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Ron:

So here are my ‘Top 10 Ingredients to embed project management successfully in law firms:

1.     Motivation:  Partners must feel client pressure for, or see, the competitive necessity of doing project management.

2.     Management Support:  The Executive Committee must support the LPM initiative and encourage adoption.

3.     Establish the Matter Scope and Budget:  The firm and client must negotiate the matter scope and budget.

4.     Create an Activity Plan:  The firm must translate the agreed-upon scope and budget to reasonably granular activities / tasks and assignment of fee earners to them.

5.     Monitor Progress against the Plan: The firm must regularly monitor progress – time billed and task completion – against the plan.

6.     Communicate Progress to the Client: Regularly communicate progress against plan to the client.

7.     Integrate with the Finance System:  Tracking progress requires access to time entries and the ability to incorporate phase-task code sets, which requires support from the finance department. 

8.     Fee Earner Cooperation: Punctual time entry and regular reporting of task status.

9.     Designated Matter Manager:  Someone with responsibility and authority to manage a matter: track actuals vs. plan and cause fee earners to cooperate with tracking.

10.  Supporting Software:  Software that makes it easy for fee earners to report task status and that provides an easy-to-use overview of the entire matter for matter managers.

A Hint and a Qualifier: Long term success does require active client communication; short term, however, firms should practice project management first.  Setting up sensible budgets at the outset based on pricing that clients want and that yields the firm’s target profit margins has additional and different requirements.

Thank you Ron – the perfect recipe indeed - I can’t wait to see what comes out of my oven!

Keep following to hear more from global industry leaders on how to get LPM to stick so you don’t get stuck.

Until then,

Michelle