Legal Project Management and Its Methodology

Why are many firms and legal departments implementing legal project management (LPM) in the delivery of their services?

Planning makes it possible to establish a structured guide for achieving defined scopes. For this reason, we support the application of project management to legal matters, because it provides tools that make it possible to apply a strategic and organizational methodology aligned with better use of time and resources, both professional and financial. This, in turn, helps fulfill the responsibilities of the legal professional as well as the interests of the people served, in terms of diligence, communication, and costs. Legal knowledge joins with management to offer an efficient, high-quality service.

Traditionally, project management was used in professions such as civil engineering and the military; however, it has evolved into a discipline in itself that provides a wide range of highly useful tools for any profession, including law.

Legal practice has evolved. We see how legal professionals have become integrated into banking, insurance, tourism, hospitals, telecommunications, nonprofit organizations, and other sectors. Given the multiple legal provisions that regulate these industries, organizations have created departments or hired law firms to handle legal and regulatory compliance, as well as legal aspects of the company’s various projects.

Faced with this reality, legal professionals must attend to multiple projects simultaneously, which involve executing tasks through personnel who must be monitored to comply with project scope and established dates. An example of this is when a company decides to incorporate new services, add affiliates, or add suppliers to its operation. This requires human and financial resources, verification of applicable regulations, collaboration among departments such as human resources and finance, and the development of new policies. In the case of organizations, the client may be an executive committee that decided to incorporate services or affiliates.

Legal project management facilitates the creation of a plan that incorporates both the required tasks and resources, manages risks and quality expectations for the company and collaborators, establishes deliverables and dates, and ultimately achieves the goal, measures project success, and reflects on lessons learned that will help standardize similar future projects. Through the four phases of the legal project management methodology, as established by the International Institute of Legal Project Management – Definition, Planning, Delivery, and Closure – projects can be managed effectively.

In the definition phase, the project itself is determined: purpose, scope, objectives, assumptions, and constraints. In planning, the tasks that will guide project execution, the necessary resources, and potential risks are established. During execution, it is important to include sessions in which resources communicate completed tasks, tasks in progress, and difficulties encountered, so they can be managed in a way that minimizes the impact on deliverable dates and the budget. Finally, in the delivery phase, the client accepts the completion of all deliverables and the project is finalized. During closure, a reflection is conducted on how the project was carried out, and a critical analysis is made of the factors that positively or negatively affected execution in order to establish which tasks, activities, or processes should be maintained, improved, or eliminated for future planning of similar projects.