The demand for legal project management (LPM) services continues to increase, especially here in the U.K.

In this post I will discuss some of the drivers behind the demand for legal project management services, how the market is responding to the increased demand and why being a legal project manager is becoming an attractive career development option.

What is driving the continued growth of legal project management?

Client Demand

The fundamental driver is client demand.

Some clients, usually large corporate or governmental entities, literally ask for legal project managers to be appointed on their matters.  These clients have relatively large legal operations teams.  For matters which they consider reasonably large and / or complex, they insist legal project managers from each organization liaise to ensure smooth legal service delivery and help keep costs down.

Most corporate clients do not explicitly insist their law firms appoint legal project managers on their matters, but they do insist their matters be managed effectively and efficiently.  Often the end result is the same: a more structured approach to matter management leading to the appointment of legal project managers.

Personal clients want the same things (i.e matters to be conducted efficiently and cost effectively), but usually personal client matters (such as property transactions, wills, estates and employment) are not seen as sufficiently complex to warrant the deployment of legal project managers.  Looked at from the perspective of individual matter management this probably correct.  However when looking at private client work more broadly, there is room for legal project managers and legal process improvement professionals working with private practice teams to help improve legal service delivery processes.

Working From Home (WFH)

I believe another driver behind the recent growth spurt of legal project management is the fact that legal service professionals of all kinds spend more time working from home.  WFH obviously became a necessity during Covid-19 lockdowns.  Equally obviously, the practice of working from home for at least some of the week is here to stay.

WFH is not a panacea.  There are many issues associated with it.  For example, practice groups in some firms are less productive compared to pre-Covid, when WFH was much less common.  Another aspect of WFH is that some staff development has slowed down.  This is most obviously seen with trainee solicitors, but it’s not confined to them.  Even on days when a junior member of staff is in the office, other people won’t be and so the opportunity to have informal conversations with more senior colleagues reduced.  Hence an opportunity for informal learning is also reduced.

Having legal project managers work with legal service teams helps to address some of these issues by, for example, focusing on productivity and promoting more effective communications.

Multi-jurisdictional legal services

Increasingly, a ‘distributed team’ refers to offices or affiliated law firms in different jurisdictions.  This has obviously been the case at large multi-national law firms for quite some time.  Many, if not most, mid-tier law firms now also boast of having offices in other jurisdictions or being part of an international grouping of law firms.

Matters which have a multi-jurisdictional component are by their nature more complex and time-consuming than domestic matters.  Having legal project managers in place to help manage multi-jurisdictional matters is another obvious step to take.

Is this level of demand for legal project management service sustainable?

I think in the short to medium term, the demand for legal project managers will remain high.  To get an idea of demand, just have a quick look at LinkedIn or a jobs board for legal project manager roles.  You will find a lot!

Another way of looking at this is to consider that in large law firms which have invested quite heavily in legal project management, the ratio is about one legal project manager for one hundred practicing lawyers.  Looked at purely in terms of numbers, we have a legal project manager deficit.  Hence its reasonable to expect more legal project managers to be employed as attempts are made to bring the legal project manager / practicing lawyer ratio down.

Justifying increased head count

Legal project management leaders in law firms, like departmental heads everywhere, must justify any increase in their departmental headcount.

As legal project management matures, this is becoming easier to do as more people see and experience the benefits legal project managers can bring.

Perhaps the most immediate benefit is that legal project managers free up practicing lawyers so the latter have more time to do what they are best at: providing legal advice to clients.

Having more time to focus on the provision of legal advice means that practicing lawyers experience increased job satisfaction, as they become more engaged intellectually.  They also become more efficient, and therefore have more time to take on more of the rarefied legal work as opposed to the legal operations work (which some lawyers still – mistakenly – consider as ‘admin’).

Some examples of how legal project managers help free up time of practicing lawyers are given below.  Legal project managers:

• Help legal teams scope and define work to be done during the matter.
• Take the lead, from an operational point of view, in communicating with the client and legal team about current matter status, and what needs to be done next.
• Monitor how much work is being done by the legal team (and sometimes the client) during the matter and reporting on matter progress regularly.
• Look ahead, scanning the horizon for any risks which may affect legal service delivery and then propose solutions to manage those risks.
• Identify defects in the processes currently relied on during matter delivery and helping to improve those processes.

Lateral hires

The continued demand for legal project managers naturally leads to quite a lot of lateral hiring within the sector.  Lateral hiring will always be with us and may appear a safe approach, but it’s not necessarily a quick fix.

There are differences between law firms about how legal project managers work in practice.  There is clearly some core commonality, clustered around working with legal service teams helping with matter scoping, planning, and reporting as outlined above.

But there can also be material differences in terms of detailed practicalities.  Knowing how to get things done in one firm may not translate nicely into another firm.  It can take time and effort to assimilate someone who is steeped in the culture and approach of one law firm into another’s legal project management team.

Longer term, lateral hiring does little to widen the legal project management talent pool.  While during the last few years we have seen the creation of, for example, legal project manager apprentice schemes and trainee legal project manager / legal operations roles I think more effort can be made finding latent talent for legal project management already within firms and then developing that talent.

Legal Project Manager: An appealing role

I have helped a lot of people transition into the role of legal project manager.  Some were already working in the legal services industry in other roles, and some were experienced project professionals from outside the legal services industry.

The legal project manager role can be incredibly rewarding, not least because legal project management is still developing and legal project managers have an opportunity to change the way lawyers and law firms work.  Legal project managers perform client facing roles which means they often enjoy a relatively high profile.  They are also generally well paid compared to project managers working in other sectors.

The net result of all of this is that there are – or should be – plenty of candidates eager to step into the role of legal project manager.

Identifying potential legal project managers

Often a source of latent project manager talent can be found close to home.

Professional Support Lawyers, Costs Lawyers and Paralegals are some of the most obvious sources of legal project manager talent, closely followed by Associate / Assistant solicitors who want to move their career in a slightly different direction.  People enjoying multiple careers within the legal service industry, segueing from one role to another, is becoming more common.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting that all legal project managers must have a legal background.  While having a legal background helps when working closely with lawyers (at the very least it helps establish early credibility with practicing lawyers), people with other industry experience bring different perspectives which can be of immense value.  For example, by using their experience of what works well elsewhere, professional project managers from outside the legal sector can become highly effective change agents in law firms.

Legal project manager skill development

I have written previously about the skills required of legal project managers, how to develop those skills and how to best transfer skills learned on training courses back into the workplace.  Suffice to say that skills development takes time and effort.

With someone new to the role of legal project manager, no-one, including the person concerned, knows how successful they are going to be.  For this assessment to be made time needs to be spent in the role, after being fully trained and assimilated into the legal project management team.

This is why lateral hires can be such an attractive proposition.  They have relevant experience and have shown they have been successful in the role elsewhere.  But, as noted above, even a lateral hire is not without risk.

Engaging independent legal project managers

Another source of legal project manager talent is the small, but increasing, number of independent, or freelance, legal project managers.

Experienced freelance legal project managers can be used to plug short- and medium-term gaps in legal project manager capacity and capability.  They can also be used to supply cover while any latent legal project management capability is being developed for the longer term.

As with full-time lateral hires, engaging freelance legal project managers is not without risk but I am seeing more freelance legal project managers on the market.

Helping to meet the demand for legal project management services

Even assuming the rate of legal project manager recruitment and development continues, there will still never be enough legal project managers, at least in the short and medium term, to go around.  I think the demand for legal project management services will always outstrip the ‘hands-on’ real life supply.

I am often approached by people asking for advice about how to become a legal project manager and whether the role would be a good one for them.  (I have written a short free e-book about how to become a legal project manager, which can be downloaded here).

Sometimes organizations looking to recruit legal project managers also ask me to help them.

I always try to help people and if I can’t help directly, the likelihood is that I know someone else who can.  I am fortunate to have an international network of colleagues through the International Institute of Legal Project Management (IILPM).  I have trained hundreds of legal project managers and legal process improvement professionals and keep in touch via my monthly alumni meet-ups.  Underpinning all of this is the fact that I have spent my entire career in the legal services industry.  All this means I have a quite a large network of people interested in legal operations I can reach out them to as and when the need arises.

So if you would like a conversation about legal operations (including legal project management, legal process improvement and legal tech) please do contact me.