Agile project techniques for legal work, or at least some legal work, should be an excellent fit.

I wrote some blog posts about this way back in 2012, when I thought Agile was primed to take off in the legal service industry (see here, here and here).

Yet Agile project techniques have not been applied anywhere near as widely as I thought – and still think – they should be.

In this post I will what I mean by Agile techniques, how they can be applied to legal service work and how you and your team can start applying these techniques so you and your clients benefit.

 

The Agile Manifesto

The traditional starting point for introducing Agile is to start with the Agile Manifesto, written in 2021 by 17 well known software developers, which says:

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.

Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Agile project techniques have been shown to be successful and are used by professionals in various sectors, not just software development.

For example, a quick Google search shows professionals working in sectors such as Marketing, Product Manufacturing and Design, Human Resources and Construction and Engineering use Agile project techniques.

I’d like to see Legal Services added to this list of industry sectors where Agile project techniques are applied.

Predictive, Adaptive and Hybrid Project Management

The Agile manifesto was a reaction against ‘traditional’ or ‘predictive’ project management.

Predictive approaches require that as much information about a project as possible is gathered at the start, and then the project proceeds according to well defined phases, with a lot of project documentation being created along the way.

The writers of the Agile manifesto wanted to work within a much lighter project framework, which emphasized creating real world deliverables rather than detailed project planning about those deliverables.

One of the many good things about Agile is that it allows, and encourages, project teams to be more responsive and adaptive to changing circumstances as the project proceeds.  Hence Agile is also known as an Adaptive approach to project planning and delivery.

Predictive approaches are not dead – far from it.

Legal Project Managers will often use predictive approaches and strive to keep the supporting project documentation light touch.

Inevitably there are some limitations with the Predictive approach, which is why other approaches have also been developed.

Rather than ‘pure Agile’, a Hybrid approach may be adopted.  This is where a high-level project plan is mapped out at the outset, perhaps by using a Gantt chart, with some Agile tools and techniques being used during project delivery.

 

Agile Project Techniques

The most important point to grasp about Agile is that it is not an absence of project planning and control.

Running projects using Agile principles does require project planning, control and reporting.

Using Agile, these things are done in ways which are very light-touch.

Documentation supporting Agile project delivery can be tasks in spreadsheets and / or a series of Kanban Boards.

You will almost certainly have come across a Kanban Board.

At its most basic, a Kanban Board will have three columns headed something like ‘To Do’, Doing’ and ‘Done’.  The ‘To Do’ column is a task list and each task moves across the board, reaching the ‘Done’ column when it is complete.

For me the core differentiator between Agile project techniques and Predictive approaches is that in Agile projects are split up into a series of repeated, short, time-boxes (known ‘sprints’ in Agile terminology).

All the project work is done in each time box, with the work being planned, tracked and reviewed within each of these short time boxes rather than the project as a whole.

 

Agile for Legal Work – a scenario

Consider this scenario: a law firm partner has just met the head of legal services at one of her largest clients.  The client is a large construction organisation working on large complex construction projects, usually as the lead contractor.

The client is currently working on another large project.  As is normal in these projects, disputes between various parties are already occurring and will undoubtedly increase as the project progresses.

There are a lot of potential parties (Employer, Lead Contractor, Sub-Contractors, Professional Advisors, Government bodies and so on) and it is likely there will be a wide range of disputes varying in their technical and legal complexity.

The client has engaged the firm to manage all disputes during the construction project.

It is reasonable to assume that the client will want to settle some disputes quickly while it may want to contest some disputes right through to the arbitration process (which can be time consuming and expensive).

 

Agile for Legal Work – Agile in practice

The law firm employs legal project managers.

The legal project managers have learned that Agile project management techniques can work well for managing the dispute resolution work flowing from large construction projects.

Here is how an Agile approach could work in the scenario above.

1. Back at the office the Partner meets with the legal project manager assigned to the matter (in reality, it will be a collection of related matters), and they agree to take an Agile approach.
2. The legal project manager arranges a meeting of the core legal team for a project kick off meeting.
3. During the kickoff meeting the partner conveys what she can about the client’s instructions, which are obviously broad and rather uncertain. She explains to the team that there are 4 known disputes which the client cannot resolve commercially, with the likelihood of more to come during the construction.
4. The partner provides a high-level outline of each of the 4 live disputes.
5. The partner then leaves the kick-off meeting. She understands and accepts that in Agile environments teams take ownership of projects, creating task lists and assigning resources to complete those tasks as they see fit.
6. The legal service team, with the legal project manager present, then has a short project planning meeting without the partner. The team decides to work with time-blocks (sprints) of one week each (the effectiveness of the length of this time-block will be kept under review).
7. The team plans an outline of Sprint 1. The team decides to spend Sprint 1 conducting research about each of the 4 disputes and will present results to the client and partner at the end of the week. This is another essential part of Agile: at the end of each sprint, there will be short walkthroughs of the work completed during that sprint with the client and lead partner.
8. Team members divide up the work into more meaningful tasks than simply ‘research’.  Different disputes involving different parties require looking at different facts, types of documents, legal issues and different areas of law.
9. The team decide to use a Kanban board to list all the tasks they have set themselves for the week and help them track progress.
10. The team also decides that each team member can only work on one task at a time until that task is completed. If for any reason the team member can’t make progress on a task (such as waiting for information from a third party) that task is put on hold and the team member starts another task.  They have also agreed to a limit of no more than 3 tasks on hold for the entire team all week.
11. If a task is put on hold for an operational reason, such as waiting for documents from a third party, the legal project manager will take responsibility for removing the blockage. Meanwhile the lawyers concerned can move to another task which requires their expertise rather than them having to spend time on more operational issues (such as chasing people for documents).
12. The team also agrees to have a short 10-minute meeting each morning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The meetings will be run by the legal project manager.  The purpose of these meetings is so that each team member can explain progress on the task they are working on.  The Kanban board will be displayed during these meetings, and it will be an online board because different team members are in different offices and have different working days from home.
13. On Friday afternoon at the end of week 1 (end of Sprint 1) the team presents findings to the client and partner. The team seek feedback from both, especially the client.  The client now says that considering the work the team has done, he wants the team to focus on disputes 1 and 3, as commercially they are more important to the client.  Disputes 2 and 4 can be put on hold for the time being.
14. After this meeting the team holds another short meeting to review what worked well and not so well during the week. They note these and resolve to learn lessons and apply them during future sprints.
15. Finally, the team has a short sprint planning meeting where the work for the following week is planned – i.e. the team creates a task list of things to work on for disputes 1 and 3 the following week.
16. During the week the team does the work and then holds another short meeting with the client and partner at the end of week 2 (Sprint 2). The client is pleased with the work done on disputes 1 and 3 and explains that another dispute has emerged – dispute 5 – which he wants the team to research.  Disputes 2 and 4 are to stay on hold.

And so on, the cycle repeats throughout the duration of the project:

1. Sprint planning,
2. Sprint work
3. Client and partner feedback
4. Sprint retrospective
5. Sprint planning again for the next sprint.

Please note, I am not saying that sprints for legal work must be one week each.  It will be for the legal teams to determine the duration of their sprints remembering the context of the legal work they are doing.

 

Some Benefits of Applying Agile Techniques

Relatively short Sprints encourage focused attention, precisely because the sprints are short with deliverables of various kinds due at the end.

An important point to appreciate is that sprints are all about task completion.  They are not blocks of time during which people can work on tasks at – perhaps – a slow pace.  Task completion is the driving force of each sprint.

Team members collectively take ownership of sprint planning, including the task list, estimates of time to complete each task and task resourcing.  It is important to be realistic during sprint planning: what will be achievable during the sprint, given known resources and constraints?

Intra-team communications are usually much better and more succinct in Agile projects, because of regular short team meetings and use of tools such as Kanban boards which provide an instant visual snapshot of current project status.

Clients become better informed about the work the team is doing.  Clients also get to work more productively with the legal team because of the end of sprint reviews, especially by helping the team prioritize work during upcoming sprints.

The net result of all this is that operational risks facing the legal team and client are reduced.  The team can change their focus quickly and with confidence from sprint to sprint because of input from the client.

This should also help with interim billing.  There should be no surprises for the client, because they have been kept informed throughout and been able to direct the teams attention from sprint to sprint.  The expectation should be that interim bills will be paid promptly, with no pushback from the client.

The collaborative nature of Agile increases the likelihood of the client receiving ‘legal solutions’ rather than just ‘legal outputs’.  Clients value great solutions to their problems more than receiving a collection of traditional legal documents.

 

Why is Agile not more popular in legal services?

As noted at the beginning of this article, Agile is not as popular within legal services as I think it should be.

Here are some reasons why:

1. Many, if not most, lawyers are not familiar enough with Agile techniques to apply them with confidence.
2. Even in firms which have invested in legal project managers, it can be difficult to ‘sell’ the application of Agile in practice. For example, having regular short team meetings should be productive, but I think many lawyers are quick to assume that having a lot of regular meetings is time wasting.  This is not true, but the perception persists.
3. Self-organising teams, with partners taking a hands-off approach, is alien to the culture of most private practice law firms.
4. Following on from above, the emphasis on transparency within teams and in client communications and participation can also be challenging to law firm culture.
5. Agile also poses a challenge to the traditional revenue model of law firms, the hourly rate. The emphasis should be on task and sprint completion rather than the time taken to complete tasks.
6. Not every area of legal practice is suitable for Agile. The approach I have outlined above is best suited to large complex matters with substantial uncertainty around them. However, I have also trained some sole practitioners who tell me that in commercial work particularly, applying Agile approaches would benefit them.  The same holds true for in-house teams.

 

Agile is probably for you – so how to implement it?

1. Find out more about Agile and legal project management generally, ideally by taking one of our legal project management training courses which includes a full explanation of, and practice in, Agile techniques.
2. Get buy-in from senior stakeholders, especially client partners and the clients themselves. Although Agile teams should take responsibility for project planning and delivery, partners and clients still have an active role to play, especially during the end of each sprint review and when discussing prioritisation of activity during the next sprint.
3. Start by picking matters wisely for Agile, by focusing on matters where there is a high degree of complexity and uncertainty.
4. Then start thinking about time-boxing and planning for work to be done in each time-box.
5. Following on from legal project management training, if you feel you would benefit from some further consultancy and coaching about your Agile implementation, we can help with that too.
6. To find out more about our training, consulting and coaching services, please contact us and we will respond soon.