An article by two lawyers in our project management certification program

A few days ago, the National Law Review published an article by Squire Sanders attorneys Stacy Ballin and Mitch Thompson entitled Why We Decided to Become Certified Legal Project Managers.  Stacy and Mitch were not the first two lawyers to begin our Certified Legal Project Manager™ program, but they were the ones who gave me the idea to create the program.  When I met them after giving a speech at Squire Sanders’ partner meeting last fall, we chatted about the lack of intensive programs for lawyers on the cutting edge of this new field.  We continued to swap emails on this and the rest, as they say, is history.

Stacy and Mitch’s article begins like this:

On January 7, 2011, in a simple conference call, the two of us struck out upon a new venture that we believe will help us serve our clients better, and might just mark the start of a new and significant trend for law firm partners.

In a kick-off telephone conversation with consultant Jim Hassett of LegalBizDev, we plunged into an innovative program of study in the rapidly growing field of legal project management.

That conversation was the beginning of a six-month distance learning course put together by LegalBizDev that we can complete at our own pace and that leads to the title of Certified Legal Project Manager. We are among the pioneers in this, the first formal program to certify lawyers as legal project managers.

Squire, Sanders & Dempsey LLP is one of the first major legal practices to take project management to a new level. As the co-chairs of Squire Sanders’ Project Management Committee, we are taking the lead in obtaining the certification ourselves and in helping to plan how to spread best practices within the firm.

What does project management have to do with lawyers? Well, pretty much everything.  The world has changed, and clients need more than ever from their law firms. They want their lawyers to partner with them to achieve their business goals and deliver value, not to merely send them a monthly bill showing how many hours have been spent.

Like every other kind of business worldwide, law firms are becoming more cost-effective and efficient in providing their services. It’s no secret that many users of legal services – including the corporations, governments, and nonprofits, big and small, that big law firms serve – have perceived some disconnect between their costs for legal services and the value of those services. This trend has been building since the DuPont Legal Model was launched in the 1990s, and it was accelerated by the recent economic downturn.  Even as the economy improves, however, we expect clients to continue to require greater value than ever from their law firms.

To read the complete article, click here to go to the National Law Review site.