This article provides a list of 10 essential project management terms, along with some tips about how legal project teams can apply tools and ideas associated with each term.

Scope

A project scope defines the project’s goals, lists key deliverables (see below), and sets boundaries around what will – and will not – be done during the project.

Project goals don’t automatically equate with client goals.  Law firm clients may want lots of things to be done on a matter, but their expectations about what can be achieved during their legal project may be unrealistic.

Hence legal project teams must start by seeking to understand what their client’s goals are and then assess whether those goals can be met.  Setting a range of reasonable project expectations (whether about goals, timeline or costs) with clients is an essential task for legal teams.

 

Stakeholder

A project stakeholder is anyone who is affected by, or involved in, the project.

Key stakeholders should be identified early during matters.

Once identified, some thought must then be given to how the stakeholders will react to the project when it is in-flight.  Some stakeholders are likely to view the project negatively, some more positively.

How stakeholders are likely to react to a project will be influenced by their relationship with the project and each other.

To illustrate this, consider an extreme example: claimants and respondents in a litigation matter will (presumably) have very different views about the legal project (i.e., the litigation in hand) and its likely outcome.

Let’s assume we are representing a claimant.  Why should we care about the respondent as a stakeholder?  Well, taking time to understand the respondent stakeholder is likely to be of great help to us when seeking to negotiate a settlement or making an offer during proceedings.

Doing some stakeholder identification and analysis helps legal project teams communicate more effectively with key stakeholders.  The importance of effective stakeholder communication throughout projects of all kinds cannot be overstated and the path towards effective communication starts with the first steps of stakeholder identification and analysis.

 

Risk Management

Risk Management is identifying and managing potential events which may affect the project’s progress.

A risk may be a positive event, which the project team can capitalize on to expedite project progress.

More commonly, project risks are potentially negative events, in which case the challenge to the legal project team is to work out how to avoid or mitigate those risks during the project.

In legal service work, I always emphasize to my trainees that, from a legal project management perspective, we are concerned with operational risks, not the legal risks the client may be faced with.

By operational risks, I mean all things which may hinder the ability of the team to deliver their legal services effectively.

A simple risk management process looks like this:

1. Identify Risks – determining which risks may affect the project
2. Conduct Risk Analysis and Prioritisation – consider likelihood of risks occurring and their impact on the project.
3. Plan Risk Responses – develop options to reduce threats and enhance opportunities presented by risks
4. Control Risks – implementing response plans.

 

Communication Plan

A Communication Plan is a document which outlines how and when information will be shared with key Stakeholders.

For legal project teams this plan will most likely focus on communication with the client and the wider legal team (including, for example, outside counsel and expert witnesses instructed).

An obvious starting point for the communication plan is to consider the mode, content and frequency of project status update reports.

I know that many legal project teams will start by producing two project status update reports: one for the client and one for the legal service team.  While I understand the reasoning behind this, I suggest starting off with just one status update report and sending that out to both client and legal team.  This promotes transparency and is easier to manage.

A simple Communication Plan will have these components:

1. Mode of Communication – will this be a project status report, summary email, telephone call or video-call? Which will be the most appropriate mode of communication for the audience concerned?
2. Target Stakeholders – who will the communications be directed at?
3. Frequency of Communication – weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or something else?
4. Owner – who will own the communication from an operational point of view? I always recommend this role for the legal project manager, if one is available.
5. Start Date – when are you going to put your structured communication plan into action?

 

Deliverable

A Deliverable is produced by the project team to help meet a project goal or objective.

In legal projects, deliverables will be mostly documents.

These deliverables fall into two broad categories.

The first category are documents sent to, and shared with, stakeholders outside the legal project team.  This class of deliverables comprises things such as documents which must be lodged with Court (such as an Expert Report) or letters of advice to clients.

The second category of deliverables are documents produced by the legal project team to help them run and manage the project well.  These could be traditional project management supporting documents such as Work Breakdown Structures and Gantt Charts (see below).

There may also be documents created by the legal team to help them understand the matter and legal issues presented.  Documents such as timelines of events (for e.g., what the claimant and respondent did which led to the current dispute) or research notes about what the current law is on a particular issue.

 

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a list of all project deliverables along with all activities and tasks required to create those deliverables.

There are many ways of representing a Work Breakdown Structure but, essentially, they are hierarchical structures represented most often as an indented list.

To complete Work Breakdown Structures, teams must analyze and understand the work required to produce deliverables and then break the work down into parts – activities, tasks and sub-tasks – required to produce the deliverable.

Work Breakdown Structures are often created using spreadsheets.  Deliverables and their required activities and tasks are listed in sequence vertically.  The adjacent horizontal columns list items such as the person assigned to do the task, estimated duration of each task and the assignee’s hourly charge out rate.

 

Budget

A project Budget is the financial listing for all project costs.

In legal services the most frequent, and usually the most expensive, cost is the human resources required to complete the project.

The cost of practising lawyers and related professionals (such as paralegals and legal project managers) charged to clients is inevitably expressed in terms of their hourly billing rate.  Strictly, the hourly billing rate is not purely a cost rate, as the billing rate will include an element of profit costs for each fee earner.  Still, this is the financial item most often used when preparing a legal project budget.

The most accurate way of building up a project cost structure is to do so bottom-up by creating a Work Breakdown Structure, plugging in the relevant charge out rate for each fee earner assigned to a task and then sum up all the charge out rate values compiled.

Human resources are not the only contributor to project cost.  Using software, especially specialised software to help with specific legal tasks such as discovery and disclosure in litigation, must also be factored into the budget calculation.

 

Gantt Chart

Gantt Charts list all project tasks across a calendar-like timeline.

I am a big fan of Gantt Charts.  I have explained in an earlier post how to create and use Gantt Charts.

I have always found that plotting project activities and tasks against a timeline acts as an early wakeup call: often, you never have as much time as you think you do to complete the project and Gantt Charts illustrate this perfectly.

Gantt Charts can also be used for alternative project scenario planning and helping to manage projects once they are in-flight.

 

Milestone

Milestones are significant points or achievements in the project timeline.

Strictly, a milestone is an item which is not itself a task with work associated with it.  Milestones show the end of a task or series of tasks.

However, in practice milestones often appear at the completion of a significant task, so they become associated with task progression.

Project Milestones are used to help with project planning (i.e., planning from milestone to milestone) and project reporting.

 

Methodology

By Methodology, I mean following a structured approach for managing projects.

All project methods include structured approaches.

Predictive methods, such as Waterfall, start with gathering as much information about the project as possible at the beginning, predicting what will happen, and then planning project delivery based on the prediction.  The Waterfall method is so called because each phase of the project should follow on, or cascade, from one to another.

Adaptive methodologies, such as Agile, place greater emphasis on adapting quickly to changing circumstances.  Agile methods are used where there is more uncertainty about the scope and nature of the project at the beginning.  For this reason, I am still surprised that Agile tools and methods are not used with greater frequency in legal service work.

People referring to Hybrid project methods mean they use elements of both predictive and adaptive methodologies to manage projects.

 

Learning how to apply the terms in practice

One of the first engagements I had after setting up my legal project management training and consultancy company in 2012 was with a law firm which had recently lost work to competitors.

Feedback from prospective clients showed this firm was less capable of managing legal work as projects than its competitors.  Hence, its bids for new work were unsuccessful.

During an early meeting, a young partner said to me “I just want to know what the project management terms are!”.  I explained as best I could that peppering future proposals with project management terms would be of limited use unless he could convince prospective clients that he not only understood what the terms mean but, more much more important, he apply them consistently as part of his legal service work.

Project management is a practical discipline, where its methods, tools and techniques are applied to achieve desired outcomes.

Because of this, my legal project management training courses have a lot of workshops and exercises, using realistic legal and commercial scenarios. I want my trainees to get a feel for what it is like to manage legal matters using project management methods, tools and techniques.

If you would like to find out more about applying structured methods to better manage legal matters and supporting processes please sign up for one of my public legal project management or legal process improvement training courses.

Alternatively, if you would like more tailored training for your legal team, please consider my team based training for legal project management and legal process improvement.