Teaching Project Management

Project Management for attorneys seems to be on everybody's mind right now.

We posted last week about Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe creating a career track for legal project management.

This past week, Legal Intelligencer reported on a firm-wide initiative undertaken by Dechert LLP in conjunction with legal consultants Altman Weil to train their attorneys in project management.

The article quotes Altman Weil's Pamela Woldow, addressing a number of topics, including:

Initial Trepidation:

• "I think lawyers like to believe that everything they do is unique and complex and the truth is there are some parts of representation that are complex, but there is an awful lot that is rather easily mapped."

• While litigators often get the blame for being the most averse to using project management because cases can take unexpected turns, Woldow said finance attorneys, though "battle wounded" in the recession, have been the most resistant to the training.

Process:

• The training breaks down a matter from the earliest stages of assignment to the end, with an emphasis on a lot of up-front communication with the client about expectations and defining the scope of the project.

• The training sessions for partners included no more than 20 partners at a time, from varied practice groups. They were brought in for four- to six-hour sessions and taught the concepts of project management and tools to implement it. Lawyers visually mapped out matters related to their practice to see how the process works.

The Changing Landscape:

• "I do spend most of my time with GCs and in-house counsel and the message beyond the recession is that they want their law firms to operate more like businesses and deliver their services more efficiently and cost effectively."

• "From a law firm perspective, this type of process is enormously effective when operating on an alternative fee arrangement because, if they are going to be profitable, they cannot operate the way they have in the past."

• The push for efficiency among large law firms has largely been driven by cost concerns from clients and the need to make good on the alternative fee arrangements that are often seen as a solution to these cost concerns.

• While certain matters may prove more challenging than others in terms of implementing project management techniques... there are enough clients out there demanding these types of services that firms have to embrace this.

It certainly seems that project management is not just a fad with a limited shelf life.