Helping you develop your legal project management and legal process improvement capability.
Richard Allen – Head of Pricing, Project Management & Process Improvement
Richard has 40 years’ unique litigation, legal costs and practice management experience, being one of the first to achieve Costs Lawyer status and make partner in a solicitor’s practice.
He was a founding and longest serving non-executive director of the Costs Lawyer Standards Board (CLSB) and is an accredited mediator and coach.
Richard has vast experience handling significant litigation and costs caseloads for major law firms, establishing and managing several litigation and costs departments nationally, including a top 50 practice, and having a central role managing a full-service regional solicitors’ practice.
Richard specialises in boosting profitability, focusing on professional services pricing, together with costs, case and practice management, both in the UK and internationally. These skills led Richard to become an Accredited Training Provider for both the CLSB and the International Institute of Legal Project Management (IILPM) and, is the only authorised trainer in the UK and The Republic of Ireland to deliver the IILPM’s certified training courses in Legal Project Management and Legal Process Improvement.
Martyn Jennings – Chief Executive
Martyn Jennings brings a combination of commercial and legal experience that is rare in the sector. A former lawyer, he practised across a broad spectrum of work, from civil and family law through to property, giving him a perspective on the profession that is both broad and deep.
With Sue Jennings, he left private practice more than 30 years ago with a clear aim: to take what was then a cottage legal costing industry and build a legal costs business fit for the 21st century. Drawing on their own knowledge of practice, they recruited genuine costs expertise and put in place service standards designed to improve law firms’ profitability and cash flow. Jennings grew to become one of the UK’s leading costs firms.
That foundation has since developed into something broader. Recognising that recovering costs at the conclusion of a matter addresses only the final stage of the profitability question, Martyn led the firm’s expansion into legal services pricing, legal project management and legal process improvement. The integration of all four disciplines under one roof remains unique in the UK market, and it reflects a straightforward proposition: how a firm scopes, prices, plans, delivers and recovers its work determines whether that work makes money.
As a client-facing Chief Executive, Martyn is focused on the quality of working relationships, which he regards as fundamental to Jennings becoming a market-leading practice. That focus is matched by an insistence that the business nurtures its own internal structure and standards, so that what Jennings advises law firms to do it can demonstrate in its own operation.
Martyn continues to lead the firm’s development of practical solutions for law firms responding to a changing market: greater client involvement in pricing, increased transparency and predictability of cost, and growing pressure to deliver legal work efficiently. He works alongside Richard Allen in delivering the Jennings approach to profitability across pricing, legal project management, legal process improvement and legal costs.
Creating more effective lawyers and legal teams with project management
The UK’s largest law firms now employ full-time legal project managers, working alongside their lawyer colleagues. We have for a long time believed that legal project management is applicable to all lawyers and all law firms, not only the very largest. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) agrees.
In its Statement of Competence for Solicitors, the SRA describes many tasks expected to be performed by all solicitors in terms of project management. For example, the Statement refers to solicitors ‘meeting timescales, resource requirements and budgets’ (for more please see Section D of the Competence Statement). This sounds like a high level definition of ‘a project’ to us..
Developing lawyers’ project management skills is just one aspect of creating an effective project based legal service organisation. We believe all of the following are required:
1. Tools – ranging from document templates to software applications.
2. Methods and Processes – standard matter project plans supported by lower level processes and activities.
3. Skills – of both lawyers and support staff, working together as productive teams.
4. Organisational Project Maturity – to help ensure that the project delivery capability of the firm continues to grow.
The ultimate aim is not to become better at legal project management per se, but for lawyers to become more effective and clients to become happier with the service they receive. Happier clients are more likely to pay their bills quicker, instruct their law firm with more work and provide referrals.
We help lawyers and their colleagues achieve these aims by providing legal project management training, certification and support.
Creating more effective lawyers and legal teams with process improvement
We have worked on various kinds of process improvement projects in law firms since the late 1980’s.
For a long time, process improvement activity was considered as something which only firms engaged in ‘high volume, low value’ legal service provision did. This is no longer true, as law firms (and in-house teams) of all shapes and sizes now look to improve their processes.
There is a clear relationship between legal process improvement and legal project management (which we explain further in this blog post).
Experience shows that it can take longer for the benefits of process improvement to be appreciated compared to legal project management. Legal project managers usually have a client facing role and hence a higher profile than legal process improvement professionals. Hence the work of legal project managers can be more readily seen compared to that of legal process improvement professionals.
‘Improving processes’ can sound rather vague. The reality however is that its not just ‘processes’ which are improved. In our experience legal process improvement is in practice all about improving the effectiveness of legal teams.
If you would like to take a process driven approach to improving legal team working, why not consider attending one of our legal process improvement training courses?
Legal Project Management Training Courses 2026/27: Public Courses Open to Subscription
You can sign up and pay for any of the courses listed below.
The Legal Project Associate (LPA) course and certification (comprising two days of training) costs £1,800 (inc VAT) for a live, online course and £2,280 (inc VAT) for a live, in person course.
The Legal Project Practitioner (LPP) course and certification (comprising all three days of training) costs £2,700 (inc VAT) for a live, online course and £3,420 (inc VAT) for a live, in person course.
Online payment is via Paypal, which is safe and secure.
If you would prefer to pay by bank transfer, please contact us and we will send you an invoice.
If you are self-funding and find payment by instalments helpful, please contact us to arrange a payment schedule.
Legal Project Management Training live, online, November 24th, 25th & 26th 2026
Legal Project Management Training live, in-person, March 8th, 9th & 10th 2027
Course Venue:
To Be Confirmed
Legal Process Improvement Training Courses 2026: Public Courses Open to Subscription
The Legal Process Improvement Professional (LPIP) certification course runs for two days.
By default, this course is taught live and online using Zoom and Miro.
The price for the course is £1,800 (inc VAT)
You can choose a course below and pay online via Paypal, which is safe and secure.
If you prefer to pay by bank transfer please let us know and we will invoice you.
Also if you are self-funding and find payment by instalments helpful, please contact us to arrange a payment schedule.
Legal Process Improvement Training and Certification, live, online, December 2nd & 3rd, 2026
How Can We Help You?
If You Would Like To Discuss Any Aspect of Legal Project Management or Legal Process Improvement – Please Contact Us.