Should law firms hire outside project managers?

If you’ve seen my recent three-part series on project management or visited the project management section of our web page, you know how important I think project management is to law firms’ future success.

A few days ago, I was talking about this to the Director of Business Development at an AmLaw 200 firm.  They are already one of the leading firms in project management, and they want to get further ahead.  The central question was, what should his firm do to get to the next level?  One of the options he raised was hiring outside project managers.

That same day, Greg Lambert at the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog posted a very interesting item entitled "Law Firm Project Managers - Lawyer or Non-Lawyer?"  He started by reviewing a Hildebrandt blog post titled "Is It Possible To Turn Lawyers into Project Managers? Or Will They Crash & Burn?" which asked:

Is it possible to MAKE someone (a lawyer) a good project manager?  Is it possible to change someone's behavior in order to drive the cost down?  Will the push to drive down costs provide an impetus to change behavior?  Is it possible to change behavior across a firm, i.e., change the culture of the firm?

The questions had been discussed at Hildebrandt’s Marketing Partner Forum January 13-15, and the conclusion at that meeting was “A disappointing no – it is not possible to change behavior to drive the cost down.”  Carla Landry, who wrote the post, disagreed with that group consensus.  “Lawyers are inherently competitive and, I believe, if challenged to become good project managers, they will become some of the best project managers.”

In his follow-up post, Lambert took the discussion further, and argued that for project managers to be successful, “[Project management] has to be your primary (and sole) function.”

I respectfully disagree.  The best way of implementing project management will vary from firm to firm, depending on each firm’s culture and on the individuals involved.  In large firms, different practice groups may even answer the question in different ways.

Some lawyers will make good project managers; some won’t.  Some firms will do well with individuals who focus exclusively on project management; some won’t.

One good example of a firm that uses full-time project managers is Orrick, who uses them "as part of our continuing focus on reengineering our approach to legal work." Their web page describes a separate job category for "Legal Team Professionals," including full-time project managers.  According to sources at Orrick, some of their project managers are practicing attorneys but most are not.

Another example comes from the largest and best known firm that works strictly on an alternative fee basis: Bartlit Beck.  Last April, when Fred Bartlit participated in my panel on alternative fees for West LegalEdcenter, he talked about how his 60-lawyer firm has centralized project management.  At Bartlit Beck, there is no management committee.

One guy, Skip Herman, runs the entire firm, from deciding which cases to accept to setting the price and staffing each matter.  We have no firm meetings and no conferences; Skip runs everything.

A third example comes from Eversheds, a UK-based firm that has a project management section on its web page.  It explains their approach, starting from the fact that:

We have invested more than £10m [that is, $16 million] in:
•    developing innovative project management processes to provide transparency
•    installing new IT systems to support our project management approach
•    training all of our people to apply our project management methodology.

Which takes us back to Greg Lambert’s original question about who should serve as project managers: lawyers or non-lawyers?  At one level, I don’t think it matters.  As  Richard Stout wrote in a followup post at Lawdable:

Excellent project management is completely dependent on the individual project manager. If you look hard enough, there are lawyers out there who are great project managers, who understand how to budget and track metrics, who know how to design and implement proven protocols – and who have been doing this for years. On the flip side, there are undoubtedly non-lawyers who can come into a project management role, add a lot of value, and do a better job than 95% of the lawyers who currently have project management responsibility.

But knowing how to manage projects is the easy part.  The hard part is getting lawyers to do it. 

In this time of transition, some firms will undoubtedly hire outsiders to manage legal projects.  I predict that while a few may succeed, most will fail.

I am reminded of law firms’ experience over the last few years as they tried to become more professional about developing new business.  Many experimented with hiring people with no law firm experience to help in sales.  A few of these outsiders quickly figured out how law firms operate, and had great success.  But most became frustrated by the way decisions are made, and not made, in law firms.  They were unable to adapt to an environment in which they could be personally micromanaged by dozens of owners (that is, partners).  Some quit, others were fired.

As the owner of a firm that offers business development coaching, I know all too well how hard it is to get lawyers them to behave differently when selling.  And most of them don’t even care that much about selling.  It’s just the principle of the thing: they want to do things their own way.

Changing business development habits will look easy compared to getting lawyers to manage projects differently.  Effective project managers will want some partners to change the way they have worked for their entire careers.  Good luck.

I am not saying that this cannot be done.  In fact, I believe that it MUST be done, and that firms that fail to figure out how to manage more efficiently are ultimately at risk of going out of business. But success is going to require flexibility, patience, resources, the right kind of  training programs, and more than a little psychology.

Each group’s answer to how to implement this change will be based on whether some of their lawyers are naturally good at it, whether those individuals want to do more, and how much time and money the firm is willing to invest in it.  There are many ways to solve this problem, and what works in one firm or practice group may not work in another.

But of one thing you can be sure: to succeed in today’s challenging environment, firms will need to manage projects more efficiently.

Comments

[C.A.]

Another great and very informative post on this subject. That being said, I disagree with the "but knowing how to manage projects is the easy part. The hard part is getting lawyers to do it" comment. Truly great PMs aren't easy to find in the legal profession, where the difference between 'average or good' and 'great' can lead to significant cost savings or the creation of more consistent/ sustainable processes. PMs with that skill set have a lot of experience focusing on cost containment, metrics/technology and the best way from Point A to Point Z, among other things. With that context, I'd have to say that it's probably easier to find attorneys willing to pursue project management than to find an attorney who is a great PM. It's splitting hairs though -- neither is easy, as you imply.

[Toby Brown]

As Greg's co-blogger I'll chime in to defend his honor. The three examples you gave don't seem to support your point about not needing dedicated project managers. Orrick and Eversheds have (by these descriptions) dedicated project management positions. And Barlit Beck doesn't have project management ("Skip runs everything" is not what I would call sound project management.)

As to the second point about lawyers versus non-lawyers as PMs, I'll make two points. First - any lawyer who accepts project management as a primary role has just taken their name off the future partner list. True - they may define a nice niche for themselves, but it won't be moving up within the lawyer ranks of the firm. Second - I'll paraphrase Susskind, "a three day course does not a project manager make."

Lawyers' training, both academic and professional, is not well aligned with PM principles. Lawyers are trained to manage to legal results, traditionally with disregard for business and financial results. In fact the ethics rules are designed to remove any financial motivations from the equation to insure the client's best 'legal' interest is kept paramount.

I envision legal PMs of the future coming from professional services PM backgrounds, who develop working knowledge of legal practice. (As an aside, I pity the first ones).

With Greg's honor (partially) restored, I must add that I really enjoy your blog and writings. Keep up the good work and keep the dialogue going.

Best,
Toby

[Jim Hassett]

Toby – I hate to seem like I am dodging this argument, but for now I plan to dodge this argument. You and I have started to talk about several complex questions at once, including whether project managers should be lawyers or non-lawyers, how much training is needed, who exactly should be considered a project manager, should the project management role in law firms be a full time role, and more. I suspect that if you and I had a long face to face discussion about each, we’d find a lot to agree about, and a few areas where we absolutely did not agree.

I expect to be discussing these issues for the next few years, as law firms experiment with different approaches and we gradually build up a body of data showing what works and what doesn’t.

But for now, I personally am focusing on what I consider the single most important issue: what should lawyers do to increase efficiency? I think the quickest way to find the answer is for each individual lawyer to review proven project management principles, select an action item that fits their practice and personality, and give it a try. That’s what we do in our workshops, and that’s the main thing I will be writing about in the short term. - Jim

[Ron Baker]

Jim,

This comment is disconcerting: "But for now, I personally am focusing on what I consider the single most important issue: what should lawyers do to increase efficiency?"

This is the wrong focus in professional knowledge firms. It's redolent of Frederick Taylor's fraudulent Scientific Management (for recent scholarship on this, see the book, The Management Myth, by Matthew Stewart).

There's no such thing as "generic efficiency." It all depends on what your objectives are and how much you are willing to pay. Effectiveness is far more important than efficiency. There's nothing more useless at being efficient at doing the wrong thing.

This is not just a semantic argument about definitions. Google time of 20% it not "efficient." Why do they do it then? Because it's effective, and they are willing to pay the price of inefficiency for greater innovation, creativity, and customer service. Examples of companies doing the same abound.

It's time to stop paying homage to efficiency, and focus on effectiveness.

Also, project management is not pricing. And excellence in project management is needed, no matter how a firm prices--even those who bill by the hour.

Respectfully,
Ron Baker, Founder
VeraSage Institute
www.verasage.com
Twitter @ronaldbaker