Legal Project Management: May 2010 Archives

LPM Tidbits for Week Ending 5/29/2010

By Paul C. Easton on May 28, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending Saturday, May 29, 2010. Ron Friedmann notes the rise of legal project management in a post to his Strategic Legal Technology blawg. He covers a number of recent developments that this blog has chronicled, but what I really enjoyed is the vignette he shares about the attempt a colleague and he made to convince a litigator to use project management back in 1993: [W]e knew, at that time, we could not utter those words to a lawyer. So we explained in a somewhat round about but nonetheless clear...

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LPM on the Cover of CCCA Magazine

By Paul C. Easton on May 27, 2010 4:02 AM | Comments | No TrackBacks

Legal Project Management is the cover story of the summer issue of the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association's quarterly publication CCCA Magazine.[1] In this feature, Michael Rappaport shares legal project management insights gleaned from lawyers from a number of Canadian and U.S. corporations and law firms, as well as a number of legal project management experts, some of whom have been discussed on this blog in the past:Brian Armstrong, Exec. V.P. and General Counsel of Bruce PowerMarc-André Blanchard, Chair and CEO of McCarthy Tétrault LLP [2]Darryl Cruz, Partner at McCarthy Tétrault LLPMichael Fekete, Partner, Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLPSteven Levy, Principal of Lexician [3]Joachin...

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Does the Project Management Merit Badge Have Merit?

By Paul C. Easton on May 24, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments | 1 TrackBack

An elderly citizen needs help crossing the street. Develop a time and cost estimate for this task and calculate the earned value of your progress as you cross the road.Sorry, I couldn't resist. But it is true that the Boy and Girl Scouts of the United States are considering adding a project-management Merit Badge. The PMI Educational Foundation (PMIEF) is looking for volunteers to help with this. In particular, they would like you or your children to share ideas that help demonstrate why a project-management Merit Badge is "a fun, engaging, exciting, age appropriate concept for youth."I'm sure some...

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Amazon Guide to E-discovery Project Management

By Paul C. Easton on May 23, 2010 7:59 AM | Comments | No TrackBacks

I just took a stab at creating an Amazon guide for legal project management. In case you are not aware, an Amazon guide is not much more than a short blurb highlighting books that are helpful in understanding a particular topic, so calling it a "guide" is an exaggeration. For what its worth, you can check it out here:http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/R24KTUHY673O2GI've also created an Amazon Listmania list titled: The E-discovery Project Manager's Ready Reference Bookshelf, which highlights books that I find helpful to keep in easy reach.Have I overlooked any book that is on your must-have list of e-discovery references?...

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LPM Tidbits for Week Ending 5/22/2010

By Paul C. Easton on May 22, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending Saturday, May 22, 2010. For those of you using Martindale-Hubble Connected, there is a new Litigation Management group "for attorneys who manage litigation.Sanket Purani discusses "reverse offshoring" and wonders when the legal-outsourcing industry will find its "Kanban" in a post to his LPO Savvy blawg.D. Mark Jackson discusses the pitfalls of automation in a post to his Lean Law blawg titled "Does Technology Make You Complacent?" Timothy B. Corcoran re-posts the top five posts from his Corcoran's Business of Law Blog in "Corcoran's Greatest Hits, Volume 1." Topping the list is his...

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The Passing of a Project Management Pioneer

By Paul C. Easton on May 22, 2010 5:56 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

I just learned through a post on Rick Morris's Project Management That Works! blog that Rita Mulcahy (@Rita_Mulcahy), a pioneer in Project Management education, passed away on May 15th after a long struggle with breast cancer. Like so many others, I used Rita's materials to prepare for the PMP exam and followed her on Twitter. Her obituary was published in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, but read the announcement posted on Rick Morris's blog about this incredible woman who was given several months to live after being diagnosed with cancer in 2005, but fought on for five more years, authoring five best-selling books, while delivering classes...

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Do You Know When You're Done?

By Paul C. Easton on May 17, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

D. Mark Jackson explains in a post to his Lean Law blawg how he modified his GTD-based task lists after reading The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.[1] Atul Gawande, the author of that book, is a surgeon whose surgical checklists were inspired by aviation checklists. One common feature of aviation checklists is that they explain what "complete" means. Most people, Mr. Jackson points out, write out a brief description of the task with a little box to tick when they've completed it, but don't indicate what is required for that box to deserve the tick. TextMr. Jackson gives the...

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Onit Seeks Members for Advisory Group; Offers Members its Legal Project Management Tool Free for Six Months

By Paul C. Easton on May 17, 2010 7:38 AM | Comments | No TrackBacks

Onit is an on-line project management SaaS offering that that is targeted to the 1500 companies that are just under the Fortune 500. I first looked at Onit when I read that it was creating a "legal edition." I set up a demo account on the beta version and found it to be a simple-to-use collaboration platform, but I didn't see anything that made it particularly well-suited for legal users or anything that made it stand out from the myriad of other project management SaaS offerings.[1] In a recent e-mail exchange, however, Eric Elfman, the CEO of Onit assured me that Onit would...

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LPM Tidbits 2010-05-15

By Paul C. Easton on May 15, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending May 15th, 2010.Knowledge-management consultant Jack Vinson reflects, in his Knowledge Jolt with Jack blog, on Jim Hassett's seven-part series on Legal Project Management that Mr. Hassett has been running on his Legal Business Development blog (most recent post herehere). One of the insights he share in the conclusion of his post is "In project-based businesses, it doesn't matter how many projects we have running: it matters how many we finish.... Home buyers can't move into a half-built house, and a client isn't going to be terribly happy unless the deal is completed."...

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A Night Owl's Notes on the ACC's Web Cast on Legal Project Management

By Paul C. Easton on May 14, 2010 6:11 AM | Comments | 2 TrackBacks

Earlier today I attended the Association of Corporate Counsel's CLE Web Cast on Legal Project Management, which is now available on the ACC Web site as an archived recording. The one-hour CLE program, sponsored by the Huron Consulting Group, was presented by Nancy Jessen, a Managing Director a Huron Consulting Group, and Elizabeth A. Jaworski, Director or Motorola's Law Department Business Operations.This was one of the better and more informative Web casts on legal project management that I've attended. It covers much of the same ground that similar project-management-for-lawyers-in-only-an-hour programs do, but also included some interested statistics on the adoption of LPM in corporate...

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Indiana University Maurer School of Law Offers Project Management Course

By Paul C. Easton on May 14, 2010 1:13 AM | Comments | No TrackBacks

Legal education has been getting a bad rap recently for failing to properly prepare students in today's environment where clients are less willing to foot the bill for training lawyers how to practice law. In addition to practical legal skills, there have been calls to better prepare law students with business skills, including project-management skills.[1]Therefore, I was happy to come across a proposal for a Project Management for Lawyers course to be taught for the first time at Indiana University this fall by Professors William Henderson and Carole Silver at the University of Indiana Maurer School of Law.[2] The course will focus "on teamwork and project...

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Law Firm PM Watch: McCarthy Tétrault Highlights its Project Management Capabilities

By Paul C. Easton on May 13, 2010 11:16 PM | Comment | 1 TrackBack

In a post to this blog last month, I highlighted McCarthy Tétrault's home-baked project management system.[1] I concluded that post questioning why the firm didn't highlight its project management savvy on its Web site, which I saw as a lost marketing opportunity. While I doubt that my post had anything to do with it, I note that the firm's Web site now has a page showcasing its LPM expertise.[2] On this page, the firm explains its project management approach: The basic premise behind our approach is that to give our clients what they're asking for, we must manage their mandates...

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Law Firm PM Watch: McDermott Will & Emery's Deal Dashboard

By Paul C. Easton on May 13, 2010 3:25 AM | Comments | No TrackBacks

In part 8 of his series on legal project management on his Legal Business Development blog, Jim Hassett reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun and highlights McDermott Will & Emery's Deal Dashboard as evidence that legal project management has been taking place under the radar well before it became a buzzword in the last year or so.[1] McDermott describes the Deal Dashboard in a brochure available from the firm's Web site: McDermott is using basic project management tools to reengineer the way it does deals to streamline the M&A process, reducing inefficiencies and costs. We have implemented the Deal Dashboard,...

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Does the 2009 PMI Salary Survey Tell Us Anything About LPM Salaries?

By Paul C. Easton on May 10, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

The Project Management Institute's Project Management Salary Survey for 2009 was recently published and is now available for purchase at the PMI Web site.[1] The survey, "based on self-reported data from 35,000 project management professionals" from 19 countries, measures "salaries across eight major position description levels" and includes a number of key demographics, including work experience, PMP status, industry, department/function, and highest formal education level obtained. What, if anything, does it have to tell legal-project managers about their earning potential? For this post I only looked at the Salary Survey Country Report for the United States. The U.S. Report draws upon data...

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LPM Tidbits 2010-05-08

By Paul C. Easton on May 8, 2010 10:00 PM | Comment | No TrackBacks

Juicy bite-sized morsels of legal project management from the week ending May 8th, 2010.Toby Brown argues in a post to 3 Geeks and a Law Blog that the legal profession is not in a "buyer's market," but rather is in a "competitive market." Steven Levy examines these labels in a post to his Lexician Blog and agrees with Mr. Brown, noting that unlike in a pure buyer's market "[i]t's not profit that's being squeezed out [of law firms]. It's inefficiency." He warns, however, that if lawyers do not "manage their legal projects in a way that recognizes business as well as legal imperatives...we...

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BE GONE - WORDSMITH!

By Paul C. Easton on May 8, 2010 9:16 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

Most of the jokes about IT vs. legal come at lawyers' expense, so its nice to see some dished out to IT. While Scott Adams may not have had lawyers in mind when he created this strip, I do believe lawyers belong to the "word smiths" clique. Hmm, perhaps this explains why so many people still can't open the new MS Office formats....

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PMP = Promotion, More Pay?

By Paul C. Easton on May 6, 2010 9:44 PM | Comments | 2 TrackBacks

While folks have strong opinions about the worth of PMP certificates to employers,[1] it seems they bring value to the employees who hold them. According to the 2010 Global Knowledge/TechRepublic IT Skills and Salary Survey, salaries for PMP and other business-improvement and project-management certifications increased from 2009.[2] One interesting finding is that employers are increasingly looking for people possessing a good mix of business and process improvement skills. If you already have a PMP, the addition of Six Sigma credentials make you particularly marketable. Linda Leung, reporting on the survey for Global Knowledge, writes: The average salary of this year's survey respondents who...

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Synchronization the Killer Feature for Cloud-based Practice/Project Management Apps?

By Paul C. Easton on May 5, 2010 2:55 AM | Comments | No TrackBacks

A recent post in the April 29th issue of Technolawyer's Answers to Questions e-mail newsletter represents the frustration that is typical of practice/project-management end-users: TechnoLawyer member Jeff Garvin asks: "I currently am using the old Amicus Client Server in a >small law office. I have a Palm Treo phone and would like to get a new phone, either the iPhone or another PDA from AT&T. The Client Server edition of Amicus actually works >well for me and would like to keep it. What is the best phone that I can get from AT&T and how would I make it link (without...

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Legal Project Management is now on Face Book

By Paul C. Easton on May 4, 2010 7:13 AM | Comments | No TrackBacks

I've created a community page on Face Book to promote Legal Project Management. If you use Face Book, please become of fan of Legal Project Management and share your thoughts, tips, and discoveries related to legal project management. To become a fan, just visit the following URL and click the "like" button:http://www.facebook.com/pages/Legal-Project-Management/118579031495751...

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LPM Tidbits 2010-05-01

By Paul C. Easton on May 1, 2010 10:00 PM | Comments | No TrackBacks

LPM Tidbits is my (mostly) weekly collection of items of interest to LPM that I didn't already cover in a dedicated post. Steve Levy on his Lexician blog discusses the importance of tracking time, and knowing when time-tracking has become a non-value-added activity. He also, in another post, addresses the great debate over what the proper term for non-hourly-based billing should be: "alternative fee arrangements" or "value-based billing."PMI and LexisNexis have teamed up to help keep you on top of the latest project management news in a news service on the PMI Web site, that they are calling PMPort: www.pmi.org/pmport/The future law-firm model demands...

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May 2010 Archives