Have you ever thought that you need to improve your law firm workflow? If you answered “YES”, then you will want to join our upcoming Webinar on September 27th, 4:30 PM Berlin (CEST) / 10:30 AM New York (EDT).
The panelists Greg McLawsen, Dr. Sascha Theissen, and John Grant will answer all your questions on how to make your law firm (or in-house team) truly agile. They will also share their views and experience about benefits of Kanban in legal teams.
John, Greg, and Sascha have an extensive experience in applying Agile Legal Project Management in their legal organizations. John and Greg did so in their law firm practice, while Sascha did the same with his in-house legal team.
Click here to register for the Webinar
Why you should attend this Webinar?
Legal Project Management sometimes sounds and feels as a big, complex topic. However, it only represents a discipline that makes sure your clients get their services on time, in line with the agreed budget.
It is therefore, clear that all your clients need you to use Legal Project Management (yes, even if they did not ask openly). Moreover, in many cases, clients make LPM a mandatory requirement in their bid processes.
It is the right time you give Legal Project Management a thorough consideration. Or perhaps you already have?
If you considered implementing the LPM and then learned about all the different ways of how you can run your projects, you might be wondering which of those methods is the right for you.
In our experience, Kanban is a pretty powerful method. It is very visual, logical, and does not require any technical knowledge nor certification in order to be used. You can read more about the Kanban method here.
In very short time, Kanban enhances communication, productivity, and transparency in legal teams. In other words – you will know who from your team is working on what at ANY TIME.
Join us on September 27th, and you will be able to ask anything about this project management method.
What will we discuss during this Webinar?
Our panelists will point at the various advantages that Kanban brings to law firms and in-house legal departments. Here are some of the questions they will answer in detail:-
Why is Kanban the most recommended project management method?
What positive effects legal teams (law firms and in-house legal departments) get shortly after applying Kanban?
What benefits do law firm clients see as a result?
Why should in-house legal departments (and other clients) require their law firms to use Kanban?
Also, panelists will be answering your questions – so make sure you join the discussion and ask anything here.
Are Agile and Kanban right methods for your team?
Kanban is a highly effective method in organizations with many different processes and hierarchy, regardless of a size of your team. Greg, one of the panelists, shared his experience in a law firm prior and after using Kanban:
“We used to use the same project management method as almost all other law firms – that’s no method whatsoever. It’s actually pretty rare for attorneys to view what they do as managing projects, though that’s exactly what it is.
“Clients hire us to get stuff done. So we should think critically about the art and science of getting stuff done… – Greg McLawsen
Agile project management is less a fringe philosophy than a collection of best practices for people who have thought hard about project management as a thing. So we’re happy to borrow from what others have thoughtfully created.”
According to Greg, Kanban has many benefits for their clients as well. The main is understanding the present status of all your “work in production.” Law firms may have extensive to-do lists, but few have a 30,000 foot view of where all their cases are in the production pipeline.
Kanban boards show you at a glance what is keeping a case from moving to completion. This information is necessary if you want to increase the speed at which you’re completing representations.
Greg added that at his firm, they were surprised to learn that clients, rather than anyone at the firm, were the speed-limiting factor. Hence, Kanban can be a pretty great learning tool about your firm as well.
Dr. Sascha Theissen also recommends Kanban from his personal experience:-
“Kanban is an evolutionary change tool, which drives change and innovation by creating transparency. We sticked to Kanban because we really liked the easy visual overview of all of our task’s statuses and the short daily routine meeting to get the team synchronized.
Before Kanban, we never knew how much work each of us actually was doing., Also, we did not know nor appreciate sufficiently diverse skills and experience of our team.
Kanban helped us to change our mindset and become more collaborative, both within our in-house legal department and within the businesses.”
“Kanban made us faster, aligned, and more effective. We also started having more fun at the same time…” – Dr. Sascha Theissen
Dr. Theissen is the GC of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, and he also shared why should in-house legal departments require their firms to use Kanban:
“I want all of my outside law firms to become more agile – which is where Kanban can be very helpful. A (virtual) Kanban board shared across the entire team (internal and external members), along with short daily standup / video meetings is something I want to have with our outside counsels.
This helps everybody to be on the same page AND also provides a better project progress tracking than other kind of currently used status reports.”
John Grant recommends Agile because of the value it brings to clients. Here’s what he added:-
“Although Agile developed around the software industry, it is effectively the “missing link” that helps unlock the tools and techniques of Lean philosophies for the world of knowledge work.
At its core, Agile is about orienting teams around the delivery of customer value, which is exactly what legal clients are saying has been missing from the industry.“
John added one important point:- to be successful, Agile requires an open mind, a flattening of hierarchies, and a willingness to challenge assumptions about the best way to deliver services.
“Firms that have been successful using certain behaviors in the past are often reluctant to change, even when they know the world is changing around them. Agile also benefits from executive buy-in and direction, but that can be hard to secure in firms with a broad partner base.
Another reason I think Agile will continue to grow in Legal: the more businesses turn to Lean and Agile techniques the more they will expect their lawyers to use them as well.
Several of the lawyers I know who are using Agile today see a significant competitive advantage to being able to not only speak the language of their Agile clients but in some cases, they have seamlessly aligned their workflows with those of their clients for maximum benefit.
Why Kanban, and not some other LPM method?
John primarily recommends Kanban for legal teams since it creates an interface layer that allows lawyers to actually see the work. This work would otherwise be either in their heads or on their hard drives (so, not really visible).
According to John, it is the visual nature of Kanban that really resonates with knowledge workers, including lawyers.
Additionally, John feels that Kanban really helps legal teams get their sense of stages and progress of their workflows. Better yet, you will feel these benefits shortly after putting Kanban in place.
Kanban will also help you put better definitions around what constitutes completion of each step along the way.
Once your team gets more advanced with Kanban, you can start using data tracking and analytics to gain insight over your capacity, your staffing needs, and time-frames for delivering client work.
On the other hand, clients of agile teams usually benefit from better aligned objectives (between them and their legal advisers), clearer communication, and more efficient delivery of services.
Register today and join the Kanban discussion!
To get the most out of the webinar, send us your questions to the panelists using the register button below. Join Greg, Sascha, and John in the discussion on how to increase productivity, cut overhead, and have much more fun in the process of running your legal team.
Looking forward to seeing you there.
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