One size does not fit all

The legal sector has made significant recent strides in becoming fitter for the modern age. The most obvious example is the headway that has been made in legal technology. Most people in the legal sector are aware of at least some of the benefits that legal tech has brought to their industry, and also recognise the central role it is likely to play in the future.

Artificial intelligence that uses data to copy human behaviours is being used frequently in the legal sector to do many of the more repetitive tasks, freeing up legal professionals to focus on strategic work. It is having a real and tangible impact on the everyday work done by lawyers.

But a lesser-known example of modernisation in law, and one that is proving to be similarly effective to law firms and legal departments, is project management. The methodologies and rigours of project management can bring huge benefits to legal, and firms and in-house teams are now increasingly working with project management professionals to deliver on a wide variety of legal matters.  

The uptake of project management in law is a fairly new trend. The legal sector is relatively late to project management, and it was more commonly seen in sectors such as construction (which has made heavy use of it for many years). For legal businesses, it is currently an area full of opportunity, especially as technological innovation in law continues to evolve at pace, often allowing legal professionals to achieve huge efficiencies in terms of time and cost savings.

However, as this trend emerges, a new issue has come to the fore. Law firms and legal departments will often be tempted to bring in a project management consultant with lots of project management experience but little experience in law. This is understandable. There is not yet a huge body of evidence for most people to look to, spelling out the interactions between project management and law, because it is such a new development. Many therefore assume that project management methodologies that work well in one sector can be lifted into the legal sector and expected to perform the same. This is not the case.

One size does not fit all. What is needed is a bespoke approach in the form of legal project management.  

Crucially, legal project management (unlike in other sectors) is not just about process. The ‘people’ aspect needs to be carefully considered. In law, the entire result of a case (in litigation), or the entire outcome of a commercial agreement, can turn on the meaning of just one or two words. Each matter is extremely different to the next and, while there will be some elements in a legal matter that are broadly the same (evidence-gathering, e-discovery, certain contract clauses and so on), taking too rigid an approach runs a serious risk of the important nuance of each matter being lost.

What does this mean in a project management context? Trying to treat one matter the same as the last and trying to ‘standardise’ it by imposing rigid deadlines will not work. The emphasis needs to change and more care needs to be taken in deciding which part of the project to manage.

Most companies looking for legal project management are not interested in this kind of standardisation, and they usually are not looking for the matter to be handled faster than before. What they want is to improve communication and transparency between management and the company’s lawyers, and to foster a closer working relationship between the business and its legal team.

In law, it is about building a stronger bridge between the legal team and the business, so that when the next matter arises the two can work in greater harmony and handle the matter more efficiently. Legal project management is much more about the people in this respect.

So, what are the risks of getting this wrong? In the worst case, when you try to lift traditional project management over to law without taking this bespoke approach, businesses risk completely alienating their lawyers. Staff will end up feeling as though management and the project management consultants they are working with do not understand the nuances and complexities of their sector. There is also a lot of money on the line. According to the Project Management Institute, for example, neglecting risk and project management methodologies costs organisations roughly 11.4% of all their resources, or £114,000 out of every £1m.

Traditional project management and legal project management indeed have some tools in common, but there is a danger in trying to take a one-size-fits-all approach. Above all else, projects have to be managed with law at the core. This needs to be the goal from the outset, and all other activity needs to flow from that.

Nebil Gaigi is head of legal project management at Pinsent Masons Vario