General counsels (GCs) and corporate legal departments fundamentally serve as problem-solvers for an organization’s legal issues. This mindset often leads to a heavy focus on the outcome of a legal task than the process for achieving it. In fact, a recent survey of legal operation professionals showed only 37% of their legal departments use a legal project management process.

Yet, project management systems and tools are essential for optimizing your department’s resources. They help you maintain an objective perspective on the successes and shortcomings of your department, especially when aligning with other business units. In short, end-to-end legal project management is valuable. Learn why below.

Key Takeaways

• Legal project management encompasses all actions you take after a matter request enters your department.
• Having legal project management systems in place provides valuable information you can transform into strategies for the business units you serve.
• Legal project management helps reduce the risk of missed deadlines, which can generate valuable cost savings for your organization.
• Start your legal project management transformation with a third-party audit and research into available solutions.

What Is Legal Project Management?

Legal project management refers to all efforts you make to track, complete, and debrief an operation or workflow within the scope of your legal department. It’s useful for various processes, including contract lifecycles, litigation and dispute resolution, compliance matters, and other internal controls.

The Benefits of End-to-End Legal Project Management

When we describe end-to-end legal project management, we are really discussing the value and benefits of being more mindful of the beginning of an operation, its outcome, and the impact that result will have on the company. After incorporating end-to-end management practices, you’ll quickly realize the rewarding information at your fingertips as a GC that you can leverage to better serve your department and other business units.

Help Develop Systems for Capturing Key Data on Your Legal Projects

Legal project management encourages organization and consistency, both of which are essential for improving operations. Developing repeatable systems for your most standard operations allows you to capture key legal data that can inform and guide future decisions. When a new project occurs that doesn’t fit in your system, create a process for how your legal department will handle it. This could mean sitting down with stakeholders to establish a new system or outsourcing the project to an ALSP or outside counsel. The types of data you might track within your project management systems could include:

• Time spent on the projects (both as a whole and in part)
• Total costs
• The outcome
• Frequency of issues that arise within the scope of a project.

Identify Inefficient Operations in Your Legal Department’s Projects

When you prioritize the steps and data a legal project produces, you can identify weaknesses, redundancies, and other inefficiencies. These factors hinder your legal department’s alignment with the company’s objectives. With this information, you can play a more active role in the company as a strategic business partner.

Forecast Timelines of Legal Workflows with Greater Accuracy

Knowing how long a legal project could take is another benefit of end-to-end legal project management. When you have timelines for each step of a process, you have a greater ability to maneuver within the project at large. You can set reasonable expectations for the business partners and know when to switch course on a project because of other business factors (e.g., the closing of a deal, and tax deadlines).

Legal Project Management Is a Useful Hedge Against Employee Turnover

Having legal project management systems protects you from unexpected turnover in the company –whether in your department or another business unit. Ideally, your management will include dashboards to see the status of a project when a person leaves, helping you direct the project to the next responsible person. Handling turnover is also where your playbooks and process mapping will shine, because they allow your new legal team members to adjust more quickly and gain competence.

Reduce the Risk of Missing Key Deadlines or Compliance Issues

The benefit of legal project management is also apparent in meeting significant deadlines regularly. Having personnel dedicated to managing looming deadlines, setting up automated alerts, or using a combination of both will limit lapses of key legal events. For example, contract renewals governing a valuable business operation, state regulatory filings, and more items that would financially cost the organization if missed.

Simple Steps for Establishing Legal Project Management Practices in Your Department

Revamping your legal project management systems can feel like a gargantuan task depending on the current state of your operations. However, GCs and chief legal officers can start small with gradual improvements over time that lead to long-term solutions. Consider these simple steps for greater legal project management:

• Meet with legal design experts who can audit your management processes and make recommendations on strategies for improvement.
• Get feedback from business unit leaders and personnel your legal department frequently works with to get insight into their biggest concerns.
• Research software solutions that provide centralized dashboards and automation features to fill gaps in your management.
• Hire non-legal support with technical, data analytics, and financial skillsets who can develop into legal project managers.
• Create playbooks and roadmaps for every legal process to establish standards and build consistency among your team.

Master Legal Project Management with Morae’s Design Experts

Legal project management is an unavoidable aspect of the role for today’s general counsel who must continually show their value to garner the respect and trust of the C-suite. How your legal department achieves outcomes for the organization is just as important as what those outcomes are. With our legal design experts, get immediate insights into ways you can better understand your legal operations and make improvements that deliver a positive impact.

Contact us today for a free consultation.