Peer to Peer Magazine

59 WWW.ILTANET.ORG ANDREW GEORGE Andrew George is the Director of Financial Planning & Analysis at Finnegan in Washington, D.C. He has worked as a finance professional for 15 years in the legal services industry. His leadership experience includes oversight of strategic planning, legal project management, data mining and analytics, financial reporting, and budgeting. Andrew earned an MBA and a master's degree in law firm management from The George Washington University. He also holds a yellow belt in Legal Lean Sigma and Project Management and currently serves as the Finance Chair for the ALA Capital Chapter. Contact him at andrew.george@ finnegan.com. BRENDAN MCINERNEY Brendan McInerney is a Project Management Professional (PMP) with over 15 years of project management experience in the legal services industry. He is responsible for the development and management of Dorsey & Whitney's legal project management (LPM) program. Brendan trains Dorsey's attorneys in LPM principles, technology and tools and is involved with business process improvement initiatives. Contact Brendan at mcinerney. brendan@dorsey.com. Should LPM Be Billable? Two Sides to the Story FEATURES successfully, lawyers must plan the work, strategize and communicate with the client. Utilizing LPM simply helps to develop and standardize a lawyer's processes with an aim at delivering consistent, excellent client service. Implementing an LPM framework and training aorneys in LPM is akin to continuing legal education. Should clients pay for that? They shouldn't, and most won't. » With LPM, we'd make clients pay for pre-work. In almost any other industry, clients/customers review a detailed work plan and agree upon a price for services before work commences. If LPM principles are used by lawyers to create a work plan that estimates the effort involved before the work commences, why should a client have to pay for this pre-work? Most contractors don't bill you for scoping out a bathroom remodeling project because they understand this is part of the investment in bidding for the work. Similarly, the status updates that the contractor provides you while the work is ongoing are essential and are expected as a natural part of the arrangement. Can you imagine receiving an invoice for time spent preparing a status update on a home renovation project? » A law firm should be responsible for the programs that make them more efficient. A firm's investment in people and soware help it become more efficient. A more efficient law firm should be able to provide services at a lower cost to a client, affecting their boom line in a positive way. Although technology is a cornerstone for collaboration between law firms and clients, and although LPM practitioners can help with some of the blocking and tackling that make the maer run more smoothly, clients should not have to pay for the resources that law firms use to enhance the firmwide delivery of client services. Clients pay for lawyer expertise and experience. It should be implied that law firms will be efficient and that they have the client's best interests at heart. LPM should not be sold as an add-on service. » LPM can be an excuse to bill more hours. Many clients have expressed a clear desire for law firms to cut back on billing for status reports and case management soware via their outside counsel billing guidelines. Firms focused on trying to sell the value of LPM to their client to get them to pay for it are doing what law firms have always done: bill hours. It should be clear that the way forward is not to add another timekeeper or cost line to an invoice. Instead, the focus of LPM should be on how we can use planning, communication and efficiency to enhance the client's experience. Law firms benefit from implementing LPM practices that strengthen their alignment with clients. The standardization of LPM efforts across a firm leads to the consistent and predictable delivery of services and, in turn, will create a solid market differentiator for the firm that successfully implements an LPM program. Firms have a lot to gain from establishing LPM programs from a business development standpoint. The firms that do well at implementing and executing on LPM will benefit from new business and the strengthening of relationships with clients that value predictability, transparency and partnership. P2P

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