According to Jordan Furlong in a recent post to his Law21 blog, project management is the closest thing there is to a panacea "[f]or a profession suffering from aggravated clients, shrinking revenues, competitive inertia, archaic business practices and system waste."[1] "If it could cure cancer and direct an Oscar-winning movie, it could hardly be a more attractive proposition," he gushes. Rarely has someone made me feel less geeky for running this blog.
Ah, but then comes the kick in the teeth: "[Y]et, with few ... exceptions, there's not much enthusiasm for [project management] among lawyers and law firms--there's an odd reluctance to embrace something that clearly delivers so many benefits." Yes, yes, project management is the brainy kid with the pocket protector that can't get an embrace, much less to first base. But there is hope. "The good news," Mr. Furlong notes, "is that project management is starting to catch on within the profession." Every dog has its day and LPM's day is nigh.
In support of this observation, Mr. Furlong points to recent articles, books, and blogs (but, alas, not this one) on the subject. From his reading, he concludes that the reason why lawyers are not embracing project management is that they don't see the value. The reason they do not value project management is that they have a "distaste for procedure, systematization, methodology, routine -- with process." Lawyers pride themselves on their ingenuity, "priz[ing] raw intelligence over plodding procedure."
I believe he is right about lawyers' self-deceptions, but non-lawyers may find his observation a strange one. After all, aren't lawyers obsessed with procedure? Laws, regulations, rules of civil and criminal procedure, and on and on and on. Also, "ingenuity" and "lawyer" rarely appear in the same sentence outside of some firms' marketing materials. Laws, regulations, stare decisis, and a risk-adverse culture do not exactly lend themselves to an inventive environment. But what those outside the law may not understand is that the rules and procedures lawyers operate within rarely focus on efficiency and controlling costs.
Yet, it is a stretch to blame lawyers' reluctance to adopt project management methodologies on their intelligence and creativity. I agree that smart people are drawn to the law, but I believe that the reason project management is abhorred by lawyers is that law firm incentives are stacked against it. Hourly billing discourages efficiency. I'm sure smart people were drawn to the law before the 1940s, when U.S. lawyers began adopting the practice of hourly billing.[2] Also, I know that smart people are attracted to the practice of law in countries where hourly billing is the rare exception. I don't think that lawyers will run from the law if they are forced into fixed-free arrangements and have to start worrying about inefficiency eroding their profits.
In short, it is less a matter of project management crimping lawyers' style and more a matter of it crimping their wallets. Change the perverse incentives of hourly billing and watch attitudes towards project management and process improvement magically change.
Mr. Furlong goes on to make the obvious argument that lawyers ignore project management at their peril. If a law firm doesn't embrace project management, it will lose business to competitors who do. He also points out, what should be equally obvious, that much of what lawyers do can "be charted, diagrammed and proceduralized, and both the quality and the cost will be better for it."
His closing advice to lawyers is that like it or not, you need to adopt project management if you want to remain competitive.
But what I really want to urge you to do is, in fact, to like it. Process is not a diminution of your intellectual gifts; it's the honing, disciplining and improvement of them. Frameworks and road maps have never hurt anyone, and they've gotten things built and lives changed far more effectively and comfortably than we could have managed in their absence. Take a new approach to process -- look at it with a fresh eye, and see what it can add to your professional life rather than what it can take away. Process doesn't have to be a necessary evil; it can easily be a necessary good.Amen. Mr. Furlong is preaching to the choir here, but I hope the good word gets out.
[1] Jordan Furlong, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Project Management, Law21: Dispatches From a Legal Profession on the Brink., Apr. 9, 2010, http://www.law21.ca/2010/04/09/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-project-management/.
[2] The rise of hourly billing in the legal profession has been traced to the 1940s when large Wall Street law firms adopted time sheets, see Ronald A. Baker, Professional's Guide to Value Pricing 80-82 (2005), available at Amazon.com
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