Legal Project Management (LPM), is a discipline widely recognized in the legal services industry. Legal project managers are now employed by all the major law firms in London and some of the larger regional ones.
What is legal project management? What does a legal project manager do? What is the difference between legal project managers and professional project managers in other industries?
Knowing the answers to these questions could be more than a passing interest, considering that City law firms often offer between PS60k-PS90k for senior project managers.
What is Legal Project Management?
LPM and its reasoning are defined by me as:
Application of project management principles to legal services delivery. LPM assists law firms to run projects (including live client matter) more efficiently. This improves client satisfaction and helps law firms remain profitable.
This means that legal work of any kind, whether litigation or non-contentious, should be properly managed from start to finish.
Legal project managers are often part of large law firms and work with lawyers and other professionals to deliver legal services more efficiently. A legal project manager is often embedded in a legal team, performing specific types of legal work, such as banking and finance or mergers & acquisitions.
Interestingly, and possibly in contradiction with the model outlined above: The Solicitors Regulatory Authority(SRA) expects individual solicitors be able demonstrate competence in project management.
The Statement of Solicitor’s Competence by the SRA refers to all solicitors being capable of demonstrating competence in areas such as matter scoping and resource management, planning, monitoring, and change control.
Next: Project Management Job Titles Explained
Why is the ‘Legal?
Many people questioned the necessity of the prefix “legal” in the early days of LPM. What is it about lawyers and law that a prefix is necessary for an application of project management in an industry?
This is my answer. The market has already decided! Advertisements for legal project managers are becoming more common, and almost everyone in the legal service industry has heard of it.
Although there is still some confusion about what legal project managers do and the value they add, people are much more aware of it now than they were when I started my consultancy business just over five years ago.
Second, the legal service industry is a distinct branch in commerce. Lawyers use specific terminology, procedures, and processes, so the ‘legal” suffix is perfectly justified.
To give you an example, I don’t know of anyone who has ever tried to question the term “legal IT”. It has been known for a long time that legal IT is different from mainstream IT. Similar sentiments can be applied to legal project management.
Professional project managers from other sectors will be familiar with core practice, but some skills and attributes required of legal project managers are specific to the legal sector.
What are the Essential Skills to Be a Great Legal Project Manager?
What skills, attributes, and abilities are required for legal project managers?
1. Project Management Skills
This is the most important prerequisite.
2. Communication skills
Communication skills are essential for project management. Project managers in any sector need to have excellent communication skills to succeed.
Manager of legal project
