Legal Project Management in High Volume Complex Litigation

Project management is the application of processes, methods, skills, knowledge, and experience to achieve specific project objectives according to the project acceptance criteria within agreed parameters. Countless other industries implement legal project management, but law firms have long resisted this practice. They shouldn't. Indeed, Legal Project Management (project management designed and implemented for law firms and lawyers) is groundbreaking, has been around a long time, and has the potential to drastically change the face of our profession. 

This CLE will cover what Legal Project Management tools look like by exploring their use in plaintiff-side civil rights litigation as an example. This will include introducing and explaining the use of task matrices, backlogs, scrums, swamp outs, and case strategy meetings. While nobody wants to go to a meeting that could have been an email, implementing LPM practices ensures that is not the case. When meetings are held, they must have been planned for, with stated goals and time limits. The program will then review what a Task Matrix looks like and the rules governing it, including setting hard internal deadlines, and track who is doing what at each point of the week. Finally, this CLE will discuss how LPM can help in decreasing attrition at law firms, especially of women and BIPOC, because it can address the pressure points that lead to such attrition.

This program will benefit attorneys seeking to level up their practice management skills. Because it will use civil rights cases as a case study, it will be especially helpful for civil rights attorneys, but the concepts will be of use for any attorneys in similar high volume complex litigation practice. 

Learning Objectives:

1. Discuss the use of project management techniques in legal practice, using a high volume civil rights practice as a case study

2. Introduce and explore the use of task matrices, backlogs, scrums, swamp outs, and case strategy meetings in a litigation practice

3. Implement legal project management tools to streamline your high volume litigation practice