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The blog Just Below the Law highlighted E-Discovery Project Management as an alternative legal career, interviewing Michael Boland, Senior Project Manager in Winston & Strawn's E-discovery Services Group, in a post last week. Read it at:http://justbelowthelaw.com/2011/09/15/alternative-career-feature-e-discovery/#comment-198Related articlesTop 10 Best Jobs To Have As A "Legal Professional" (cyberesq.wordpress.com)Book Review: How to Land a Great Job in Litigation Support (legalprojectmanagement.info)Transitioning from Document Review to E-discovery Project Management (legalprojectmanagement.info)Using Legal Project Management to Extend an E-discovery Practice Group to a Firm-wide Competency (legalprojectmanagement.info)LPM Career Advice: Getting Back in the Game (legalprojectmanagement.info)ILTA 2011 - Legal Project Management Staff Roles Survey (legalprojectmanagement.info)E-Discovery Project Management: ILTA White Paper on Legal Project Management,...

The International Legal Technology Association has been at the forefront of legal-project management. I have covered ILTA conferences, webinars, and white papers in the past on this blog. Currently, ILTA is holding its 2011 "Rev-Elation" conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Two fellow leaders of the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Legal Project Management Community of Practice (LPM CoP) are presenting at this years ILTA conference.Kim Craig, the Communications Lead for the LPM CoP, is the Director of Seyfarth Shaw LLP's Project Management Office. On Tuesday, she participated in a panel presentation with Pamela Woldow, Partner and General Counsel at Edge International, Inc., and Andrew Terrett, Director...

The Project Management Institute's Project Management Professional (PMP) certificate comes in at number three in Global Knowlege's list of the "15 Top Paying IT Certifications." According to Global Knowledge, the average salary for an IT professional with a PMP is $103,570. There are a lot of lawyers in this economy who would envy a six-digit salary. The article states that the PMP credential is recognized as the most important certification for project managers, is globally recognized and in heavy demand. The Project Management Professional credential demonstrates that you not only have the experience but also the education to successfully lead...

On April 28th, the New York City Bar will host a CLE presentation by Aileen Leventon on how lawyers can use legal-project management to advance their careers. Title: "IMPLEMENTING PROJECT MANAGEMENT TO ADVANCE YOUR CAREER"  Format/Location: Live workshop held at the New York City Bar, 42 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036. Cost: Cost. Free to members and attorneys from sponsoring law firms. 60 USD for everyone else. Organizations: New York City Bar; QLex Consulting Description: Legal project management enables associates to be more effective when working on teams and helps improve overall efficiency and quality of work. This program...

Despite the recession, demand for litigation-support talent, especially for e-discovery project managers, continues to grow. This blog frequently covers this job market and so I was interested to learn that David Netzer, founder of LitigationSupportCareers.com, has published a book through the Organization of Legal Professionals (of which he is an Advisory Council Member). The book is titled How to Land a Great Job in Litigation Support: An OLP Quick Guide and is billed as "an informative guide geared towards those who seek employment in the exploding market of Litigation Support",[1] "useful to people at all stages of their career from recent...

A reader asks:  I have worked as a document review attorney for a number of years. I'm interested in developing my career in the ediscovery area, beyond doing document review. I would appreciate some advice regarding this, such as what career options are out there in this area? Also, it would be a great help if you could point me to some resources that provide more information.Over the years, I've seen a number of document-review attorneys build successful e-discovery law and legal-support careers. Given the theme of this blog, I will focus on careers in e-discovery management, rather than sales, training,...

It's time for another post on the value of project-management credentials, a topic on which many of my readers have strong opinions. This post continues my discussion of the International Legal Technology Association's (ILTA) recently released white paper on legal-project management.[1] In the first post in this series I discussed Pamela Woldow's article on how legal technologists can use LPM to enhance their position in their law firms.[2] The second post looked at an article by Jennifer Potter, which discusses her firm's rollout of Microsoft Windows 7/Office 2010.[3] In the third post, I discussed three articles: Laura Livecchi's discussion on how to leverage legal-project management philosophies...

The American Lawyer recently published an interesting article about the increasing number of law firms that are creating e-discovery counsel positions and setting up e-discovery practice groups and task forces.[1] There are a variety of models described, but what they all seem to share in common is that there are one or more attorneys and staff who focus full or part time on e-discovery issues, which act as a go-to resource for the rest of the firm and its clients. The problem with this approach is pointed out by the always-astute George Socha:[J]ust having an e-discovery practice group doesn't mean that the...

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) recently released a white paper on legal-project management comprising eight articles by lawyers and technologists discussing various ways to leverage project-management practices and tools to improve legal work.[1] In conjunction with this publiction, the ILTA has released its 2010 Legal Project Management survey.[2] I'm dedicating the next few posts on to discussing these articles and the survey.  In Rethinking the Role of Technology in Legal Project Management, Pamela Woldow of Edge International discusses how "[l]egal technologists can reposition themselves as essential contributers to the LPM implementation process [and help them] redefine what it means to be 'indispensable'...

I was recently asked a great LPM-career question and thought I would post it, and my answer, here. Feel free to add to or counter my advice in the comments section. The question is: I have over 20 years of experience in the legal arena on both the vendor and client side. I have been out of the market for about two years and will be returning. How do I quickly come up to speed on the technology side? Most of my experience has been client facing (which I enjoy the most) and some project management. I prefer to delegate...