LMP

AVOID EXPENSIVE TRIPS DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I dont much care where--" said Alice."Then it doesnt matter which way you go," said the Cat."--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,"
Alice added as an explanation."Oh, youre sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
Lewis Carroll

By Russ Dempsey and Leah Sellers

egal Process Management or LPM is a tool to make delivery

of legal services more efcient and goal-oriented and
avoid trips down the rabbit hole of endless litigation and
unplanned legal expenses. It involves disciplined planning,
organizing and managing resources to successfully complete project
goals. LPM goes beyond the use of billing and task codes to track
costs, and involves a suite of management tools from the beginning of
an engagement through post-mortem analysis. Project Management
has been broadly dened as the application of knowledge, skills, tools
and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements.2
Lawyers can use LPM to help their corporate clients achieve business
goals, instead of just being a drag on company resources.
Project and process management have been used extensively in
other industries, including professional service industries, but only
recently have been embraced by law rms. One reason for the delay
may be in the perceived differences between legal services and other
professional services, such as accounting and engineering. These
differences become much less apparent when legal services are
commoditized, which has, for better or worse, become the trend.
The parallel trend by corporations to hire in-house lawyers who at
a minimum handle routine matters and at best, who build trust and
become strategic business partners, also has created a more businessoriented approach by companies in hiring outside counsel. The bottom
line is: Clients rightfully expect lawyers to be active participants in
helping them achieve business goals, including reducing expenses
through proper resource allocation.
The fundamental premise of LPM is to start with the end in mind.
When presented with a problem statement, outside counsel should be
able to describe how their services will help solve the problem, how
long the work will take and how much it will cost. They should be
prepared to help establish a Project Charter to describe the project
tasks, how long each task will take, who will staff each task, deadlines
for completion, a budget and list of stakeholders. One of the most
important aspects of the Project Charter is to identify communication
chains that show how information will ow. This most certainly will
involve identifying point persons for communication, who then will
disseminate information to other appropriate team members, thereby
eliminating communication breakdown.
After the Project Charter is developed, the next step is to manage
the project by establishing metrics. Metrics in legal services go beyond
winning a summary judgment motion or completing a transaction
for a client by the expected deadline. There should be metrics for
each task within a project, so that every aspect of the project can be
evaluated and improved upon. One obvious metric is billable hours
spent for projects. Experienced lawyers know how long a particular
task should take, given a team members experience level; however,
not all lawyers have the breadth or depth of experience to know
whether a specic task has been overbilled. Lawyers of all experience
levels can help each other and build trust in the process by having
open communication with all team members about expectations and
ongoing process improvement.
36

Eliminating waste is critical to exceeding expectations. Motorola

and other manufacturing companies pioneered and modied the Six
Sigma approach, and lawyers can apply aspects of this approach
to legal services as it has been used to improve engineering process
and production quality. The Project Charter is the rst part of the
modied Six Sigma process, but lawyers must frequently revisit the
Project Charter with a goal of identifying areas for increased efciency,
improving processes and implementing proper controls.
In his book Legal Project Management, Steven Levy translates
wastes identied in manufacturing processes to their legal service
component. For example, Excess Processing in the manufacturing
setting became unnecessarily revisiting or revising documents or
redundant, repetitive communication. Obviously, project deadlines
alone will not reduce excess processing, as unclear objectives,
communication breakdown and frequent interruptions also cause
excess processing. LPM tools like a risk chart can, however, be
valuable in managing the uncertainties and variables that are unique
to legal work.
Just like robotics in manufacturing applications, technology
can assist in framing Project Charters, improving efciencies and
evaluating metrics. Most business lawyers are familiar with billing
and task codes, document management systems and online research
sites. They likely are less familiar with project management software
or even how to use a simple spreadsheet to assist with LPM.
The recession has made law rms and departments leaner and
the lagging recovery presents great opportunities for lawyers to
implement LPM into various aspects of their practice. Although LPM
is best implemented through systemic, top-down approach, lawyers
at all levels can benet from LPM by learning how to think about
legal work from a business perspective, exercising more discipline
with respect to planning legal work, and considering ways to operate
more efciently.

1.

Russ Dempsey is President of the Columbus chapter of

Association of Corporate Counsel. Leah Sellers, is a business and
general practice attorney in Marysville.

russ.dempsey@UnitedRetirement.com
Leah@sellerslawllc.com

Russ Dempsey,
VP & Chief Legal
Ofcer,
United Retirement
Plan Consultants,
and Leah Sellers1

Winter 2012 Columbus Bar Lawyers Quarterly

WCBLQ 2012.indd 36

12/9/11 8:52:28 AM