Legal Project Management Training for Costs Lawyers

In 2014 I was asked to do a series of half day seminars about legal project management by the Association of Costs Lawyers (ACL).

The seminars were well received and so began my work with costs lawyers.

I get a regular flow of costs lawyers on my IILPM accredited training courses and I am delighted to say that I have contributed to Dr Mark Friston’s 3rd edition of Friston on Costs, which includes a new chapter about legal project management.

HOW TO MAKE LEGAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT WORK IN PRACTICE

The most frequent question I get asked by costs lawyers is ‘how can I make legal project management work in practice?’.

I help them with this and during my course I also have a regular ‘Alumni slot’ where previous course graduates return and explain how they have applied the course in practice.  I grateful to Simon Murray, Partner and Head of Costs at DWF, who first suggested the Alumni slot and has contributed to them with knowledge, insight and practical tips for implementation.

WHY COSTS LAWYERS SHOULD TAKE MY COURSE

Costs lawyers are very well placed to take on the role of legal project managers.

Some costs lawyers have transitioned into becoming full-time legal project managers after taking my course.

Others have applied the principles of legal project management to their work as costs lawyers and, as a result, they have expanded the range of work they do.

With the increasing prevalence of fixed costs and fixed pricing for legal services, the relevance of project based approaches to estimating, scheduling, resource planning, cost management and reporting is obvious.

The legal scenario I most often use is one based on civil litigation, and through this I show how lawyers of all kinds can improve all aspects of their legal service delivery.

For me personally, the core of legal project management is about providing clarity.  Clarity to clients especially, but also to legal team members and other third parties.

Clarity means understanding client requirements, understanding what work needs to be done to meet those requirements and then planning for the delivery of that work within an agreed time-frame.

Therefore, during my training I normally spend a lot of time discussing a structured approach to matter definition (including scoping) and a structured approach matter planning (identifying deliverables, scheduling deliverable production and communication planning etc).

SUMMARY: WHAT YOU WILL GAIN BY ATTENDING MY COURSE

1. An understanding about how to apply project management  techniques to legal matters.  You will become fully conversant about project management concepts and terminology by the end of the course and, most importantly, you will be able to explain and apply them in the context of legal service delivery.

2. Improved leadership skills as you will be capable and confident of leading legal project teams to help ensure successful outcomes.

3. Insights about how to convince clients of your legal project management skills.

4. How to go about improving your organisation’s processes and procedures to help improve legal service delivery, including how to implement legal project management successfully.

5. Certification as a Legal Project Associate (LPA) or Legal Project Practitioner (LPP) as administered by the International Institute of Legal Project Management (IILPM).  You will have the right to display your IILPM certification badge in your email footer, LinkedIn profile and website etc.

INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED CERTIFICATION

At the end of the course attendees will become certified and registered as either Legal Project Associates (LPAs) or Legal Project Practitioners (LPPs) with the International Institute of Legal Project Management (IILPM).

If you would like to become a Legal Project Associate (LPA), then you must attend the first two days of one of my training courses scheduled below.

If you would like to become a Legal Project Practitioner (LPP) then you must attend all three days of one of my training courses scheduled below.

COURSE DELIVERABLES

1. Written notes covering all topics referred to in each course.
2. IILPM Templates which can be used to execute key tasks found in legal project management.
3. Practical workshops: my public courses have practical workshops and exercises baked in.  Experience shows these really help students better understand key concepts and develop their legal project management skills.  I often find that in my public courses particularly, people learn almost as much from each other as they do from me – the course is a great opportunity to network, share experiences and learn about what other people are doing.
4. I usually recommend that any in-house training should also include workshops and exercises whenever possible and that they be based on real problems facing the legal service delivery team (I can work with you to create workshops and exercises tailored for you).
5. Post course follow-up: few things are as frustrating as completing a course full of new ideas and enthusiasm, only to find when you return to work course notes get filed away as the daily demands of job take over again.  I am really keen that course graduates get to apply legal project management after training.  With this in mind I keep in touch with all course graduates.  I also offer course graduates three hours of free consultancy advice (via telephone or skype). I find the people who take up this offer are usually those charged with implementing legal project management in their organisation.  Some people continue the consultations, which become chargeable after the three hours.
6. Graduate meet-ups: Every other month I arrange an online meet-up for all of my IILPM certification graduates.  Attendance to these meet-ups is free to IILPM graduates and the purpose of the meetings is to exchange best practice information about the continued development of legal project management and legal process improvement.

SUMMARY COURSE OUTLINE

Broadly the course is in two parts.

1. The first two days we work through the core elements of the IILPM 4-Phase LPM framework:
   1. Matter Definition
   2. Matter Planning
   3. Matter Delivery and
   4. Matter Close.
2. Then on day three we consider legal project leadership including how to further improve legal service delivery using Agile, Process Mapping and I.T. support for LPM.

DOWNLOAD COURSE PROSPECTUS

To find more detail about the course, please download the prospectus by clicking on the image adjacent.

WORKSHOPS AND EXERCISES

My teaching style is informal, but please be aware that this is an intensive course.  I appreciate that it is quite a commitment for legal service professionals to take three days out of their business as usual activities to attend a training course.  So my commitment to you in return is a course which is comprehensive, engaging and at times challenging.

With this in mind, please be prepared to fully engage and participate in the workshops and exercises.

Students usually get a lot out of the workshops and exercises.  Everyone particularly enjoys the opportunity to work alongside a wide range of professionals engaged in legal service delivery.  My previous courses have been attended by solicitors, barristers, cost lawyers, in-house lawyers, government lawyers, professional support lawyers, business development professionals and project managers.