Legal Project Management: Why Process Is Important

While process improvement has had a long history in manufacturing, it has a very spotted history with knowledge disciplines such as lawyering and consulting. This is changing quickly thanks to electronic discovery. In some ways the perfect storm, e-discovery has created an environment where a fuller understanding of value must be brought to the table. The days of inefficient planning and time consuming meetings are gone. With increasing client scrutiny, tighter litigation budgets and pressure on billable hours, law firms are recognizing that they must not only be accountable, but they must quantify value in order to remain competitive.

Corporate clients and attorneys today expect an unprecedented level of service, information and collaboration, and they expect this from their outside lawyers, paralegals, litigation support departments as well as all legal vendors they use. Providing the kind of value-added experience required in today's legal environment has been best described as "making sure everything that was to be done, was done in a repeatable way that makes future work predictable." But what do these terms really mean in a practical setting?

With my experience implementing process improvement software and methodology in dozens of Amlaw 200 firms, I summarize the current opportunity for process improvement as follows:

Litigation support is perfectly situation to demonstrate that process improvement is consistent with the needs of law firms and in-house legal departments.

1. Lawyers are good at many things but project tracking and planning are generally not among them. This creates a very positive environment for litigation support professionals to step up and add value. (People)

2. The volume and unpredictability of electronic discovery has created an environment where accountability and planning are necessary. (Environment)

3. Improved collaboration software has made it very cost effective to implement. (Technology).