy; it is the application of a management science, and professionals should learn about it in order to understand and apply it.

If we could summarize what 2020 left us, Mike Tyson was right with his famous phrase, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Without question, the pandemic caused structural changes in the way we work that affected all industries, including the legal services market. (Venegas, I. & Maggio, A., 2021). The shift away from hourly billing models, the new culture of virtual work, and new models of legal intervention have shaken the foundations of a conservative market that is resistant to change, forcing it to consider innovative options.

As historical context, we can consider that Legal Project Management originated in the legal field during the 2008 economic crisis, when clients needed greater control over pricing and more immediate responses from legal professionals. Today, in 2021, the environment in which legal professionals operate is under strong pressure related to the cost of services, better-informed and therefore more demanding clients, and significant productivity pressure within defined timeframes. These factors lead legal departments and law firms to implement Legal Project Management, achieving a system based on client orientation, phase-based organization, and collaborative work, with constant process evaluation to correct tasks when needed. “It moves from working in an isolated way to working in an organized way with master plans,” notes Aurea Barco González, Market Manager at Wolters Kluwer.

After analyzing the new context in which we work and the availability of new work tools that have been tested globally, we as professionals are required to understand what Legal Project Management is and evaluate whether it is worth implementing.

Ask yourself: What would be a valuable reason not to consider Project Management in my legal practice? Should we examine the vision of improving, understanding the application, and obtaining the benefits? Legal Project Management is here to stay. Do not wait to prepare and put it into practice.

Legal PM Partners, together with attorney Larry Bridgesmith, co-founder of the International Institute of Legal Project Management (IILPM), will offer a Legal Project Management course from November 11 to 13, 2021. We will have three full days packed with information and work tools that will improve management capabilities and techniques, while completing the 24 contact hours required to obtain the Legal Project Practitioner (LPP) certification from IILPM.