Recently in Law Firms Who Get It Category

As one of the leaders in applying to process improvement and project management to legal work, Seyfarth Shaw has appeared on this blog many times (see the "related posts" section, below). Once again the firm is receiving media attention for its Seyfarth Lean program, which I've covered before. In this month's "Legal Rebels" column, the ABA profiles Lisa J. Damon, a member of Seyfarth Shaw's executive committee. The article highlights her role in promoting the Seyfarth Lean model, a version of Lean Six Sigma tailored for legal work, as well as the firms shift from hourly billing to alternative fee arrangements, and...

On September 28th, the International Legal Technology Association along with the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Legal Project Management Community of Practice (LPM CoP), and the PMI's Chicagoland Chapter are co-hosting an informative session on legal-project management. Title: "Project Management = Law and Order"  Format/Location: Live event at: Seyfarth Shaw LLP 131 S. Dearborn Street Suite 2400 ChicagoIllinois 60603 *Attendees should be prepared to show photo ID upon arrival Cost: Free. Organizations:  ILTA PMI's Legal Project Management Community of Practice (LPM CoP) PMI's Chicagoland Chapter  Description: In collaboration with the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA), PMI's LPM Community of Practice and PMI's Chicagoland Chapter, Seyfarth...

Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP have promoted their legal-project management activities in a couple of recent posts to their events and news pages. The firm is one of the first to use LegalBizDev's Certified Legal Project Manager program to provide its attorneys with LPM training. Two partners of the firm, Stacy D. Ballin and Mitchell S. Thompson,  are among the initial group of students to undergo the LegalBizDev program. Squire Sanders has a project-management committee co-chaired by Ballin and Thompson and is actively promoting LPM in legal conferences and CLE events. For example, next week, Squire Sanders partner Susan M. DiMickele...

Danish law firm Forum Advokater highlights the importance of legal-project management and advertises its LPM expertise in a page dedicated to the topic on the firm's Web site. Interestingly, the firm uses the registered trademark symbol every time it uses the term "Legal Project Management." A search of the Danish Patent and Trademark Office shows that, indeed, Forum Advokater has registered "Legal Project Management" as a trademark in Denmark. http://onlineweb.dkpto.dk/pvsonline/VaremaerkeIt is currently in the investigation & assessment stage. If there are any Danish IP lawyers reading this, I'd be interested in your whether Forum Advokater can succeed in claiming "Legal Project Management" as...

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...

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...

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,...

"Having more lawyers who are better at managing projects to a budget is the only way [alternative fee] arrangements will gain traction." In the second of an occasional series in on how law firms are implementing process/project management techniques, Gina Passarella of The Legal Intelligencer speaks to Daniel J. Sheeran, chief financial officer Duane Morris LLP about how the firm uses project management to take advantage of the increasing popularity of alternative fee arrangements (AFAs).[1] I've written before about the importance of project management to AFAs [2] and I've discussed Duane Morris's use of litsupport-specific project management applications.[3] This article...

Not sure how this one slipped past me. At the beginning of this month, American Lawyer posted a six-minute interview with J. Stephen Poor, Managing Partner of Seyfarth Shaw on how Six Sigma is working out for the firm.[1] There's not much we haven't heard before about Seyfarth Lean in this video, but one interesting nugget is that Seyfarth Shaw is rolling out a client feedback mechanism modeled off of the ACC Value Challenge that is tied to Seyfarth Lean, which will go out to all the firm's clients. Bill Henderson provides more detailed notes on the video on a post to his Legal Profession...

Jim Middlemiss reports in the National Post [1] that the law firm of McCarthy Tétrault has launching its own home-baked project management system. 18-months in development, the system is intended to help the firm's lawyers "with planning and estimating legal projects."The Microsoft Excel-based system builds "on information in the firm's knowledge-management centre, which includes precedents and checklists lawyers use when carrying out legal tasks" and consists of two parts: One allows lawyers to create a customized work-plan template. Lawyers use that to agree with clients on how they will proceed on a matter.... The second is a staffing tool, a database of the...