Myth: Project Management requires specialized skills
Reality: Legal Ops teams can successfully manage projects like the pros do (with these tips)
The discipline of project management provides a solid foundation for every activity conducted by a business. Legal Project Management (LPM) provides the control that enables Legal Operations professionals to define, demonstrate, and deliver value by using a proven business methodology that balances the scope of work, time, and available resources to achieve explicit success criteria. Legal Ops can use LPM practices to promote efficiency and productivity throughout the Department.
At its core, project management is 90% communication at critical points with the right stakeholders – such as the law department leadership team, business unit personnel, or the CFO – to manage expectations and deliver results. You can create checklists as an approach to supports the underlying strategy and summarizes the approach to the work.
Legal Ops professionals should ask the following five broad questions at the outset and at critical checkpoints throughout a project:
1. WHY are we doing this project? (What valuable purpose does it serve?)
2. WHAT tasks and activities will accomplish the goal? (What work is out of scope or unnecessary?)
3. WHEN and in what sequence should the work be done? (Have we considered the uncertainties and dependencies of timing and resources?)
4. HOW do we manage the work, given constraints and requirements that are within and out of our control?
5. WHO is the right person to be involved in the work, and what is each person’s role and responsibility?
The answers to these questions have consequences for timing, resource allocation, work plans, the scope of work, stakeholders, roles and responsibilities, teamwork, training, communications throughout the project, status reporting, and stakeholder satisfaction.
Let’s break it down into the four stages of a project. Intake; Planning; Execution and Monitoring; and Review.
Intake occurs when Legal Ops and project stakeholders collaboratively reach an agreement on the goals, objectives, and scope. At his stage, identify stakeholders and explicitly document and share the definition of a successful result. The definition of success, reinforced by the project sponsor, drives all the other aspects of the project. Address any conflicts at this point to avoid later sources of tension. Also, establish a mechanism for resolving differences between stakeholders upfront, particularly across functions.
The Planning process ensures that the scope of work is well-defined, with sign-off by the project sponsor. Sometimes this is the point where the team identifies the real sponsor, which can have a significant impact on the success of the project.
A work plan should also be formulated, taking into consideration time constraints, resources, and complexity. During this process, it is critical to document the assumptions associated with the phases of work; revisit these as the project evolves. It is also helpful to create a timeline or Gantt chart to reflect time constraints and the expected duration of phases. They, too, will change, so having the documentation helps frame everyone’s expectations about when they will need to be available. When developed collaboratively and communicated effectively, planning documentation reduces and even eliminates bottlenecks and fire drills.
It helps to identify basic plans for contingencies such as delays and cost overruns. Establish the frequency of status checks, communication, and metrics for monitoring the project early on. Open and honest discussion at this stage is vital to avoid running into misunderstandings and crosscurrents as the project proceeds.
While there are often too many meetings, the kick-off meeting is an indispensable one. It sets the tone for sound stewardship of resources, accountability of team members, formally confirming goals and timelines, and reinforcing the definition of success.
Execution and Monitoring include continuously checking that the work meets expectations. Ensuring expected quality and outcomes requires significant tact, empathy, and awareness of the experience of team members. A well-managed project is not a series of ad hoc reviews and scrambling to submit reports to management. It is an ongoing process, embedded in regular and appropriate communication. Some projects may require specific reporting to individual stakeholders or updates in regular status communications.
As the project manager tackles challenges such as milestones that do not meet the definition of success, it is helpful to revisit the agreement on the scope documented during the Intake phase. Also, brief the project sponsor on potential implications regarding the timetable and use of resources. If the project sponsor is unwilling to support these variations from the project plan, Legal Ops professionals will need to find an alternative path to successfully meet stakeholder expectations.
The final stage of a project, Review, is too often scuttled. During this stage, it is crucial to look for what worked well and establish it as a best practice. The review stage is an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the value of Legal Ops and the commitment to continuous improvement. It is also the time for the team to demonstrate accountability when things do not go according to plan.
Legal Ops facilitates change in the law department culture by communicating success stories about both the project outcome and how the team used LPM to be productive and efficient. It is worth socializing the fact that the established Statement of Work kept stakeholders aligned, and the work plan improved efficiency. At this point, it is useful to reflect on how to apply the LPM methodology more broadly, such as having lawyers adopt the tools to more efficiently collaborate with business partners.
LPM provides the vocabulary for communication with all parts of the legal supply chain. It reduces waste, minimizes surprising outcomes and costs, manages overall costs and spending, and makes successful completion more likely. LPM is a powerful and effective platform for conveying the value of Legal Ops and harnesses a business competency in a unique professional services environment.
A leader in legal project management education, consulting and coaching, Aileen Leventon, JD, MBA, draws on more than 25 years as an operations professional, practicing lawyer, and author. She is an active participant in legal industry standard-setting and peer organizations such as the ACC, CLOC, and the ABA, with contributions to leadership in legal project management, managing change, process improvement, data analytics, knowledge management, and sourcing. Aileen is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an Accredited Training Provider for the International Institute of Legal Project Management.
Originally published in ACC Legal Operations Observer – March 2020
About the Author
Aileen Leventon, JD, MBA, FIILPM, Senior Advisor & Consultant, LegalShift, LLC
A leader in legal project management education, consulting and coaching, Aileen Leventon, JD, MBA, draws on more than 25 years as an operations professional, practicing lawyer, and author. She is an active participant in legal industry standard-setting and peer organizations such as the ACC, CLOC, and the ABA, with contributions to leadership in legal project management, managing change, process improvement, data analytics, knowledge management, and sourcing. Aileen is a Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and an Accredited Training Provider for the International Institute of Legal Project Management.