(Webinar Slides) Introduction to Legal Project Management - Why It Matters for Solos and Small Firms

#LegalProjectManagement
Legal Project Management
for Solo & Smalls
How to Streamline Your Firm's Workflow Processes

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Mark E. Lassiter
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Email: mlassiter@lassiterlawfirm.com
@MarkELassiter

Poll Question
Question: Have you ever HEARD of “Legal
Project Management” before?
1. No, I haven’t – this is my first time
2. Yes, I have, but I don’t really know what it is
3. Yes, I have, and my firm is trying to implement it right
now
4. Yes, I have, and we ARE using LPM right now, but I’m
trying to see how others are doing so too

1. Explain, Define and Illustrate “Legal Project Management” (“LPM”)
2. Infuse sufficient THEORY to startle you enough to effect culture
change in your firm or practice
• Rise of ‘Value Billing’ as increasingly predominant pricing method
• Can’t PROFITABLY adopt ‘Value Billing’ without LPM
• How LPM may change what law firms look like
3. Explain a simple LPM Lifecycle
4. Answer Questions

The 21st Century Facts of Life…
Law practice has IRREVERSIBLY CHANGED
since 2008 ‘Great Recession’
Law practice is moving quickly & irreversibly away
from Hourly Billing to VALUE BASED BILLING
arrangements (“AFAs”)
If you don’t get the above you’re either clueless or in
denial - either way you’re screwed…

Importance of LPM to AFA Adoption
…
‣ You can not profitably do value based billing or AFAs
if you don’t know and use legal project management –
AFAs w/o LPM = “Suicide Pricing”
‣ Value Billing & AFAs are the ‘tail wagging the dog'
of the emerging field of Legal Project Management

What you may not know, or adequately appreciate…
‣ The biggest hurdles to implementation of LPM in Law Practices is
CULTURAL, not TECHNICAL
‣ They are CULTURAL because, when LPM and VALUE BILLING are taken
together to their logical conclusion, they will drastically alter (and may
destroy) the latter 20th Century ‘Pyramid’ or early 21st Century ‘Diamond’
Shaped Law Firms as business models
‣ Most Equity Partners are still invested in the ‘Pyramid’ or ‘Diamond’ Law
Firm models (e.g., lease guarantors), so they don’t want their firms to change
‣ Can’t respond to market demands without change

What’s a Project?
‣ The Project Management Institute’s (“PMI®’s”),
Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) defines a
project as:
‣"... a temporary endeavor to
create a unique product,
service, or result."
Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge,
(PMBOK® Guide) – Fifth Edition, Project Management Institute, Inc. 2013, Page 3

“Legal Project Management” Defined …
“Legal project management is the application of
the concepts of project management to the control
and management of legal cases or matters.
Practitioners of legal project management apply it
to the mechanics and business of providing legal
services rather than to the substantive legal work
itself.”
‣ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But aren’t lawyers already “Project Managers”?
How Trained Project
Managers See Lawyers as
“Project Managers”…
Hey, but football is football, right?
How Lawyers See
Themselves as “Project
Managers”…

Lawyers as “Accidental Project
Managers”
“Accidental Project Manager: Someone
who is or has become a project manager
without specific training. Sometimes they
are thrust into the role; others see a need
and step up, perhaps later recognizing that
what they’re doing is project management.
Some of the absolute best project managers
I’ve known began as accidental project
managers.”
Steven Levy

BakerManage™
- Baker
Donelson’s
Legal Project
& Process
Methodology
But times are changing …

SeyfarthLean™
Seyfarth
Shaw’s Legal
Project &
Process
Methodology
But times are changing …

So, why is the legal profession, which has
been around for HUNDREDS of years, just
now getting around to “project management”?
An Important Question…

The “Billable Hour” is going by the way side
as Alternative Fee Arrangements (“AFAs”)
based on ‘Value Billing’ emerges as the ‘New
Normal’
The Answer …

Corporate
America’s
Response
to the
Billable
Hour…

Corporate America’s Response…

“Value” Simply Defined…
What Clients Want
Better
Faster
Cheaper
How Law Firms Deliver

PEOPLE
CHEAPER
VALUE
Correlations…

Value Engineering Defined
An organized effort directed at analyzing the
functions of systems, … [and] services… for the
purpose of achieving the essential functions at the
lowest life-cycle cost consistent with required
performance, reliability, quality, and safety...
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars_a131

Key Concept in Value Engineering…
“All Cost is for Function”
Source: SAVE International®
http://value-eng.org/value_engineering.php

Key Definitions
Value = Function/Cost
Where:
‣ Value is the reliable performance of functions to meet customer
needs at the lowest overall cost.
‣ Function is the natural or characteristic action performed by a
product or service.
‣ Cost is the expenditure necessary to produce a project, service,
process, or structure.
Source: SAVE International® -

How I’d Change the ‘Value’ Definition for Law
Value = Function/Cost x IMPACT!
Where:
‣ Value is the reliable performance of functions to meet customer
needs at the lowest overall cost.
‣ Function is the natural or characteristic action performed by a
product or service.
‣ Cost is the expenditure necessary to produce a project, service,
process, or structure.
‣ Impact is the result of the Functions and Cost
Source: SAVE International® -

“FAST” Diagram of Law firm
Conflict of Interest Process
Function Analysis Systems Technique (“FAST”)

“FAST” Diagram of Law Firm
Conflict of Interest Process

A ‘Project Plan’ Often Just Translates Processes & Functions into a Time-Phased,
Budgeted, Organized, Sequenced Action Plan…

Poll Question
Question: Do you USE “Legal Project
Management” in any way in your practice?
1. No, not really, but I’m interested in doing so
2. Yes, but only for administrative matters
3. Yes, for some, simple types of legal matters
4. Yes, we’re using it for complex legal matters

Altman Weil 2012 Survey
© 2012 Altman Weil, Inc. Fair use claimed.

Altman Weil 2014 Survey
© 2014 Altman Weil, Inc. Fair use claimed.

PMI®’s Project
Management
Knowledge Areas
& Process Groups
Project Management Institute, A Guide to the
Project Management Body of Knowledge,
(PMBOK® Guide) – Fifth Edition, Project
Management Institute, Inc. 2013, Table 3-1, Page
60
PMBOK® Guide is a registered mark of the Project
Management Institute, Inc.

IMPORTANT POINT!
Consumer Clients have the Same Desires
and Concerns for Pricing Value,
Predictability and Certainty as Do Big
Corporate Clients – this is where
EVERYTHING is going…

The Bottom Line…
‣ Law practice is moving quickly & irreversibly to VALUE
BASED BILLING arrangements (“AFAs”)
‣ You can not profitably do value based billing or AFAs if
you don’t know and use legal project management – AFAs
w/o LPM = “Suicide Pricing”
‣ Value Billing & AFAs are the ‘tail wagging’ LPM

So, How will Legal Project
Management Change the Legal
Profession in the Future?

Wall Street Journal – Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Latter 20th Century Law Firm
‘Pyramid’ Economic Model

Equity Partners
Jr. Partners
Associates
OVERHEAD
Latter 20th Century Law Firm
‘Pyramid’ Economic Model

OVERHEAD
Negative
Revenues from
Less Work
Shrinking volume of
legal work… Equity
Partners
Jr. Partners
Associates

The Legal Industry’s Reaction???

Equity Partners
Jr. Partners
Associates???
Early 21st Century Law Firm
‘Diamond’ Economic Model

But does the ‘Diamond’ Shaped
Firm really solve the problem?

Let’s break it down…
What do
Lawyers &
Law Firms
Really Do?
Source: Jeff Carr

Historic law firm
essential services
Advocacy
Counseling
& Advice
Content
Processes
Source: Jeff Carr

Advocacy
Counseling
& Advice
Content
Processes

Advocacy
Counseling
& Advice
Content
Processes
The “Unbundling”
of Legal Services

“Unbundling” of 21st Century Legal Services
Lawyers Paralegals Staff
Non-Firm/
Outsourced
Workers
Firm
Employees
Originating or
Responsible Attorney
Future legal teams may be a ‘mixed bag’…
Lawyers Paralegals Staff

The Modern Dilemma - A
Lawyer’s Competing Demands…
Law Firm
Increase firm/own
income by
generating work
done by firm’s own
employees?
Outsource work to
non-firm workers
who can do it
better, faster,
cheaper?
Clients

The inherent conflict between the best interests of the
‘Firm’ and of the ‘Client’
Law Firm wants to keep its
high-priced, traditional,
‘Pyramid’ or ‘Diamond’
way of doing business…
Client wants VALUE –
doesn’t care about
preserving the Law
Firm’s ‘structure’
How will this
inherent tension
play out?

The End of Lawyers?
“[This] book (points) to a future in which
conventional legal advisers will be much less
prominent in society than today and, in some walks of
life, will have no visibility at all. This … is where we
will be taken by TWO FORCES: by a market
pull towards COMMODITIZATION and by
pervasive development and uptake of
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
Commoditization and IT will shape and characterize
twenty-first century legal service.” (Emphasis added.)
Richard Susskind, Legal Futurist

Commoditization of GOODS 1780-1880
“Guilded Era” of Craftsmen, Journeymen,
Apprentices, etc.
“Gilded Age” of the Industrial
Revolution

Commoditization of SERVICES
1990 - Present in IT Age & ‘.COM’ Era
Content from “Bespoke,”
‘custom made’ services, etc.
Commoditized, Web Generated
Content

“Tailor” made,
“customized”
legal work –
“from scratch”
(e.g., drafting
of entirely new
type of contract
for a new
industry)
BESPOKE
Development of
checklists &
procedures -
development of
‘templates’ for
repeat work
formerly of the
‘bespoke’ kind
(example:
“incorporations”)
STANDARDIZED SYSTEMATIZED PACKAGED
Legal work so
commonplace and
routine that it
becomes ‘OPEN
SOURCE’ and
even free (e.g.,
access to justice
issues, etc.)
COMMODITIZED
Automation of
checklists &
workflows for
high-volume tasks
& activities by
many people –
“document
assembly” used
(e.g., “collections
work”)
Packaging of
legal content &
expertise made
available on-line
on a licensing
basis – “Lawyer
makes money
while sleeping”
(“LegalZoom”)
The Evolution of Legal Services
Susskind, Richard (2013-01-10). Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future
(pp. 24-28). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.

Individuals
Small
Businesses
Regional
Businesses
National
Businesses
Global
Businesses
Bespoke Standardize
d
Systematized Productized Commoditized
Artisan Guild Multidisciplinary Teams Low Cost Providers
BigLaw LeanLaw
e.g., Seyfarth
NewLaw – e.g.
Axiom, Novus Law
e-Discovery
Vendors
Legal Publishers
e.g., LegalZoom,
Rocket Lawyer
PeopleLaw
– e.g.,
Modria and
Legal Force
Criminal Defense
/ Public
Defenders
Regional Law Firms
Solo & Small Firms
In-House Vertical
Integration TechLaw
KM &
Analytics
Vendors
E.g., kCura,
Recommind,
Lex Machina,
KM Standards,
Neota Logic,
Exemplify
Green Zone – growing
Susskind ‘s Market Evolution
“Two-Hemisphere”Continuum
X
Y
© 2014 William D Henderson
Used with permission.

An Important Question…
So, how do lawyers adapt to move from
the old ‘Bespoke/Hourly Billing’
practice model to the 21st Century
‘Sweet Spot’ of ‘Systematized,
Packaged, Productized’ practice
systems?

Richard Susskind on “New Jobs for Lawyers”
“In years to come, I predict that conventional lawyers will
not be as prominent in society as today. Clients will not
be inclined to pay expensive legal advisers for work that
can be undertaken by less expert people, supported by
smart systems and standard processes. This prediction
does not signal the end of lawyers entirely, but it does
point to a need for fewer traditional lawyers. At the same
time, when systems and processes play a more central
role in law, this opens up the possibility of important
new forms of legal service, and of exciting new jobs for
those lawyers who are sufficiently flexible, open-
minded, and entrepreneurial to adapt to changing
market conditions.”

Richard Susskind’s “8 New Jobs for Lawyers”
Table 11.1. New jobs for lawyers
The legal knowledge engineer
The legal technologist
The legal hybrid
The legal process analyst
The legal project manager
The ODR practitioner
The legal management consultant
The legal risk manager
“Although the long-term
prospects for most conventional
lawyers are much more limited
than in the past, I urge young
lawyers not to be de-
motivated or downhearted,
because there will be, I
believe, a promising range of
new opportunities and new
careers for people trained in
the law. I summarize these in
Table 11.1.”

Richard Susskind on “The Legal Process Analyst”
I have spoken … about decomposing deals and
disputes into their constituent tasks and sourcing
these tasks through a multitude of providers.
However, the job of analysing a piece of legal work,
subdividing the assignment into meaningful and
manageable chunks, and identifying the most appropriate
supplier of services for each, is itself a task that requires
deep legal insight and experience... It is a job for what I
call ‘the legal process analyst’. This individual will
often be employed within an in-house legal department…
[or] legal process analysis could be a service offered by
law firms or other third party providers such as
accounting firms or legal process out-sourcers. Today,
there are very few legal process analysts but they are
already in demand.

Richard Susskind on “The Legal Project Manager”
Once the work of the legal process analyst is done, the
deal or dispute that has been decomposed and prepared
for multi-sourcing will not look after itself. To ensure
the success of multi-sourcing, the legal market will
require what I call ‘the legal project manager’... [I]t
is the job of the legal project manager to allocate work
to a selection of appropriate providers, to ensure they
complete their decomposed work packages on time
and to budget, to control the quality of the various
packages, to oversee and supervise the output and
delivery, and to pull the various work packages
together into one seamless service for the client.
(pp. 114). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.

Richard Susskind on “The Legal Project Manager” [Cont.]
[Cont.] This is similar in many ways to the role of
the production manager in a manufacturing
environment. The discipline of legal project
management should, in my view, be built upon
theory and experience from related management
disciplines, such as logistics and supply-chain
management. No doubt, the legal sector will come
to develop its own sophisticated tools and
techniques, such as ‘legal supply-chain
management’ and ‘legal logistics’, which will be
core subjects in future courses on legal project
management.
(pp. 114). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition.

Lex Projex™ is a NON-Law Firm Company that Embraces
Susskind’s Ideas
Table 11.1. New jobs for
lawyers
The legal knowledge engineer
The legal technologist
The legal hybrid
The legal process analyst
The legal project manager
The ODR practitioner
The legal management
consultant
The legal risk manager

“Unbundled” Legal Services
[Legal] Tasks will become
unbundled as a result of
business pressures and
globalization. The trend of
unbundling will climb from
lower value tasks up to higher
value tasks, and the benefits
will be as available to the
local niche firm as they will
be to the global giant.
Galbenski, David; Barringer, David (2009-04-22). UNBOUND: How Entrepreneurship is
Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today (Kindle Locations 545-588).
Self-published. Kindle Edition. [Bold/Italicized emphasis added.]

Unbundled Legal Services
Unbundling will also enable wider collaboration. A project will be
organized into tasks. These tasks will be assigned to those best fitted to
get them done. A team will be put together. The team will work
together to complete the project, and when the project is done, the
team will disband. In this way, a team may be composed of a few
lawyers from one firm, contract staff from a local provider, and clerks
and paralegals on the other side of the world. Tasks will be assigned
based on efficiency, experience, and expertise. Team managers will
coordinate the project and staff the team. Unbundling will enable a
completely new and flexible method for organizing and providing
legal services.

[Legal] Tasks will become unbundled - A ‘Project Plan’ Often Just
Translates Tasks, Processes & Functions into a Time-Phased,
Budgeted, Organized, Sequenced Action Plan…

Automatically Generated Task
and Status Notices…

Monitoring Legal Task Performance with
Dashboards & Collaboration Websites …

See Your Case Status on Portable Devices…

One of Bruce MacEwen’s Ideas …
[A modern lawyer may even]…
become an exquisitely talented
maestro of assembling just-in-
time teams you put together for
one project at a time, with the
precise blend of talents,
capabilities, and capacities to get
the job done and then to
disperse (think producing a
Hollywood movie or
constructing a major downtown
office) …
MacEwen, Bruce (2012-12-10). Growth is Dead: Now What? Law firms on the
brink (Kindle Locations 1958-1976). Adam Smith, Esq., LLC. Kindle Edition.

Unbundled Legal Services
Entrepreneurs in this industry are
depending on the unbundling dynamic to
drive increasing collaboration and,
therefore, the creation of new legal-
service models. The new premium
compensation will be paid to project
managers (“movie producers”) who
can deliver the desired outcome with
increased efficiency and decreased cost.

Closed Legal Communities. The idea here is for restricted groups of
like-minded lawyers with common interests to come together and
collaborate online in private social networks. A cross between
LinkedIn and Wikipedia, but solely for the use of small groups of
lawyers, the users can build up bodies of collective knowledge and
experience. …
In pursuit of the collaboration strategy described [above], in-house
lawyers are expressing serious interest in these closed communities—
as platforms upon which they might share the costs of certain legal
services and also as a tool to encourage and enable closer collaboration
amongst their preferred law firms. For firms that are wedded to the
notion of servicing their clients separately, this poses a considerable
threat.
Will “Closed Legal Communities”
Replace Law Firms?
(p. 45). Oxford University Press, USA. Kindle Edition. (Emphasis added.)

Alternative Delivery Models
Entrepreneurs will be taking advantage of these
opportunities, but so will law departments, law
firms, and other providers. They will be looking
to software technology, intranets, and the
internet to share information, to access work
product, and to foster collaboration among
lawyers, staff members and clients.

“Just in Time Teams”?…
Alternatives to Law Firms?…

“The End of Law FIRMS?”
… Who needs them anyway?

* From Jordan Furlong Book –
EVOLUTIONARY ROAD, Pg. 14
Great quote from Legal Analyst & Thought Leader Jordan
Furlong about what new, small firms will start to look like in
about 2016*

Simple Legal Project Management Lifecycle
#2 Determine Tasks
#9 Manage Stakeholder
Communications &
Expectations
“Determine & Decompose
Deliverables,” Make
Checklist (i.e., “WBS”) “RASCI”/Collaboration Site.
#3 Schedule Tasks #8 Monitor Work &
Manage Changes“Determine Deadlines” &
“Order & Sequence Tasks” Dashboards & BMPs.
#4 Resource Tasks #7 Identify/Assess Risks
Assign Generic Resources
to Tasks; Estimate Work
Effort & Duration.
Plan for Risk – Do you “Avoid it?”,
“Transfer it?,” “Mitigate it?” or
“Accept it?”
.#5 Estimate Costs/Do Budget #6 Select Team & Assign Tasks
“Top Down” vs. “Bottom Up” Planning;
“Scope, Schedule, Cost, Quality Equilibrium”
#1 Get, Set Clear Client Goals #10 After Action/Knowledge Management
“Issues,” “Interests,” “Assumptions,”
“Requirements,” “Scope,” “$$$”
Lessons Learned & Recorded to use again.
Resource to the matter & budget!

Good, FREE, Resources for Getting Started on LPM in your Firm!!!
http://www.acc.com/valuechallenge/index.cfm

Legal Project Management Books & Publications

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Mark E. Lassiter
Direct: 480-218-4455
Email: mlassiter@lassiterlawfirm.com

(Webinar Slides) Introduction to Legal Project Management - Why It Matters for Solos and Small Firms

(Webinar Slides) Introduction to Legal Project Management - Why It Matters for Solos and Small Firms

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Editor's Notes