Implementing legal project management will not only help your law firm to work more efficiently and increase client satisfaction, it will give you a competitive edge too. Here are five project management lessons that are worth incorporating into the legal industry:
1. Think like a project manager
Project managers have to be leaders, managers, communicators and problem solvers all at once. Every project needs a manager to plan, set a budget, create schedules and identify and mitigate risks. But a PM also needs soft skills to interact with a lot of different stakeholders such as customers, executives and team members. The best thing to do is to either appoint a person who takes on project management tasks next to their regular workload or hire a consultant who works exclusively as project manager.
2. Make a plan
The first step for any project is always to have clear objectives and goals and that’s going to help you to identify the steps you have to take to reach them. Next, break down your tasks into smaller segments and prioritise them. Visualise which tasks have to be done before the next ones can start with a Gantt chart, for example. Determine which tasks are critical to your project’s completion (a critical path). Then plan your budget and allocate the necessary resources. You also need to identify eventual risks and measures on how to avoid them entirely or, if that is not possible, to mitigate them.
3. Be flexible
Accept that there will always be changes and that no matter how carefully you plan, something will happen that might veer your project off course. Your clients might demand regular status updates or some other change of plan. Or maybe there is a sudden legislative change. Some changes might be unfeasible, but that doesn’t mean the whole project is a failure. If you have implemented PM correctly you will probably already have anticipated this or at least prepared an alternative plan for such a situation.
4. Standardise and improve processes
Each case and client is different, but there are some that have very similar processes. Compile these processes and you won’t have to start from scratch for each case. That way you can work much more efficiently and give your clients a much better cost estimate because you already know which steps to take in such a case. Project management can also help you identify which processes are inefficient and where improvements can be made.
5. Use technology
Digitisation has reduced paper chaos dramatically and has also made business much easier. Project management software can help with tools to plan and manage your legal projects and it allows you to create and track budgets. Furthermore, law firms have to work with a lot of documents and you can easily lose track of them. You can assign certain documents to specific tasks and projects and communicate and collaborate easier.
Source: Law Technology Today