Legal Project Management Principles

Legal Project Management is defined as the application of project management principles to the control and management of legal services provided by lawyers to their clients. Adopting this way of working improves the longevity of the relationships that lawyers have with their clients and the profitability of the legal work which is done.

All of our work is dealt with in accordance with the project management principles which we have adopted as a business:-

• Define – Checking that the instructions are clear and that the outcome is achievable.
  We contact our clients regularly to gauge their anticipated costs work, whether that is full bills of costs for detailed assessment, breakdowns of costs for settlement meetings, draft budgets, budget comparisons etc.

• Plan – We plan how we will work as a team to achieve the desired outcome.
  We operate a work schedule for both work which is already in our system and also work which we anticipate receiving over the next two to three months. Before multi track cases are issued by our clients, we pre-allocate time for valuing incurred work at the appropriate stage and we also schedule in time for preparing the first draft budget. At all times, we honour our commitment to scheduled work.

• Execute – We carry out the required work.
  We use a web based project management system which allows regular clients continuous access to each negotiations ‘project’ and ensures complete transparency. We can all monitor progress and strategy thereby minimising non-progressive reporting time and costs.

• Evaluate – We evaluate the success of the work we have completed.
  This improves the effectiveness of future work. We report to our clients and provide them with feedback and we have an active policy of continuous improvement.