Business & Financial Management

We ask Lisa Chamandy, Counsel, Client Service and Innovation at McCarthy Tétrault LLP, based in Montréal, her thoughts on how to embed LPM successfully in law firms.

Lisa:

To my mind, the key to successfully embedding project management principles into our file work is to understand where lawyers are coming from and meet them where they are now (not where we thing they should be).  We need to go with their flow; there really isn’t any point in trying to convince, cajole or coerce them into project management, and any attempt to do so just sets them up to resist it.  The fact is, they’re great at what they do, period. It’s up to us as a project management team to respect their work and remain open to opportunities to contribute to it through effective planning, pricing or tracking.  We have doubled the number of files that use project management for the last two years. So we’ve done what we had to do and we continue to…but it needs to stay low-key for it to succeed.

Thank you very much Lisa. Yes the ‘carrot vs. the stick’. This is actually a theme that I am rather passionate about  - and  I agree -  gently does it. Show lawyers the benefits of LPM - don’t force it and they will come along for the journey.

I’ve really enjoyed sharing this series with you – keep following as we ask the people who know what it takes to make LPM fact not fiction.  This is the last week in this series, there a few great posts to go!

Until then,

 Michelle