All You Need to Know About Legal Project Management
Legal project management (LPM) is a relatively new discipline for most law firms. While many understand the benefits, its precise definition is often elusive. Simply stated, LPM is the process of planning and managing cases, matters, transactions and other legal work in ways that deliver high client value, improve the client experience and establish solutions that are repeatable. One of the things that makes legal project management unique is that when it is done successfully, it can add value to both the law firm and the client.
Many law firms struggle with the tools available in the marketplace. LPM can be done without a tool – by just changing the way the firm approaches planning and managing legal matters. However, the use of tools can significantly increase the efficiency and effectiveness by providing a common communication tool for teams, clients and outside consultants . Software tools come in two flavors: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal tools are generic task and project management software and can be used across all industries. Vertical tools are specifically designed for the legal industry.
Understanding the difference between the two is essential. The legal industry is unique in that pricing is often out of the firm’s control. Time is not as predictable as it is in other industries. As a result, the cost of being effective is much higher. There are many dimensions to LPM software, including the ability to: LPM is not a science, but an art. This is a critical distinction. The frontline lawyers and staff have to be engaged for the discipline to become part of their routine. The benefits are monumental, including the leveraging of resources, cost and time savings, and significant client value-adds.
Traits of the Best Legal Project Management Programs
The best legal project management tools for lawyers have a number of important features. These tools should:
Make it easy to track and manage tasks: A key area of focus in the modern approach to law firm practice is managing and tracking the many tasks involved in any given legal matter. All of these tasks (whether they relate to your work or the work of others on your team) need to be managed properly, and the best legal project management tools enable you to easily assign and track tasks. This is an integral part of any successful legal project management system.
Include time-tracking capabilities: Timekeeping is an essential part of the practice of law that shouldn’t be neglected when you’re trying to ensure that processes run as efficiently as possible in your business. The best legal project management tools come equipped with time-tracking features that automatically log the amount of time each attorney and other team member involved in a matter has spent on it, as well as providing simple time entry functions.
Enable seamless collaboration between clients and their legal teams: In the context of legal project management, one of the most important things to keep all parties involved in a matter up to date is clear communication. Legal project management tools are a key way to ensure that your internal legal team members and your client are always on the same page regarding ongoing projects.
Allow document automation: A great deal of a typical legal project involves the creation of numerous documents, both for the sake of your records and yours and your client’s convenience. Instead of having to create each of them from scratch, a quality legal project management tool will allow you to automate the process, creating documents using an integrated process that can save you a significant amount of time.
The Best Legal Project Management Tools in 2023
Some of the top legal project management tools in 2023 include BrightFlag, LawGeex, 99firm, Zola Suite, and Legal Tracker.
BrightFlag is a full-service legal management tool that aims to improve communication between the law firm and client. In many ways, it resembles a more basic case management program.
Pricing: Unknown
Reviews: Currently only available on two review sites, BrightFlag earned 4.7 out of 5 on G2 and 5 out of 5 on Capterra.
LawGeex is a matter management and legal workflow automation system aimed at empowering in-house legal teams to provide real-time visibility and reduce risk. The program lets you set predefined approval rules so the system can reach out to parties for revenue contracts, training presentations, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and any other non-legal documents that might arise during the course of specific legal matters.
Pricing: Plans start at $500 per month.
Reviews: LawGeex has a perfect rating of 5 out of 5 across both TrustRadius and SoftwareAdvice.
99firm’s automated time-tracking and practice management program is designed for law firms with solo practitioners and smaller teams in mind. It features billing, accounting, and document management tools, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.
Pricing: Plans start at $49 per month.
Reviews: 99firm earned 4.9 out of 5 on SoftwareAdvice and 5 out of 5 on Fit Small Business.
Zola Suite is one of the most robust business suite programs available. Besides legal project management and time-tracking tools, it also features billing, accounting, and an advanced practice management system.
Pricing: Unknown
Reviews: Zola Suite earned a 4.4 out 5 on G2 (8 reviews) and a 4.5 out of 5 on FinancesOnline (88 reviews).
Legal Tracker aims to streamline processes across multiple legal departments. It includes legal spend management and e-billing tools, as well as solutions for time and expense tracking and matter management. Users can customize their dashboards to focus on KPIs that matter most to them.
Pricing: Unknown
Reviews: Legal Tracker earned a rating of 4.3 out of 5 on G2 and 4.0 out of 5 on Capterra.
The Perks of Legal Project Management Software
The integration of law practice management software into your law firm will help with more accurate billing and even forecasting of your income, as you gain such things as the ability to track milestones and tasks in the performance of a matter. Streamlined handling of contingencies and changes in scheduling will also lead to less conflict, at least in terms of time spent in court, thus allowing for greater efficiencies. One of the major advantages of legal project management tools is that repetitive tasks can then be automated. A good example of such a situation would be in litigation, where milestones after a complaint has been filed might include filing an answer, scheduling a case management conference, etc. By having these army ants to gather, carry out and protect these tasks, you will have a place to focus your energies to achieve better results. Using legal project management can also help you to determine which functions require outsourcing, and this is one of the best ways to improve your bottom line. While most law firms believe that any purpose not performed in-house is handled less efficiently, the opposite can actually also be true in a number of cases, such as litigation.
How to Pick a Legal Project Management Tool for Your Law Firm
Choosing the right legal project management tool for your law firm is no small task, especially when they all seem to come with different features, capabilities, and costs. The first thing you should do when embarking on this endeavor is look at exactly what both your business and your clients are in need of. What are the tools doing for you? Just like with a puzzle, it is important to figure out where the pieces fit before you start piecing everything together. One factor to consider is the size of your firm – smaller firms may need less of a comprehensive approach while larger law firms are likely to benefit from more robust offerings. Next, consider how many other members of your firm will be using the product. If it will only be an attorney or two using the program, then perhaps the interface is not as big of a deal as it would be if many people will be logging on to the program throughout the day . After all, you don’t want your firm to have to spend hours being trained on complicated technology, so the interface should be easy to learn and operate. One of the most important factors to consider is the budget of your firm. It is always a good idea to have free rein to select anything and everything on your wishlist, but this is not a reality, luckily there are many products out there that will fit into any budget. Budget-friendly products may not offer as many options as other more expensive programs but often times the products with fewer features still get the job done. Some other factors to consider are whether you are looking for a product that can be customized for your specific practice area, whether it will be used for any other departments at your firm and if it will be used by clients as well. Every law firm has different needs and requirements so determining which legal project management tool is right for your firm will depend on a variety of factors.
How to Implement Legal Project Management for Your Law Firm
Implementing legal project management (LPM) into your firm requires planning and communication between partners and staff. Staff needs to be onboard for the implementation to be successful and effective. The first step to take is to determine what LPM tools will be used and how the staff will be trained.
The goal of LPM is to control costs by completing work more efficiently. It is the responsibility of the project manager to monitor the time and other resources spent on tasks. The project manager should work with the project team to identify potential efficiencies. These can include:
Taking these steps to streamline the process can lower the cost to the client without compromising quality.
Once you have decided on the tools to be used and the workflow you will follow, you need to train staff on using the new LPM tool. At a minimum, staff should understand the basic functions of the tool so they can help maintain key pieces of information and ensure the information being entered into the system is effective. The project manager should also understand the basic functionality and have an understanding of how to track and report project performance.
You must also develop a communication plan among stakeholders to inform them about the adoption of LPM; the purpose of the project and what partnering means, as well as other relevant information. Don’t forget to communicate to your clients about the LPM implementation. Keeping the lines of communication open is critical to the success of LPM.
The Future of Legal Project Management
The future of legal project management looks very bright indeed. As law firms continue to understand the value gained from implementing legal project management, we cannot expect this area to slow down anytime soon.
The future will bring in some new trends that are exciting. Things like artificial intelligence will continue to integrate into legal project management and legal project management software. It will be wonderful to see how this technology will make projects more efficient and effective.
We will be reaching a point where we are using a lot more different tools for knowledge management, contract analysis, matter management, data analytics and lawyers’ resource allocation . We need to tie all this together with an enterprise LPM to see everything in one snapshot and better plan and allocate resources.
We will see the ability for remote collaboration in the near future. This will allow us to carry more tools into the cloud and out to the lawyers in a manner not currently possible.
I think we will require much more integration capabilities in the coming years. We will need to keep working on how to share data between various systems to get the data into a unified view and better report on things like resource utilization and information sharing.