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Project Management for Lawyers

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

Format:
Paperback

Pages:
115

ISBN:
9781907787614

About the authors

Barbara J Boake
Barbara J Boake is a senior partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLP, practising in the areas of bankruptcy, insolvency and restructuring. With over 20 years of practice experience and having served on her firm’s board of partners and its executive team, Barbara was named one of the ‘Top 100 Most Powerful Women’ in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network. While a member of her firm’s executive team she was responsible for leading the development and implementation of the firm’s ‘Dialogue Project Management™’ programme. Barbara speaks regularly on all aspects of project management for the legal profession. Barbara can be contacted via email at McCarthy Tétrault LLP.
Rick A Kathuria

Rick A Kathuria
Rick Kathuria is a professional engineer, certified management consultant and a certified project management professional with over 15 years of experience working on large international projects at top tier consulting firms, before starting his own consulting firm. His projects included managing multimillion dollar projects internationally, as well as the implementation of internal project management offices for several of his clients. He also serves in a leadership role in operating the Project Management Institute’s ‘Legal Project Management Community of Practice’. He has been working with McCarthy Tétrault LLP as head of its IT development group and director of its project management office, where he oversees major implementation projects. He has spent the last few years working with senior partners of the firm to develop project management training and he designed the tools that they are currently using. In this capacity, he was also responsible for delivering training to lawyers and providing ongoing coaching to help them effectively project manage their legal mandates. Rick is available for contact via email at McCarthy Tétrault LLP.

Price
£199 (£9.50 p&p)