The post below is an extract from our whitepaper: How Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) add value through project management. Click here to read the full whitepaper.
Project managers will naturally seek to define the project objectives up front – the what, ensure these are aligned to a business need – the why, and produce a baseline plan – the when.
What is often overlooked though, is the focus project management gives to the framework and processes that will be implemented to deliver the project – the how.
By affording this the attention it deserves, wasted time and cost can be greatly avoided in the delivery of the project.
“Building the plane while you fly it” may be an accepted concept in fast-paced Silicon Valley environments where speed to market is key and “ship-it, fix-it, ship-it again” is a way of life.
However, in the delivery of legal and compliance services there is considerably more risk involved in the production of unfit or prolonged deliverables.
Having a defined delivery framework and associated operational processes is key to successful MLPs.
Let’s take for example a large-scale e-Discovery project. A playbook defining the review workflow up-front will ensure that each document is adequately reviewed, and quality assurance review parameters can be agreed and embedded in the workflow.
This will avoid the risk of re-review at the latter stages of the project. Effective project management here will also seek to define the data architecture pre-review, ensuring that the required data for production (e.g., relevance, privilege status, subject categorisation, metadata) is captured once and, critically, at the time of review.
This is not to say however, that MLPs cannot be innovative in their approach, and it is certainly possible to introduce alternative project management methodologies to the delivery of MLPs.
For instance, an e-Discovery project could benefit from the adoption of Agile methods traditionally used in software development. A backlog of items sought to be investigated through e-Discovery could be iteratively worked through, with the project manager controlling the prioritisation of items, introducing new items as lines of enquiry become more developed, and managing the assignment of investigation items through daily scrum meetings.
The extract above was taken from our whitepaper: How Alternative Legal Service Providers (ALSPs) add value through project management. Click here to read the full whitepaper.
About Johnson Hana
Johnson Hana is Ireland’s leading alternative legal solutions provider. That means we disaggregate legal advisory and legal process work, and focus on the latter.
We offer:
Legal Process Outsourcing – whereby a specific legal process is carved out and outsourced to us
Legal Process Secondments – to augment a busy legal team or fulfil a temporary requirement for an experienced legal professional.
Historically, legal advisory and legal process work were tackled and billed in the same way. This means that all legal work has been as costly and time consuming as legal advice.
It doesn’t need to be.
We deliver legal process work through a combination of innovative legal technologies, robust project management methodologies, and expert lawyers. This approach reduces client legal spend by over 50%, while also providing totally transparent reporting and billing. This leaves our clients free to focus on the strategic, advisory work that really adds value.