Improve Your Project Pipeline Management for Legal Services

How to create outlook signature

[Music] hey folks and thanks for joining us for another rocket mater and Florida PRI CLE my name is nefra McDonald I am the business development and strategic partnership coordinator here at rocket mater today's topic is running a better law firm using project management please put any questions that you might have in your go-to webinar questions widget and the CLE number will be given at the end of the presentation so stay tuned and you will see that on your screen and I will read it out to you so you can get that to record it the wrap-up email will be sent tomorrow at noon and that will include the recording from today the slides and any resources that we discuss so that will be sent again tomorrow at noon for your records so don't scramble to take notes just pay attention and ask any questions that might come up so a little bit about rocket matter we are the leading cloud based practice management software and a Florida Bar member benefit so visit the Florida Bar member benefit page for more information this is presented in conjunction with the Florida Bar practice Resource Institute or PRI which strives to bring attorneys the resources they need to run better law firms all of these webinars and cos are archived on the PRI website they're a great resource to you in addition to a ton of other materials so definitely check out that website it's there for you so let's dig on in so what is project management for those of you that are unfamiliar with this it's the practice of initiating planning executing controlling and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time you do some aspect of this in your day to day and it's the workflows that you implement in your law firm to get a case from intake to work up to discovery - you know filing an actual lawsuit or settling whatever it happens to be all of the things that you do to move a case or or a matter from intake to a great outcome from your client is part of managing a project what might be missing is an actual process or a documented process but you do have some sort of workflow in place so what's a workflow workflow is a sequence of industrial administrative or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion workflows are used in every industry that you can think of but this is what will get you from that beginning to the end so a simple way to think about workflows a lot of the things that we do daily can benefit from more workflow so you're already using them in things like cooking a meal like when you cook a meal you decide what you're making you look at a recipe you buy the ingredients you prepare them for cooking you know then you then you may you know follow the instructions on that recipe then serve and eat the completed meal you know that's a simple version but you can get more granular than that like one example that one of our current clients uses when she's talking about when our features is you know how would you instruct someone to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you can get super super super detailed with just that example another workflow that you might be already implementing is planning your daily work schedule so you have meetings that you have structured throughout the day and you can plan those out in a block format but then what are you gonna be working on in the in-between times what do you need to get to you what's your task list look like and that's gonna have a process for for everybody that's a little bit different and workflows can get complex so some are simple and others can be a little bit more complicated so one example would be a workout routine so the workout might be linear and could potentially have the same path from start to finish every time some of you may work on circuits at your gym and you've got numbers on machines that you just need to follow and that's what's gonna get you through that circuit but there's more dynamic processes like writing a song so that might have differ points and gradually finish in various ways and for each person that might be a little bit different everyone might have their own process but there's a benefit to standardizing your process project management project management benefits for law firms are plentiful you will have a cookie cutter process and it'll be documented it's less responsibility of having to remember all of the steps and that's where some errors will happen if you forget something or if you have someone new that may not be trained on some of the nuances and and that's where stuff you know can can get a little bit out of hand there's a lot more of an ease and time tracking between the steps which leads to more predictability and efficiency processes can be enforced this is a way for you to have like checks and balances within the firm and quality control so you know that the work product that's coming out of your staff or your associates or even you is consistent and there's a consistent message going out to your clients and to opposing counsel and then there's continuous optimization based on learning so you can continue to iterate on these processes so a lot of people may dismiss workflows or project management because they like to think that the law is nuanced and it is but you can't deny that there are other factors that can dictate standardized processes so information you'll typically need to gather at intake rules of procedure deadlines ideal workflows that minimize the amount of time a client has to wait for the desired result all of those are things that you can think about and find a way to implement so here's a quick visual of a simple workflow with some branching so it starts out the same way you're collecting the same information then it moves to the next phase or you maybe send out letters and and gather more information and then once you have that back there's a bunch of different ways that things can go and then you may have like a wrap-up process and then it's included and you know you file that away here's one example in the law firm context so think ways that you might want to think about managing your projects so think of the different ways the potential cases start with the fee structures that are associated with them so this is an actual visual workflow and that one of our law firms is actually implementing so they they don't think of their projects as coming in with a certain status everybody comes in as no status they're either a consult they're hired as a flat fee or they're hired hourly and depending on how that case comes in that'll branch off into these other areas so there's a bunch of different ways it can go I can go to pending it can go out with a ready to close it can go to closed and and that's how they like to visualize it before they start getting super granular so they do a high level thought process and then they get very specific and that's how it should go for you to and we'll talk more about that so you think of the different ways they could start with the fee structures then you think of the status headers with the corresponding workflows so what what's the title of that status and then think of them nuances that might lead to some of these different branches so let's get into the legal project management basics so what is legal project management legal project management isn't more thoroughly defining the engagement at the outset planning it executing it actively managing it and evaluating and closing the matter at the end it's not rocket science but it does involve the application of specific methodologies tools and approaches that have not historically been used by lawyers but this is definitely possible because you're probably already doing some of this so if you have existing spreadsheets and checklists if you have departments organized for Caze phases so a lot of people will have a pre litigation department then they might have a litigation department and within those departments people are responsible for various things you might just a discovery paralegal and a paralegal that handles all your trial prep those all of those things are fitting into the bigger picture and each person is gonna have their own workflows deadlines and things that they're responsible for so you're doing some of it but what might be missing is that overarching process right you're doing periodic review of your files if you're not then it might be something you want to implement but if you're already doing it you're kind of already on your way and then if you're tracking time you're spending on matters for billing and productivity purposes these play into a larger part of you know actionable business intelligence that you can get to make better decisions in terms of your marketing and in terms of hiring and just making sure that you're prepared for some of the things that may come up this this kind of stuff when it's not piecemeal together becomes part of a larger project and a larger series of projects that can really make your life a whole lot easier and doing stuff like this and in separate ways and not thinking about it as a cohesive process makes the project more cumbersome than it needs to be using project management is a competitive advantage and it's a competitive advantage in several ways so first things first until every firm is implementing legal practice sorry legal project management in a sophisticated fashion and it becomes like the standard of care for private practice lawyers those firms that do this better can use and are using it in their business development activities to differentiate themselves or differentiate their firm from others so like a lot of RFPs that come in from clients they'll ask law firms to explain how they're implementing legal project management and approaches just like it and how it's gonna benefit you know that client for you know if they hire them and so law firms that have already begun implementing project management with pilot groups within their firm they're winning new business over firms that aren't so the second thing that you want to think about is your profit margin so the profit margins and law firms have shrunk you know in the past several years and firms are really struggling to increase their profits for partner year after year and so you can increase your profits by reducing write-offs and that's gonna give you a competitive advantage over other firms you know and the reason why that happens is write offs get reduced because there's communication and a clear scope of work and if the if anything ever comes up where the work exceeds the scope that's better explain to a client who is already in on the process from the beginning and they can understand where things may have happened that we're out of your control and you may not get as much pushback as if they were not expecting this at all the third thing is that when project management is properly implemented it helps the firm in terms of better training and development of their lawyers more engagement of the legal professionals and as a result better morale so this can provide a competitive advantage to the firm as well because you know that that's the the people that are on the phones with your clients or maybe helping you with projects if they're more engaged and excited and they know what's coming next and there's a process and predictability it makes their jobs easier and it gives them more room to be truly helpful and allowing you to bring that case to a successful conclusion so this has so many benefits and it's definitely a competitive advantage so project management starts at intake one of the critical success criteria of this entire project that you're about to take on this new matter is that you need to get on the same page about expectations at the outset with your clients so clients and lawyers need to get the objectives together the scope of work and the plan to complete the work so you have the know-how when it comes to the rules of procedure but your client already has their ideal outcome in mind and that's gonna influence how you develop the strategy for this matter and complete the work so for a smaller matter the steps can be done in you know a pretty short amount of but if they aren't done you're gonna find that you have write-offs which is gonna result in reduced profitability or you're gonna have a client that's not as satisfied as they could have been if you understood their expectations and work together with them to come up with that plan for a larger matter now where there's a larger team working on it or a larger fee or greater risk to the client project management is really gonna ensure that the matters handled to the client satisfaction and you know if you're communicating with them what the possible outcomes can be from the outset you're not gonna have significant trade offs in a lot of large law firms today right offs that are attributable to a lack of project management are typically costing in excess of ten million dollars per year those are real numbers so definitely time to consider legal project management and you want to consider it if you want your business to grow if you want actionable business intelligence if you want to do a better job with documenting your processes you want increased efficiency and organization those are really important things I don't think anyone's that's listening today is gonna object to that so don't forget as we're going through this if any questions come up throw them in the questions widget and Rose will reserve some time at the end so let's talk about project management technology using cloud based project management technology can increase productivity and focus among team members so the closer you can track the progress and targets of a project the quicker you're gonna be able to identify potential roadblocks and issues collaboration is so key on these projects and even if you're a solo and you're working on it alone this is going to increase your productivity and your focus because you know exactly what's coming next here are some of the benefits of technology and legal project management so there's improved communication and most project managers across industries will tell you that communication is key to the project being successful so it shouldn't be a surprise then that one of the most important uses of Technology and project management is to ensure proper communication between the partners and the associates and any paralegals or assistants working on the project and your clients they are the main stakeholders in this too so improved communication is really key and technology really helps with that so like for example a few decades ago when email first came into common use project managers used to use this to replace interoffice memos faxes voice messages and like other forms of communication that weren't as reliable so now we've got social collaboration tools and other innovations that are really changing the way that we communicate and that's even replacing email now so successful project managers continue to use the latest technology to get those updates out to people upload documents and get other critical information to the team of people that are working on a project including the client cloud based project management technology is not only cost-effective and easy to manage it allows for mobile access and interoperability in the way that like an on-premise solution can't because you're getting that efficiency in the cloud you're getting those real-time updates and you're getting reporting that increased mobility means that you can continue to work from anywhere and manage your products there's an ease of collaboration because of the software being in the cloud and you get those automatic data backups data backups are so important if you've taken any of our other technology cles on cybersecurity you'll know that backing up your data is the way to go there's nothing worse than having your data compromised so when you're working with a cloud technology they're doing the backups for you multiple times a day or at least nightly and that's not necessarily something that you're going to be doing on your own so you know whether attorneys are on the go or the staff has flexible hours technology can really help teams stay on the same page helps to keep projects on task from anywhere so let's talk about helpful technology for managing projects so Trello is a great online program an app that's free it's easy to use and it uses a method called Kanban which enables the people using it to move cards around as a method of representing the tasks within each project so the placement of each card is gonna give you a like a visual assessment of where the project is and then where the progress of it so that members can get how close the project is to completion this is used a lot in tech companies we use it here at rocket matter I use it to manage some of my own responsibilities and projects it's really great because in each car you can set a deadline you can add multiple people that may be responsible for that deadline you can add subtasks and checklists and attachments put status updates and notes within each card and so it's a great program and for being free it's you know it's an awesome tool and so there isn't a lot of room for very very granular detail but it is a free tool again so no complaints rike is another one that's out there it's it's both in the online and app format so if you only have a few users that platform is free and the costs for more users isn't that prohibitive so it allows you to track statuses 1-run workload reports seeing like you know what people are responsible for you can keep track of deadlines and keep account of you know time and money that you've spent within this platform you have the ability to communicate directly with collaborators on this and you can tag team members in a comment box on this another feature that makes this standout is its integration capability so it integrates with Outlook Dropbox Google Drive which makes it a lot more flexible productive is an absolutely free for all projects and users program it's as long as you don't need to integrate with other platforms it's free to use and then if you want to integrate it that's gonna make you upgrade to a pro account so it's easy to maneuver it's easy to get around it's like simple real-time communication tasks listing progress tracking um couple of features aren't available with this like tracking and billing software but you know that as far as just a free project management tool this is just another one that's out there the last one I wanted to bring your attention to is asana asana is a another one that is Kanban style to help you manage your projects and of course rocket matter so rocket matter does have built in project management which is super powerful for attorneys because you've got a platform that is already robust in terms of time and billing document storage document generation and now there's this element of project management that allows you to have everything in one centralized place so here's what the role of Technology and project management is so it's gonna allow you to automate your workflows and you know all of your processes so project tracking across practice area and matter types is really important because it's gonna give you actual data that you can use to maybe start marketing more in certain areas or adjust your pricing and that's super super powerful information communication and collaboration are very important like we talked about because people and processes are at the heart of project management not tools and technology but technology and tools are an essential part of managing teams and projects effectively and having that internal communication so that everyone is on the same page is great but having a tool that documents all of that communication for you is a great way to jog your memory if a client calls in our walks in and wants an update so there's an easy which transfer that becomes really important when you hire someone new or are bringing on another attorney for a project you want things to be easy for someone to pick up like somebody new comes into the office and you have a case in there that's almost 2 years old you need to get them caught up quickly if you have everything documented in your practice management system for example it's gonna be very easy for them to get caught up plus if you're using tools that are easy to use and easy to train on that knowledge transfer becomes that much easier it's gonna help you think more strategically with aggregated data so if you have intelligence already on you know how much you've been spending and costs on a matter and how much time you've been putting it and how much your client has been billed and how much they've paid plus the number of days that a case has been in a specific status so if it has been in the pre litigation phase for an excess of 12 months you may have a case that's costing you more money than it's actually worth the only way that you know that is if you've got an idea of what a reasonable amount of time that a case should be in pre litigation is historically for you and the amount of time you spent on it plus what your estimated value of that case is so all of these things are gonna be accessible to you within a technology or a platform that helps you with project management the other great thing is that it's easier to spot bottlenecks and process problems so if you start to look at your reporting when you're using project management and you see that you've got a certain number of cases that are in a specific phase like if everything is in the litigation department but discovery hasn't been sent yet and that's where you're seeing a volume of cases pile up you know you've got a problem in that department and you can send help but you may want to be able to you may want to analyze that process and see what can be refined so that that bottleneck no longer occurs and you get that kind of intelligence from being able to get an aerial view of what's happening in the firm great way to do that as when you're implementing project management so you can respond very quickly to any queries that are coming in and be able to complete any tasks a whole lot quicker and the automation process that is available to you with using technology and project management makes things go so much faster the other thing you want to consider too is a flexible system so that if anything changes or you refine a process or Rules of Civil Procedure change which happens you can easily adjust it and it can go through the process of the entire firm with any cases that might be affected with those rule changes or the updated process so here are some of the advantages of combining project management with practiced management so you'll have that streamlined communication everything that is related to your matters will be in one centralized place so not only do you have your matter centric communications there you've got all of your billing you have the number of cases you have in each phase you have the number of cases that are past due what's past due if it's been in that phase for too long and it's not reasonable anymore the number of active cases in each practice area is a good thing for you to know if you're a general practitioner and you've got cases in multiple areas that's a good thing to know and then productivity per matter per user you want to be able to see how productive your staff is being on a matter level and you want to just see as a as a an employee what kind of productivity they have because those are gonna be things that will help you either revisit that matter and see if your strategy is working and then also be able to coach your employees one-on-one on things that can make them more productive or more effective and it's an opportunity to get feedback when you have numbers to approach someone on your staff with and say hey your target hours are 40 but each week you're only hitting 30 what's going on they may tell you hey such-and-such is not really helping me out and they're falling behind on this and that's why I haven't been able to get it worked on because I don't have enough that's a problem that you can fix and it's a way that a conversation regarding productivity can be constructive so another benefit of using practice management with project management so I do want to take you through rocket project management just to show you an example of how rocket matter implements project management with case management software so this screen that you're looking at is where you would start setting up your project management scheme so matter types will allow you to customize the kinds of cases that come in so the one that you see here is like auto accident tracking but this may be this is a personal injury firm so some other examples might be like you might have a mater type for premises liability or for products liability or whatever other cases you take on in that p.i realm you would have a mater type for each because those cases may perceive differently and have different branches family law example might be an uncontested divorce and then another one would be an uncontested divorce with no minor children and so on so those are where this is where you would name those mater types this area is where you'd create your case statuses or phases for powerful automation so you've got a new case that comes in then you do the intake then you may the client may be receiving treatment and then once they're done with treatment that goes into the demand from the demand it can settle or it can go into litigation it can it can go into settlement before the demand is sent depending on you know how much communication the adjuster has had and how much you know what whether the injuries were catastrophic but they're a bunch a bunch of different ways of this can go and this is the area where you're gonna define the phases of the cases typically go through it could be broad it could be very specific but as you can see the system is highly configurable and it's flexible so it's up to you to figure out how this goes so now once you define those phases this is where you can decide where these cases transition to or where these phases transition to so if I case can only flow from new case intake to the client receiving treatment then that's the only way you're going to be able to move these around and I'll show you what that means so you do a from status and then a to status and then this is gonna give you all of the the permutations so once you've completed that whole grid this is going to show you exactly what you just did and how these statuses can flow so like demand can transition either into litigation or to settlement and all of these phases can transition to close so litigation and settlement can't risk an transition to closed so when you add a new matter in rocket matter you'll have the matter type available and then you'll have the workflow status available in a drop-down so you can you can take in new cases at at different times it's always gonna be a new case intake and maybe the client has already received treatment and they're coming to you from another attorney so you'll be able to select from the drop-down where it is the powerful thing about this is that it's also going to be associated with a matter template so you can transition directly from the dashboard from the new case intake to receiving treatment which is really convenient and the matter templates are gonna be the ways that you can create your own calendar calculations custom data tasks allows you to set up basically an entirely automated system so there's no reason to miss steps missed deadlines and when you transition a matter from one phase to another all of this predefined data automatically populates so from the matter template you can configure the billing rates you can do statute of limitations permission levels like the attorneys I can see it or the staff members that can see the matter and then put in all of your tasks and calendar events that may have to do with a specific stage so it gets really granular and when you add a template to a matter it's gonna tell you what it's adding to that matter so as you transition from one phase to another and a new matter template is about to be applied you're gonna get this screen to make sure that you're about to move to another phase and this is exactly what's about to be added to this matter to automate the process and these tasks and calendar events depending on how you set them up are going to be assigned to specific people or to a specific role in that matter so if you have a case that's assigned to a specific attorney and assistant the attorney and assistant that are assigned to that matter will be assigned those tasks so it's highly configurable there as well and then here's the reporting so you get a matter workflow status report so it's gonna tell you the the area of these cases at any case that's assigned an area will show up in this report it'll tell you the status that it's in so you'll see the number of cases that are on schedule meaning they are within the defined term or a period of time for a case to be in that status if it's outside of that time frame it'll go into that do column and then you'll see the total number of cases with the client receiving treatment or that are in demand or that in litigation or in settlement and then you can get more granular with it so we did a drill down and any cases that are a new case intake you can see the names the the matter names and the number of days it should be in that workflow status so if you've defined at your firm that it should only take someone three days to open a file you'll be able to see here you know how many days it's been in that status the maximum number of days it's recommended the last time somebody did work on it and whether it's overdue so this is going to give you actionable data stuff that you can act on right now so how do you act on project management reports what do you do with them you can spot bottlenecks and address them you can iterate on existing processes meaning if you see a process that may not be working you can get to the bottom of it and change it to make it better you get insight into firm-wide efficient efficiency through some of the reports that you just saw and some of the others like productivity reports like revenue reports you can adjust the rates for legal services based on historical case profitability so over time you're gonna start to get a lot more data that you can act on that that will allow you to adjust any pricing that will maybe allow you to offer alternative fees for the first time or in a more efficient way or a profitable way for the firm you can see employees that are highly efficient or ones that may need more training and coaching so these are all things that you can look at with project management that you may not be able to when you have a piecemeal system because nobody has the time to put together these kinds of reports when things are all over the place when it's in one centralized place you have clearly defined processes and procedures in place this is how you'll be able to get through your your cases and make your firm more profitable and less time so here are some additional resources that you can take a look at so the ABA has a ton of books on legal project management if you're an ABA member obviously you'll have access to the more economical member pricing and the lien law firm books so I don't know if any of you tuned in to Larry and Dave's CLE on running a lien law firm but they did write a book and a lot of the processes that we're talking about and that systems-thinking is a part of that book so if you haven't seen that CLE go onto the PRI site and take a look at that and definitely get a copy of the book it's gonna change the way that you approach running your business and your firm so let's get to the Q&A portion so does anybody have any questions definitely throw them in the questions widget and let me know okay we've got one if I want to start implementing project management today what's the first step I should take okay what I would do is take a look at some of those existing things you have in place so if you've got nothing at all then you've got you know some a little bit of a way to go but you should have some things in place if you already know for example if you got rules of procedure for certain case types that you take in I would I would start with an assessment of what kind of cases come into your door and what do you normally take and then if you've got any checklist for how you work those up definitely start documenting those and thinking of them in a in a broader sense first then getting more granular with all of the tasks that have to be completed for this case to move from phase a to phase B from phase B to phase C where if it's not from from B to C if it's C to D E or F you've got to figure those out but understand that those are ways that this can start to branch off and and think broader first so A to B and then B to C D and E and then maybe to F and then to G no no if I'm explaining that and you're seeing what I'm talking about but it kind of goes back to and let me see if I can pull up this slide here so that I can visually illustrate that and this sort of thinking this is where you would start and then get more granular in terms of the smaller tasks and events that might happen so this is this is what I would go back to okay any other questions can can these software's be used offline rocket matter does not have offline capabilities and all of the other programs that I was talking to you about are they are web-based a few of them do have apps but I believe you need Wi-Fi or Internet or or you know be on a cellular network to be able to access the data in those any other questions all right I'll let a few more trickle in but a few more housekeeping things if you are interested in seeing how rocket project management works you can visit us at rocket matter comm or call this number eight six six seven one zero one eight four five to take a deeper look and to check us out if we can really do a lot for your law firms and project management it can definitely help another question if you change or improve your processes later can they be implemented to current cases and new cases moving forward yes yes you can you can definitely apply the the template to add or improve that process yep that can definitely be done and even with our so we've got an integration with watchful box as well so if you know a Rule of Civil Procedure changes and the deadlines change or if your trial date gets moved it can kind of back out some of the the deadlines and things that you have on your calendar and then put in those new dates so you're not doing that manually which is great alright folks well if there are no more questions this is the CLE number the CLE number is three zero seven seven one more question just came in what project management tools are best for template merges for example the ability to merge information into motion order template in order to streamline motion prep yes so rocket matter actually does that so if you have existing data in rocket matter in either standard feels like the name and let the last name and an address and the attorney's name and bar number and all of that if that's existing in rocket matter already in some sort of contact card or in a custom field in the matter all of those can go into into merge documents they'll have merge fields and you place those in the document where that actual data should go and you can merge those into documents as well so that can be a part of your process a lot of our firms will set up tasks to make sure those merge Doc's get done alright folks if there are no more questions again that CLE number is three zero seven seven if you have any other questions for me you can email me at nefra at rocket matter comm don't forget that the wrap-up email will be going out tomorrow with the slides and the recording of today's session thank you so much for joining us we really enjoy having you guys here and and bringing you these jelly's every month the PRI is really serious about getting you the education you need to run a better law firm and we're serious about it too if any of you folks are interested we are doing a legal wellness retreat this summer and the Berkshires visit legal wellness retreat com to get more information about what we're doing it is wellness month for the Florida Bar so if you do one thing this month definitely check out that website and see how you can join us in the Berkshires this summer we have world-class speakers like gina cho and brian cuban yours truly will be speaking with a top yoga instructor from Canyon Ranch it's gonna be a three-day beautiful excursion it's gonna be a lot of uplifting CL ease a lot of time to relax take in a lot of information that you'll be able to come back to your firm with re-energized and knowing a lot more about how to Center your self and live a happier life as a lawyer it's definitely possible so take care folks have a great rest of your day and we'll see you again next month [Music]