Many people today do not know or understand the importance of good project management skills in a paralegal field. Lawyers and judges claim that professional project manager can significantly simplify the management needs of the law departments making them work more efficiently and cost effectively. In the past century, project management was not recognized as a separate branch of studies, however today it has become an integral tool for all corporate business units and especially for law departments because of the higher client expectations and the evolvement of in-house counsels. Today clients become more and more demanding, they no longer expect professionals to have only substantive legal knowledge; they also expect all in-house counsels to have business acumen and to provide all kinds of legal assistance in an efficient, consistent and predictable manner.
Today project management Canada experts can help law departments to fulfill such broad role as such professionals have more skills in effective planning, resource allocation, cost control and, of course, risk management, which is extremely important nowadays.
Main Principles of Project Management in Paralegal
A lot of different organizations offer their resources on the principles of project management. In general, this notion involves implementation of PM principles to any sort of “project” in order to create a unique product or get a result with a finite beginning and end. This project should be organized through the process of initiation, planning, then executing, controlling and monitoring the process. In the legal field, projects can involve the execution of specific legal matters, such as a lawsuit or an acquisition, or a departmental improvement. In general legal PM requires more formal and intentional integration of not only planning, but also budgeting and communication. It means that legal PM is a much more complicated process than just project management as it is.
Project management implies working within the strict bounds of project’s major constraints; it means that even if only one is changed others require to be renovated to. In traditional definition of PM you will find three main constraints, namely scope, time and cost. However in paralegal PM you should also take into account that any sort of legal work is connected to people, so they become one more constraint.
The Legal Project Management Process
In order to complete the project successfully you need to clearly define these PM constraining factors so that to create and develop a detailed plan, then execute the project according to the created plan and never stop monitoring, controlling, and adjusting it if necessary. According to the experts, paralegal and legal project management can be held in four main steps:
Define the Scope
Establish the Project Plan
Conduct the Legal Matter
Review the Process and Outcome
Mike Arnold is established as a content developer for a number of Internet content hubs, who shares opinion on a mix of legal topics exemplified by Paralegal and Legal Project Management and whatever else is related. A tireless nomad of online community and an opinion maker in all having to do with the legal PM.