“The Association of Corporate Counsel states, “Legal project management requires formal and deliberate integration of planning, budgeting, and communication – more than simply using matter management software.”
Keeping that definition in mind, Legal Project Management can be broken into 4 phases:
- Define the Scope
- Working with external counsel to determine search terms and parameters for ESI
- Establish the Project Plan
- Working with the team to establish a budget, a timeline, and which data sources are involved
- Conduct the Legal Matter
- Reviewing the process and outcome, providing a search term hit-report to counsel, advising the team, changing search terms, and sending them to an external vendor for review
- Review the Process and Outcome
- Reviewing cost, timelines, and how the tools worked
Some of these things may already be happening with your team, but an ad hoc approach doesn’t ensure reasonableness. Or as Jaime Skinner puts it: “Defensibility is our keyword and cornerstone for E-Discovery. Using some kind of legal project management is a way to establish a defensible way of meeting those reasonableness standards.” – Jim Gill, excerpted from his article, “Napoleonic E-Discovery: Legal Project Management is the Key to Efficient, Cost-Effective Operations” @ Exterro, click here to read the article in its entirety.
Insightful and well said! PMO Advisory offers courses throughout the year designed for project professionals interested in Portfolio (PfMP), Program (PgMP), Project (PMP & CAPM) Risk (PMI-RMP) Management, and Agile (PMI-ACP) certifications.
