2024 IILPM Awards – Winners

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – Rooted entirely in the LPM methodology, Litigation Service is CMS Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo’s bespoke solution for large companies seeking to efficiently manage their litigation portfolios. This initiative brings together a multidisciplinary team of lawyers, legal project managers, technologists, and support staff to deliver a competitive, reliable, and client-focused service.

Tailored to the unique needs of each client, this service is underpinned by a data-driven approach that harnesses cutting-edge technology and the firm’s extensive project management expertise to seamlessly support clients in their day-to-day legal operations. Beyond resolving litigation, CMS aims to provide a holistic solution that enhances efficiency, control, and strategic oversight over legal matters.

Launched in 2018 in response to the legal and operational complexities of volume litigation in Spain, CMS now manages over 30,000 cases for 15 leading companies, whose trust and collaboration have been key to the project’s success.

In partnership with each client, CMS develops customized guidelines for legal management, with a focus on mitigating risks and identifying opportunities for improvement. Emphasis is placed on robust reporting systems to capture essential data that drives performance and value creation. This approach fosters greater competitiveness, efficiency, and sustainability.

The evaluation of the benefits brought by the application of the LPM methodology is unequivocally positive, reflecting substantial improvements in both operational excellence and client satisfaction.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – Forte Workplace Law specializes in navigating the complex world of employment law with dedication and expertise. In response to the increasing complexity and volume of workplace investigations, the firm set out to develop an innovative solution using Microsoft Planner to streamline tracking and management processes. This project aimed to enhance collaboration, increase efficiency, and ensure the firm could support the team members’ capacity within the workplace investigations process.

Forte Workplace Law’s primary goal was to create a centralized platform where their legal team could easily manage ongoing investigations and investigator team availability, assign tasks, monitor progress, and maintain documentation, if required, in a transparent manner. They envisioned a user-friendly interface that would facilitate communication among team members and provide real-time updates on case statuses utilizing the software they already had access to.

Implementing Microsoft Planner for tracking workplace investigations has led to significant improvements in operational efficiency by increasing collaboration, improving visibility, and producing time savings. Team members can now assign and update tasks in real-time, which has enhanced accountability and reduced delays in communication. Investigation leads can easily access dashboards to view the status of investigations, leading to informed decision-making. The streamlined processes have reduced the time spent on administrative tasks, intake, interviews, and report writing, allowing the Forte legal team to focus more on substantive legal work.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – Epiq is a global leader in providing legal and business services to law firms, corporations, financial institutions, and government agencies. The company’s solutions help clients optimize their business processes, manage class actions and mass torts, and more. This project focused on reducing idle and non-billable time for lawyers, while improving overall utilization and efficiency across projects.

Epiq applied continuous improvement strategies, starting by analysing three years of historical data to determine the optimal number of cases each lawyer could handle at any given time. The team then identified key stakeholders at every stage of the workflow and conducted collaborative sessions to implement a robust tracking mechanism. This created the necessary transparency, fostering better communication and reducing trust issues and escalations.

By setting a minimum billable utilization percentage based on past performance, Epiq was able to enhance the productivity of each lawyer. This led to faster file movement, less non-billable time, and improved stakeholder communication. As a result, the project significantly reduced costs by increasing output with fewer lawyers, improved transparency with internal and external stakeholders, and achieved a client satisfaction score of 48%. As a result, the project significantly reduced costs by increasing output with fewer lawyers, and improved transparency with internal and external stakeholders.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – The Central Bank of Armenia (CBA) is a state-empowered legal entity with the primary goal of maintaining price and financial stability. As part of its new transformation agenda, the CBA has implemented legal project management to reform its regulatory system, a critical component of policy and regulatory decision-making, under the project entitled “Better Regulation in CBA.” This initiative focuses on creating effective, targeted regulations that achieve their objectives with minimal burden, fostering trust in the CBA and enhancing its ability to address future challenges.

The CBA’s legal department developed a comprehensive set of legal, institutional, procedural, and organizational tools to streamline policymaking and rulemaking. These tools are applied consistently across policy papers and regulatory drafts, ensuring alignment with the CBA’s Annual Strategy and policy priorities.

The “Better Regulation” initiative aims to improve policy and regulatory quality by:

• Developing evidence-based legislation and policy decisions,
• Balancing the costs and benefits of regulation,
• Avoiding overregulation and unnecessary administrative burdens, and
• Strengthening stakeholder consultation processes.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – Naranja X’s primary mission is to provide digital financial services. In its pursuit of efficiency and innovation, the legal department has developed NIXI, an AI-powered chatbot. This virtual assistant is revolutionizing how internal customers access information and resolve queries, freeing legal professionals from repetitive tasks and allowing them to focus on more strategic activities.

Previously, all internal queries—from corporate matters to security issues—were handled by lawyers or technical teams, creating a heavy workload and diverting attention from more complex tasks. By leveraging interdisciplinary teams, agile methodologies, and close collaboration with the Automation team, the legal department at Naranja X has successfully launched disruptive projects that enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. NIXI is a standout example.

NIXI is chatbot based on artificial intelligence. This intelligent virtual assistant is transforming the way the legal department’s internal customers have access to information and solve their queries. NIXI connects to internal knowledge bases, delivering precise and immediate responses to a wide range of questions.

Key benefits include:

• 24/7 availability – NIXI is accessible at all times, even outside business hours, ensuring continuous information access;
• standardized answers – it provides consistent, accurate information, preventing misunderstandings and ensuring uniform responses;
• time savings – by handling routine queries, NIXI frees up lawyers and technical teams to focus on high-value, strategic tasks; and
• operational efficiency – automating responses to FAQs improves efficiency and shortens response times.

NIXI uses OpenAI’s API in a secure environment to process natural language queries and provide relevant answers. It integrates with knowledge bases provided by technical teams and supports contract-related queries by generating documents with electronic signatures, speeding up processes and ensuring traceability. The Legal Ops team is committed to training the entire company on how to interact effectively with NIXI. This includes developing clear, concise prompts to obtain the most accurate information.

Additionally, Naranja X has implemented a web portal to automatically respond to consumer protection complaints. A customer behaviour alerts system now allows teams specializing in anti-money laundering to focus solely on analysis, rather than data collection, and another initiative, PAGOS 360, processes judicial and administrative payments in record time. These innovations demonstrate Naranja X’s commitment to driving efficiency and delivering superior digital services.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – The Superior Court of Justice (STJ) of Río Negro in Argentine Patagonia is undergoing significant transformations as part of its Strategic Plan, launched in 2016. This plan aims to enhance justice delivery by focusing on technology, processes, people, and citizen engagement. The main goal is to modernize and reorganize the judiciary to create a more efficient, accessible, and citizen-centred system, where human and technological resources are optimized to meet the increasing demands on judicial services. A key initiative of this reform is the introduction of Integrated Processing Offices (OTI, by its Spanish acronym Oficina de Tramitación Integral) in various branches of law. OTIs separate administrative tasks from judicial responsibilities, enabling judges to focus solely on legal matters. Administrative functions—such as public service, case management, document handling, and payments—are managed by specialized staff in OTIs, alleviating the burden on judges.

Before OTIs were introduced, judges were responsible not only for their judicial work but also for organizational and administrative tasks, which slowed down case resolution and impacted the quality of legal decisions. With OTIs now in place, judges can dedicate themselves to their core legal duties, improving the speed and thoroughness of judicial processes. This shift has significantly enhanced the efficiency of the judiciary, ensuring that cases are managed more effectively, and decisions are of higher quality. The OTI model was first applied in the Family, Civil, Criminal, Labor, and Administrative Litigation Courts across the province. In the past year, OTIs have been established in key judicial districts, including San Carlos de Bariloche, Cipolletti, General Roca, and Choele Choel. These offices have strengthened the province’s ability to provide more specialized and equitable legal services.

The Strategic Plan relies on Legal Project Management (LPM) tools and methodologies, with a focus on continuous improvement. Each initiative is designed to optimize resources, improve organizational efficiency, and ensure that management practices align with long-term objectives. By embracing this comprehensive approach, the STJ is building a more efficient and sustainable judicial system in Rio Negro that better meets the needs of its citizens.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION – Hivelight is an innovative legal project management platform designed to optimize law firm operations by providing real-time visibility, task automation, and seamless collaboration. It integrates smoothly with widely used practice management systems such as Clio, ActionStep, and Smokeball, equipping law firms with tools to efficiently manage tasks, deadlines, and resources.

Hivelight’s centralizes task tracking and automates repetitive processes, enabling legal teams to work more efficiently, reduce administrative overhead, and make informed, data-driven decisions.

The platform was developed to give legal teams real-time control over their operations, enhance efficiency through automation, and foster collaboration across departments, including remote teams. The project’s goal was to expand Hivelight’s functionality beyond traditional legal project management by introducing innovations such as:

• dynamic task management, which simplifies how legal teams prioritize and track tasks across multiple cases;
• real-time matter insights, providing live updates on case progress and key milestones;
• scalable workflows, allowing firms to tailor workflows to their unique processes as they grow;
• integrated analytics, offering actionable insights through real-time reporting to support data-driven decisions; and
• customizable roadmaps, facilitating process automation while maintaining the flexibility needed for evolving legal matters.

The product’s true innovation lies in its scalability and adaptability, enabling firms to optimize their operations while retaining the agility required to navigate a dynamic legal environment. Through close partnerships and a user-centred design approach, Hivelight continues to empower legal professionals globally in their pursuit of operational excellence.

IE Law School – The “Legal Project Management” program at IE Law School was launched in 2012 and is the first program of its kind in the world delivered in Spanish. In 2021, incorporating knowledge on process management, it evolved into the LPM&LPI Program (Legal Project Management & Process Improvement), integrating new frameworks tailored for the 21st-century lawyer. The aim is for both law firms and corporate legal departments to learn and apply the core principles of these disciplines, enhancing the necessary skills to manage not only legal projects but also strategic, organizational, and digital transformation projects with greater efficiency, agility, and quality. These new approaches, in addition to generating higher profitability and sustainability, also improve client experience by focusing on the delivery of legal services and foster a better work environment by encouraging collaboration and co-creation within cross-functional teams. Since 2012, the program has trained more than 300 lawyers from Spain, Latin America, and across Europe, also offering them the opportunity to obtain international certification from the IILPM. The program has received awards for academic excellence, both in its face to face and online formats.

Vanderbilt Law School – The Vanderbilt Law School course in Legal Project Management was first offered in 2014. It has been offered every academic year since that time. I co-founded the Program on Law & Innovation (PoLI) that year and LPM was one of the first courses offered in the program. The program uses the IILPM framework in an experiential course to instil practice readiness to law students which helps them join or help launch LPM programs in their workplaces upon graduation. Since that time, the course is “oversubscribed” each term and students enroll early in order to get in the class. More than 300 students have graduated with the credentials of an LPP under the IILPM guidelines. Each year students reach out to see if I can override the wait list so they can enroll. I am unable to grant those requests (Larry Bridgesmith, Co-founder Program on Law & Innovation).

The Sociedad para Asistencia Legal de Puerto Rico (SAL-PR) is a private, non-profit organization with a mission to promote justice for economically disadvantaged individuals by providing them with high-quality legal services free of charge, ensuring equal protection under the law. The Legal Assistance Program for Mental Health Processes (PALPSM) was established using Legal Project Management methodology to enable it to serve an expanding population. It operates through a cross-functional team that includes attorneys, social workers, and administrative assistants from across the island, all led by a Legal Project Manager.

The PALPSM program was founded with two primary objectives: (1) providing legal assistance to both participants and petitioners and (2) conducting educational outreach within the community to raise awareness of the needs of mental health patients and inform citizens of their rights.

The multidisciplinary team ensures legal representation is available throughout all municipalities in Puerto Rico, addressing the diverse needs of patients and petitioners alike. By offering comprehensive services, the program fosters ongoing support for individuals, contributing to their overall well-being. The educational initiatives have reached over 7,000 individuals, significantly enhancing public understanding of current laws and regulations that protect mental health patients, empowering them with knowledge of their rights and the legal resources available to them.

This is the first legal assistance program in Puerto Rico to cover all judicial regions, staffed by a multi-functional team and implementing Legal Project Management from its inception. The program has defined processes, performance metrics, and structured communications with stakeholders. Over the past 14 months, SAL-PR has addressed and impacted more than 3,000 cases. Since many of these cases involve multiple follow-up hearings, the program handles over 11,000 court hearings annually.