IN A highly competitive fee-focused environment, project management can be your law firm’s lifeline.
Project Management for Lawyers report provides a structured approach to planning, pricing and managing legal work that will boost profitability and deliver superior value to your clients. It aims to:
- Demonstrate the value of applying project management to a legal practice;
- Explain basic project management principles and how to apply them within your law firm;
- Provide a simple legal project management framework;
- Describe key tools and techniques to support the framework;
- Discuss legal project management as a pricing and business development strategy;
- Show how lawyers can manage matter profitability and demonstrate value to clients;
- Guide lawyers in overcoming the challenges in managing a matter profitably (time, scope and cost); and,
- Share practical advice on how to develop and implement a legal project management programme within your firm.
Real-life in-depth case studies provide valuable insight into the successful legal project management programmes of Dechert LLP, Eversheds LLP, Seyfarth Shaw LLP and McCarthy Tétrault.
A case study from the Royal Bank of Canada is also included to provide the a client's perspective on the value of legal project management.
Project Management for Lawyers also comes with a complimentary CDRom packed with useful forms, templates, checklists and frameworks that can be used immediately in planning and executing your own project management programme. These include:
- A generic work plan;
- A sample staffing profile;
- A sample agenda for a project kick-off meeting;
- A sample roles and responsibilities sheet;
- A client satisfaction review questionnaire;
- A project risk log;
- A sample change request form;
- A sample monitoring worksheet;
- An example of an agenda for a lessons learned session;
- An example of how to calculate leverage on matter profitability;
- A completed monitoring worksheet; and
- A work plan for an asset purchase.
Contents:
Chapter 1: The business case for project management
Chapter 2: Project management foundational principles
Chapter 3: A simple legal project management framework
Chapter 4: Defining a project
Chapter 5: Planning a project
Chapter 6: Project execution
Chapter 7: Monitoring a project
Chapter 8: Evaluating a project.
Chapter 9: Linking project management to pricing strategies
Chapter 10: Developing your own framework – A project plan
Case study 1: McCarthy Tétrault LLP – Legal project management – A strategic priority for the firm
Case study 2: Dechert LLP – Developing best practice in legal project management
Case study 3: Eversheds LLP – Achieving certainty in cost, scope and time
Case study 4: Seyfarth Shaw LLP – Building an effective service delivery programme for clients
Case study 5: Royal Bank of Canada – A client’s perspective on law firm pricing
Appendix 1: An asset purchase Gantt chart
Appendix 2: A generic work plan
Appendix 3: A work plan for an asset purchase
Appendix 4: A completed monitoring worksheet
Appendix 5: A sample staffing profile
Appendix 6: A sample change request form