8 Legal Project Management Best Practices

Legal projects come in a wide range of types, including marketing, mergers and acquisitions, compliance training, and more. Despite that variety, all legal projects have one thing in common—the need for expert legal project management. 

What is legal project management?

Legal project management (LPM) is the formal legal project management process. It combines legal expertise with project management skills and helps ensure that your projects are delivered on time, on budget, and meet your client’s goals. The process itself hinges on four underlying tenets: 

1. Defining the project’s parameters

2. Planning the course

3. Consistently managing the project

4. Evaluating performance/success

However, other best practices are required to support those tenets. In this post, we’ll explore eight best practices that should be part of your legal practice management toolkit, whether you’re working with clients or part of an in-house legal team.

Critical legal project management best practices

1. Define the scope and objectives first

The foundation of any successful legal project is a solid understanding of the project’s scope and goals (or, objectives). What does the client hope to achieve? How large or small is the project? What are your constraints in terms of budget and timeline? What resources are available to you? 

Scope and objective-related information should be recorded. This document will act as a touchstone throughout the project, ensuring that you’re working toward the clients’ stated objectives and that your project doesn’t exceed its scope, which bears on cost and timeline considerations.

2. Hold a stakeholder meeting

Once you’ve defined the scope and deliverables, schedule a meeting with your stakeholders. This is an opportunity for anyone interested in the project to provide feedback or supplemental information that may affect the project’s course. This is also your opportunity to explain the project's goals to internal stakeholders or external counsel. During the meeting, you’ll want to clarify and codify the following:

• Team member roles and responsibilities
• Project timeline
• A change management process
• Leadership and management roles and responsibilities
• Answers to team member questions

3. Settle financial management questions

All projects have budgets. Defining yours from the outset helps you stay on track and avoid cost overruns. It also lets you understand if financial reserves are available if the project grows beyond its original scope. In addition to answering financial questions, appoint someone to oversee project-related spending and manage financial resources. 

4. Communicate, communicate, communicate

No legal project can be successful without regular, ongoing, accurate communication between all stakeholders. This includes between team members, but don’t neglect to keep external counsel and other stakeholders in the loop. That includes project ambassadors, C-suite members, and others. You should have an accurate list of stakeholders and those who need to stay current on the project’s process from your initial stakeholder meeting. You’ll also need to identify how you are communicating (i.e. method and channels) and how often (i.e. recurring meetings). 

5. Ensure that you can roll with changes

Legal projects are living things. They’re dynamic, not static. However, you need a process in place to handle those changes. A change management process helps ensure you can pivot when the project changes. Appointing a change management lead early on helps ensure this is possible. 

6. Define the project’s lifecycle and milestones

All journeys require a roadmap, and your legal project is no different. Map out the project’s lifecycle so that you know where you’re going, but don’t neglect to set major and minor milestones. Those help break large projects up into manageable chunks and provide the team with a sense of progress and completion. Make sure that the entire team has this information, but also communicate it to other stakeholders.

7. Have a plan for communication

We’ve mentioned communication several times because it’s essential to legal project management. Without communication, nothing else can happen. Create a plan that defines employee communication flow and processes. Ad-hoc communication only leads to chaos, so take the time to eliminate that possibility now. This plan should include team meetings, stand-ups, project reports, and information-sharing expectations. We also recommend considering other communication-related needs affecting team member availability, including answering your office phones and interacting with leads.

8. Review, learn, and evolve

A project’s conclusion isn’t necessarily the end of the legal project management process. Once the project concludes, review all aspects. Even if the project was successful, you’ll find lessons that can be implemented into upcoming projects. If the project doesn’t go according to plan, you can unearth contributing factors and help ensure they don’t derail future projects. We recommend instituting a formal review process based on flexible templates so you can quickly review the experience, extract meaningful information, and then apply it to future projects.

A helping hand with your legal project management

The legal project management best practices discussed above can help ensure positive outcomes and smooth sailing. However, you must also have access to the right tools and services during the project. A legal answering service offers automation, saves time, and ensures accurate, reliable communication with customers and clients.

At Smith.ai, our virtual receptionists can immensely impact your communications and legal project management success. From 24/7 answering to payment processing and appointment booking capabilities, our expert virtual receptionists ensure you never miss an opportunity. We integrate with leading legal project management and legal practice management software, providing a seamless experience.

To learn more, schedule a consultation or reach out to hello@smith.ai.