Antony Smith explains how lawyers can benefit from using a project based approach to legal service delivery
Legal Project Management (LPM) is the application of project management principles, methods, and techniques to the delivery of legal services. LPM can help lawyers better manage their individual matters and, indeed, their practice, but, as HH Judge Simon Brown mentioned in his last NLJ update (How to avoid getting into serious trouble!), it will require a "sea-change" in the way most lawyers currently operate.
I suspect that many readers may have little idea about what project management really looks like in operation and what project managers actually do, so, as well as illustrating how LPM is applicable to legal service delivery, I have included an outline of the key features of a typical project and a project manager’s role at the end of this introductory article (see Part 2: Project management in practice).
