Oh! The HERESY! In response to a recent post on this blog, Steven Levy suggests that Legal Project Management is not a panacea.[1] Dr. Feel-not-so-good Mr. Levy claims you can't just swallow the LPM pill and find that all your practice-management and client relations headaches have gone away.
As reactions to LPM move from "what?" and "it doesn't apply to us lawyers" to wider acceptance by the legal community as a necessary part of the solution to the legal industry's ills, we LPM promoters must prepare ourselves for lawyers whose attitude towards LPM are like my attitudes towards physical fitness. I see the value in physical fitness and I would like to get back into shape--so long as I don't have to diet and exercise. Many will buy the eat-whatever-you-want-and-still-lose-weight version of LPM that some newly minted LPM consultants and trainers will push.
The smart firms, however, will stick with the trainers who don't shy away from the truth. You got this way from many years of bad habits and it'll take a good deal of time and sweat to get back into good form. Steve draws an analogy to installing electrical lighting:
You're in a house without electric lights. To get them, you have to put in the fixtures, pull the wiring through the walls, install switches and circuit breakers and such. It's work, and it will even disrupt the house for a bit.
. . .
Is the rewiring of legal processes by Legal Project Management guaranteed? Well, it's not a panacea... "but screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail," says Lady Macbeth.I like his lighting analogy. I can sympathize with a lawyer, left behind and trying to adapt to a changing world crying out:
Come on baby, baby please come on, baby, cause I'm on my knees.
Turn on your lights, let it shine on me, shine on your [LPM] light.
Let it shine on me, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.Steve Levy quotes Shakespear and I quote the Grateful Dead. Ah well, after sitting in on a "Fireside Chat" over at the Lexician, you know where to come slumming around for the low-brow LPM content.
[1] Steven B. Levy, Turning on the Light of Legal Project Management, Lexician, Apr. 1e, 2010, http://lexician.com/lexblog/2010/04/turning-on-the-light-of-legal-project-management/.
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