Peer to Peer Magazine

58 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | FALL 2016 FEATURES Should LPM Be Billable? Two Sides to the Story and is a staunch supporter of legal project management. ACC Vice President and Chief Legal Strategist, Amar Sarwal, noted in his welcoming remarks at the 2015 P3 Conference that the ACC encourages all of their members to request and pay their legal service providers for LPM. As an unbiased organization dedicated to serving the needs of in-house counsel, the ACC's position is very important. The ACC sees legal project management as the key to changing law firm behaviors and delivering clients improved value. » LPM is a value differentiator. There are a few early LPM adopters that have promoted value propositions centered on their own branded maer management models. Several of these firms have developed technology-based solutions to assist their aorneys with LPM best practices, and many firms have opted to add legal project management professionals to support their practice groups and client teams. These strategies and branding efforts further support the observation that clients will pay for LPM efforts that are well-communicated and proven to be value-added activities. The rise in demand for legal project management expertise is an extension of the theme that law firms must continue to evolve and operate more like their corporate clients. The Altman Weil's 2015 "Law Firms in Transition" survey found that 92.6 percent of law firm leaders believed the focus on improved practice efficiency to be a permanent industry change. Many firms are well ahead of the curve and have embraced legal project management and process improvement strategies. Firms who have proactively accepted the marketplace challenges are those best situated to communicate their value propositions, which should include value-based pricing and legal project management. These firms will have the best case for presenting their unique LPM strategies as an integral component of the legal service delivery model. Brendan: No, LPM should be considered a non-billable part of client service. As a practitioner, I view legal project management (LPM) as a discipline that leverages a set of tools and defined processes to help lawyers efficiently manage legal maers and deliver successful outcomes to clients. A law firm's definition of success can vary from maer to maer. For clients, it is generally wedded to a legal outcome, but also to a law firm's efficiency and transparency in executing the work. LPM boils down to diligent planning, clear communication and seing well-defined and achievable goals via a maer plan. The overarching purpose of LPM should be to support a client's organizational business strategy and objectives. LPM principles are therefore inherent to any mature client services framework, and their application should be expected of law firms as part of the overall value proposition to the client. » LPM is similar to continuing legal education (CLE). Most lawyers already borrow from the LPM toolbox on a day-to-day basis, but they rarely recognize it as such. To manage maers Training attorneys in LPM is akin to continuing legal education. Should clients pay for that? They shouldn't, and most won't.

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