Psst! Hey, lawyers, wanna know the secret to project management? Here it is: The end is the beginning.
That’s not just some banal claptrap meant for Facebook memes featuring misty photos of summer meadows, it’s the way it works. There are no quick fixes, there’s no silver bullet, but it’s guaranteed that if you don’t know where you want to be at the end of the project, you won’t know how to start.
That’s the word from Melissa LaFlair – a lawyer, consultant and certified project management professional.
“You start by understanding what’s the objective, what’s the goal … and then mapping out ways to get there and understanding, particularly, the stakeholders’ objectives and risk tolerance and context, because sometimes the best legal approach isn’t practically what works best for the client’s needs,” says LaFlair, who is one of two people presenting an Oct. 4 Solutions Series webinar on project management.
It’s true that lawyers have had their own ways to approach files since long before project management became the buzzword du jour, but LaFlair says while their tried and tested approaches may produce the best outcomes from a pure legal analysis perspective, it’s not always the best outcome for the client.
“To be fair, there are various elements of project management that lawyers do innately in order to succeed,” she allowed. “(Project management) is more making it conscious and having cost-benefit decisions being made.” She tells the story of when she was an in-house counsel getting a thick and expensive IP opinion from external lawyers that “would have 30 problems identified with the asset we were looking at buying” but they would have needed diligence on only three patents. “So yes the lawyers had a proven process that worked for unearthing potential problems with every single patent; this is then taking it to the next layer and looking at how does that integrate and apply with what the client actually needs.”
Project management is a framework for identifying projects, says LaFlair. A file can be a project, as can a firm-wide initiative to buy software, or move to a new office.
“The fundamental principles of project management and the framework are how to identify, plan and execute what you’re expecting in the most effective way possible while taking into account the inevitable unknowns.”
Project management tools are helpful for people at all levels of any organization, she adds. For instance, it behooves managing partners to have some knowledge of project management because it can help them find ways to benefit their organization.
“I see firms where there are opportunities for creating synergies – there’s a lot of reinventing of the wheel going on and a lot of individual profit centres, and as crowd-funding demonstrates, working in a group is often far more effective. So if you have a way of bringing the resources together and having them work together in a way that makes better use of the resources that are available, it benefits the firm as a whole and it benefits the client.”
Many lawyers think project management is essentially a checklist to tick off as they move from Point A to Point B.
“They fail to understand that for truly effective project management, the most important part is the initiation and getting the project started and really understanding what you’re trying to accomplish and why,” she says.
Checklists are indeed a project management tool, as are budgets and reporting and tracking systems to measure progress.
“The best possible project management is identifying up front what it is that you’re going to be delivering, confirming that it meets the client’s need – which is not just their legal need but their surrounding need, there are often business needs or personal needs that are intersecting with the legal aspect – and then doing what you’re going to do to address that need and tracking, ensuring it is what you promised.”
Budgeting and putting the client’s needs at the centre of the project can be antithetical to the traditional billable hour that law firms run on.
“And that’s the inherent challenge that managing partners and firm leaders face. Many of them are becoming well aware that the system as it’s currently structured isn’t sustainable but they don’t have an easy solution and they don’t have an easy fix, and that’s where project management tools and techniques can help them get ideas as to where to start chipping away,” says LaFlair.
“It’s not a flick-of-the-switch event, it’s a concerted, long-term effort to overhaul pay structures, compensation structures, partnership compensation – there are a lot of intricate and complicated (steps). … And a lot of lawyers go into law because they like the sense of individuality and now you’re threatening that by asking that they work as part of a team. It’s not easy.”
Kim Covert is Editor of Publications at the Canadian Bar Association.