ILTA White Papers

The Business of Law

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ILTA White Paper The Business of Law 10 possibility of runaway projects. Make sure you have a decision structure for dealing with changes before you're confronted with them. Sometimes the schedule will need to be condensed –– when there's more work than imagined, fewer or less productive resources than planned, or the client (or court, etc.) imposes new deadlines. Keep the project team and the client informed of all schedule changes. Use tools such as SharePoint to share project and team information. Provide regular progress updates to the client, not just bills or chargeback statements. Seek objective truth about the project, always. Tell the truth yourself, as you know it, when you know it. Don't point fingers on failures. As the project manager, don't let others point fingers either; interpose yourself, even as a target, if necessary. • The Fourth Stage: Delivery and Evaluation Delivery and evaluation are important as a finishing stage to every project. Obtain signoff from stakeholders that the project has reached "done" and that the practice has met the conditions of satisfaction. Ask the client for feedback. Even the simple act of requesting feedback and hearing the client out improves client satisfaction. It's even better if you find value in the feedback and use it to improve future work. Ensure project documents make it into your document management solution, whatever that may be: filing cabinet, e-mail folders, SharePoint or formal software system. Capture as much knowledge and learning as you can. Remember that all practices have a knowledge management system of some sort, even if it's the institutional memory of attorneys (and support staff) who've been around for years. Learn what went well on the project and how you can build on it. Examine what didn't go so well, and draw lessons on how to improve those aspects on future projects. Finally, celebrate project success with some sort of passage ceremony. It needn't be an expensive team dinner; on small projects, a sincere "thank you for a job well done" can be meaningful. Celebrate individual successes as well. Provide positive, specific feedback when you catch someone doing something right. Let the team share by publicly acknowledging successes. The TooLS of LegaL ProjeCT ManageMenT The sharpest tools in the project manager's shed are the attorneys who are as committed to client satisfaction as they are to legal results. The most important tool of legal project management is not a piece of software; it is the framework for organizing the project and commanding its issues. Good project managers use a combination of mental models and software tools to guide projects to successful conclusions. Software tools without the right mental models will create more problems that they'll solve, "Law can be a calling, indeed a noble calling in support of civilization and the rule of law, but the practice of law is a business."

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