On the eve of LegalTech, I have been encountering a lot of magical thinking recently when talking with law firm partners about Legal Project Management. One partner, hoping that the IT and KM folks can simply buy a tech solution so that he could avoid making any real changes to the way he manages matters,… Continue Reading
Monthly Archives: January 2012
A General Counsel’s Take On Legal Project Management & Foreseeability
Posted in Alternative Fee Arrangements, General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management tools, Legal Spend, Outside CounselGuest Post by Russ Dempsey, Vice President and Chief Legal Officer United Retirement Plan Consultants Pam Woldow’s recent blog post, Putting Some Pepper Into Legal Project Management, called to mind my own recent successful use of Legal Project Management (LPM) to manage the risks and foreseeability issues in an engagement with one of our… Continue Reading
Are You Prepared to Kick Butt?
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Spend, New Normal, Outside CounselThis song goes out to all you General Counsel and senior in-house lawyers, and its title is “Sometimes You Folks Get Hosed and Don’t Do Nothin’ About It.” I could just as easily have directed the song to those law firm lawyers who sometimes are a little, ah, “casual” about the finer points of scoping… Continue Reading
Putting Some Pepper Into Legal Project Management?
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Spend, Outside CounselIt is not uncommon for law firms being pressed by clients for more accurate budgeting and better budget management to raise the “unpredictability defense.” Whether in litigation or transactional matters, the unpredictability defense asserts that it is nearly impossible to precisely plan and completely control legal spend because legal matters are subject to such a… Continue Reading
Dialing for Pizza: Practical Perspectives on Scoping Legal Projects
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Outside CounselLegal Project Management (LPM) assigns extraordinary importance to providing legal services that deliver value as perceived by the client. Yet over and again we observe that while in-house counsel tend to view legal matters in terms of broad business issues and the pressures of “commerciality,” law firm lawyers tend to focus on identifying narrow legal… Continue Reading