Having recently considered the basic issues of knowledge management. Let us consider project management and why this would be of interest to law firms, specifically large law firms.
From an engineering perspective, project management is important because experience has shown that it is not trivial to coordinate a team to accomplish a task. In fact, the larger the team the more complicated the project management issues become. It isn't as simple as just simply dividing the number of tasks amongst a bunch of individuals, simple things like managing communications between members increases rapidly in complexity.
That is, if you have a small task that can be accomplished by 2 people, a large task cannot simply be solved by throwing more people at the task. The solution generally does not scale linearly. Not if you want to accomplish the task efficiently and within a budget.
I believe the large law firms are considering project management because of the economy and the push to deliver ever more value to their clients. Traditionally, a law firm would not care about project management because any overruns in time and expenditures are simply passed on to the client. That was a great time and a great business model for the law firms involved.
However, as the push to fixed fee billing, caps on billing per task, and other alternative fee arrangements arise in order to encourage partnership with the client. The onus or burden of the cost overruns in time and expenditure are increasingly being shouldered by the law firm itself. From a start-up point of view, this is a normal way of life and is the norm in many other industries. Being a partner with a client means that there is a sharing of both the rewards and the risks!
So we have established the what of project management, and the why of project management, now what? Well, I guess we'll see how it evolves and the industry specific solutions work out. I argue that it is the law firms that, out of necessity, must understand this push for greater efficiency, the art of the proper quote for routine work and projects, including the collection and analysis of of their own performance data that will determine the new leaders in legal industry.
As a small firm, we are routinely dealing with cost-sensitive clients who demand the most value for their valuable and limited legal spend. Quoting fixed fees where appropriate or providing reliable estimates is expected or both, while delivering quality service on target is our definition of a successful partnership with our clients.
Luckily for us, engineers and scientists are trained to work collaboratively in teams to accomplish much larger goals than any one member of the individual team members could. The processes and methodoligies will likely come from the technical consulting and management consulting side of the world, as they also deliver professional services and are one of the closest industries in terms of business model.
Although, the convergence between legal and technical consulting is here (arguable management consulting), and is demonstrated by the development of e-discovery teams at large consulting firms such as KPMG and peers. The legal industry has traditionally been a very restricted field and not subject to the competitive pressures that technology industries have experienced. But, that day is now, or maybe it was years ago, with other large providers of legal process outsourcing (LPO) such as CPA global delivering compelling solutions and value.
I myself am currently considering how best to leverage our technical and legal expertise to be part of the vanguard in pushing the boundaries. However, that's a topic for another day!
As always, I'm happy to receive your comments and feedback.
Take care,
p.s. The subject of this article is attributed to Jason Leung, Director of Knowledge Management at Ridout and Maybee, who raised this topic in an email conversation and at lunch.
