NextGenLPM has acquired the rights to LegalBizDev’s intellectual property, including the company’s proprietary processes to help lawyers change behavior, and increase client satisfaction and profitability.  NextGenLPM is now offering LegalBizDev’s most successful legal project management (LPM) products and services.   

NextGenLPM was founded by Tim Batdorf, LegalBizDev’s CEO for the last several years.  Tim worked closely with me to develop the concept of the Online LPM Library which his company will offer.  It is, in our opinion, the single most valuable resource now on the market for firms that are truly serious about implementing LPM.  Tim also independently developed the Master Certified LPM Coach program which teaches LPM staff our proprietary coaching process to increase the effectiveness of internal coaches. 

Tim and I have been planning this transition for years.  I turned 73 this year, and the pandemic has not helped my mood one bit.  (So far, my family and I have escaped Covid, but we sure are tired of staying home.)  So I decided this was a good time to (almost) retire, to give me more time with my five year grandson and more freedom for other things, including writing about politics.  (In the past, when I wrote about politics, I often had to tone down my opinions to assure I did not offend a single potential client in our highly partisan world.)  I will also work as a Senior Advisor to Tim’s new company, because I want to keep a seat at the table as law firms figure out how to change LPM to adapt to their needs in the post-Covid economy.

NextGenLPM will offer improved versions of our most successful products, developed and delivered by people who worked in the trenches at LegalBizDev.  The new company also has the same commitment to helping each lawyer implement the action items that are most likely to produce immediate and practical results for their practice, their personality, and their schedule.

There is one important difference: Tim is several decades younger than I, and has the new ideas, energy and enthusiasm that will be required to adapt our approach to the challenges law firms will face over the next few years.  LegalBizDev literally wrote the books that helped start the LPM movement.  Tim is uniquely positioned to build on this foundation and develop new tools and approaches as LPM continues to evolve in its “next generation.”

In my opinion, law firms will change more in the next ten years than they have in the 35 years since I started my company.  No one knows how exactly, but almost everyone agrees that clients will demand lower prices and greater efficiency.  Thus the key to the business development of the future will depend more on prices and efficiency, and less on traditional relationships.   Firms that fail to apply LPM effectively may become less profitable or even go out of business.

Although LegalBizDev has ceased operations, this web page will remain available through December 31, 2020.

Thanks very much for reading this blog and for buying our products and services over the last several decades.  If you have any questions at all about how to increase client satisfaction and  firm profitability, please don’t hesitate to contact Tim (tbatdorf@NextGenLPM.com, 800-49-TRAIN) or me. 

Jim Hassett
Founder, LegalBizDev
Senior Advisor, NextGenLPM
jhassett@NextGenLPM.com
August 2020

               A Tribute to Jim Hassett on Retirement

A few years ago, when I first began working for LegalBizDev and was still relatively new to legal project management, Jim  Hassett and I attended the P3 conference in Chicago.  Attending that conference was a real eye-opener.  Various attendees – law firm executives, managing partners, lawyers, and LPM staff –approached Jim as if he were a Rockstar and said things like: “I read your blog all the time!” or “You’ve changed the way I practice law!”  That is when I realized LPM was here-to-stay, and that Jim’s approach to legal project management was truly unique and extraordinary.

What Jim brings to legal project management is a collaborative mindset and an unfailing generosity. That is why the Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide has over three dozen authors and 180 tools and templates.  Jim has applied his “polish” to so many writings, transforming them from good to great, and he always gives credit to others.  

In his approach to LPM and to life, Jim is 100% committed to action and is not particularly interested in theory or anything that smacks of being overcomplicated or impractical. 

At the same time, Jim is an innovator.  Not only does he have great ideas, but he has the moxie to fight for his ideas to ensure they receive a fair trial.  To his credit, Jim also listens to other people and defers to their ideas, when appropriate.  Jim is committed to the best ideas – to whatever gets the job done.

When we asked past and present employees and colleagues to describe Jim, we received these words: determination, integrity, generous, supportive, encouraging, innovative, fantastic mentor, lucky to know him, trustworthy, loyal, open-minded, best boss I’ve ever had, curious, respectfully assertive, inspiring, thorough, thoughtful, engaging, great writer, I’m a better person after having worked for him. 

Of course, Jim does not know this tribute is being published.   If we had asked, he would have declined. (Sometimes, it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission.)   In our internal discussions, we weighed the pros and cons of offering this tribute and realized that, given his New England disposition, Jim would be equally embarrassed and honored by it.  We considered that a “win-win” and decided to run with it.

Anyone who makes a living as a result of LPM or who has benefitted by using LPM tactics and techniques (in other words, anyone who is reading this blog) owes Jim Hassett a tremendous debt of gratitude for his tireless efforts towards improving the practice of law and increasing value and client satisfaction through legal project management. 

If you want to send Jim your well wishes, please contact him at jhassett@NextGenLPM.com.

From all of us: “Thank you, Jim Hassett, and Happy Trails!” 

And finally, as Jim would always say: “Onward!”

Tim Batdorf
Former CEO, LegalBizDev
Founder & CEO, NextGenLPM
tbatdorf@NextGenLPM.com
August 2020

Note:  This blog series is based on one of our new “Work from Home™ Series” of LPM tools and templates.

In this last part of our blog series on increasing engagement of virtual teams, we discuss ways to create an open team culture and foster shared vision, outcomes, and a sense of purpose.

Action Step 4:  An open team culture

In an open team culture, every­one feels heard and is free to ask for help when they need it.  Building this type of culture takes time as team members get to know each other and build rapport and trust.  An open cul­ture requires an understanding of each team member’s perspective and preferred approach to work.

Although a full discussion of this topic is beyond the scope of this article, at a minimum, team members should have a sense of the impact of their words, and they should try to conform their behavior to high standards to avoid generating defensiveness in other team members.  The chart shown at right, which appears in our online LPM library, offers a few tips to help.

Another way to create an open team culture is to hold periodic virtual meetings to review lessons learned. Here are a few examples of the types of questions your team might want to address as part of a Lessons Learned Review:

• What did we do well?
• What could we do better?
• What was supposed to happen?
• What actually happened?
• What were the positive and negative factors?
• How well did we meet client objectives?
• Were all deadlines met?
• How well did we communicate with each other?
• How well did we communicate with the client?
• Did we manage fees and expenses well?
• What have we learned and what can we do better next time?

Action Step 5:  Shared vision, outcomes, and a sense of purpose

The primary task at the start of any legal project is to set objectives and carefully define the project scope with the client and with your team. Doing so will align mutual expectations.

A Statement of Work (SOW) must fix the boundaries of what is within the reasonably expected scope for the matter and what is not. The details of contents and format will vary depending on the circumstances, but could include:

• The client’s objectives
• Detailed deliverables such as the number of depositions
• Deadlines or expected timelines
• Teams and roles, if relevant
• Assumptions and exclusions
• Risks
• Budget or fee as well as payment terms

The first draft of the SOW should be shared with both the client and the team members for their review and input. Your team needs to understand the client’s goals and expectations and align them with the team’s overall approach, focusing on the business problem or dispute from which the matter arises and on acceptable outcomes and deadlines for the client.  For that reason, you must ensure that every team member is familiar with the final project objectives. It does not hurt to remind them of the client’s objectives by way of regular e-mails and during virtual meetings.

Conclusion

Managing a legal team or a client matter becomes significantly more challenging when your team is working remotely.  We have provided you with a sampling of LPM tools and templates that can help you engage lawyers and other legal professionals that are working from home.  Many more examples are available in our online library of LPM tools and templates.

Note:  This blog series is based on one of our new “Work from Home™ Series” of LPM tools and templates.

In Part 1 we discussed how to increase the engagement of virtual teams using a Communication Plan, which helps ensure regular, clear communication, and a Matter Plan, which helps define clear roles and responsibilities within the team. In this Part 2, we present valuable suggestions on how to improve virtual team meetings.

Action Step 3:  Improve virtual team meetings

Another way to engage remote team members is to improve the team’s virtual meetings.  Below are some suggestions:

Before the meeting:

• Schedule a video conference as opposed to a phone call. The platform should be secure and easy-to-use and offer screen sharing technology.
• Clearly define the meeting objectives.
• Assess how long it will take to realistically complete the most important items on the agenda with the people you have invited, and keep the meeting as short as possible.
• Distribute an agenda in advance. This can be a one-sentence e-mail, or a more formal document.
• The agenda should include:
• The start and end time.
• The topics or decisions to be made or discussed, in order of importance.

During the meeting:

• Be crystal clear about who is running the meeting. That’s probably you. But maybe it should be someone else if they have skills that will enable them to better meet the objective.
• If the meeting goal is simply to communicate decisions that have been made, anyone in authority can do it.
• But if a meeting requires joint decision-making or consensus building, you will need a facilitator with good communication skills who can keep the discussion on track without bruising feelings. For meetings of this sort, it may be useful to start by reviewing the process and ground rules about how decisions will be made and how you will deal with items that cannot be resolved in this meeting.
• In any case, the meeting leader must be a good role model: On time, organized, fully engaged, and focused on the topic and on what people are saying.
• Whenever possible, start exactly on time.
• The reason that this piece of advice starts with “whenever possible” is because the ‘client’ is always right. If the managing partner, practice group leader, or visiting general counsel wants to start 10 minutes late, do that.
• Follow the agenda. If there are three topics to be covered, finish number one before you begin number two. If the conversation drifts, refer to the agenda and get back on track.
• Drive topics to resolution. Summarize comments and bring the group to a decision or ask them to confirm that what you’ve said is a fair summary.
• Never end late. No matter what time you start, the meeting should end at the announced time. People have other commitments, and meeting leaders should honor them. Unless, of course, the client or boss disagrees.
• If a topic turns out to require more discussion than you expected, table it for an outside meeting or propose a quick action plan for how to resolve it.
• Be prepared to deal with people who will inevitably be inclined to go beyond any time limit. The meeting leader must prevent that.
• End early if you can. Once the objective is met, end the meeting. Make sure everyone knows that you ended early, the objective was met, and you put a few extra minutes back into everyone’s lives.
• If your meeting objective includes building team efficiency and/or morale, make an effort to get everyone involved:
• Ask team members to report project status.
• Ask the team for feedback on discussion points.
• Develop buy-in on the issues and solutions.
• If one or two people are doing most of the talking, make a point of including others and asking for their input.
• Handle problems promptly but diplomatically:
• Say: “It looks like we’ve drifted a bit; let’s come back and focus on the agenda item.”
• Acknowledge the person’s experience with a subject but suggest the issue be raised at a later time.
• Say: “We’ve heard from X, does anyone have a different view?”
• If the conversation is important but time is running out, assign a smaller group to either gather more information or move the process along once the meeting is over. Find the ‘owner’ of the problem and assign it to that person.
• If two people are dominating the conversation, send them off to figure it out.
• Record all decisions:
• Keep simple meeting minutes, including all conclusions reached, who is assigned to do what and by when, and any items tabled for later.
• If it would help, assign someone else as the note-taker who will be responsible for keeping the meeting minutes.
• If a follow-up meeting is needed, ideally the minutes should include the time for the next meeting and an initial agenda including any outstanding or tabled items.

After the meeting:

• As soon as possible after the meeting, distribute a written report of what was decided and any action items. Like the agenda, this can be a one-sentence email or a fancy report, but it must be done.
• Monitor follow-up on action items.
• Give recognition and appreciation to excellent and timely progress.
• If any high-level problems came up, discuss them with decision makers.
• Consider evaluating this meeting to help you improve the next one. What worked and what didn’t? Most importantly, did the meeting achieve your objective?

In Part 3 we will complete this series by discussing how to increase engagement by creating an open team culture and fostering shared vision, outcomes, and a sense of purpose

Note:  This blog series is based on one of our new “Work from Home™ Series” of LPM tools and templates.

In a survey of nearly 400 project management professionals from a variety of industries, Dr. Penny Pullan asked participants to identify the greatest challenges they faced when working remotely. Far and away, the single greatest challenge was “engaging remote participants” (76%).  When asked what actions would help virtual team members be more engaged and productive, survey respondents often gave the following answers:

1. Regular, clear communications, without lengthy gaps in between;
2. Clear roles and responsibilities;
3. Improve virtual team meetings;
4. An open team culture; and
5. Shared vision, outcomes, and a sense of purpose.

The rest of this article offers practical tips to address each of the recom­mended action steps identified above.  It draws on material from our extensive online library of LPM tools and templates.

Action Step 1:  Regular, clear communications, without lengthy gaps in between

Using a Communication Plan is critical when team members are working remotely to ensure regular, clear communications.  The Communication Plan shown at right, taken from our online library, identifies who on the team is engaging in the communication, and with whom they are communicating.  It also describes the information that is being communicated, and when and how that communication is to be delivered.

Action Step 2:  Clear roles and responsibilities

Using a Matter Plan is a simple way to determine who is responsible for which tasks and the deadline for each task.  The precise format of a Matter Plan varies depending on the needs and preferences of the users.  The Matter Plan shown at left is excerpted from our online LPM library.  Additional columns could be added to include each timekeeper’s hourly rates, estimate fees for each task, and estimate total fees. 

Many project managers find it useful to visualize project schedules in the form of Gantt charts, which are bar graphs that show the start and finish dates for each task of a project.  A Gantt chart for the example shown at left would look like this:

Note: This image was taken from our LPM tool “About Gantt charts.”  Many free programs can be found on the internet to generate charts like this. This sample was created with free software at www.tomsplanner.com. However, for legal projects it may be simpler to create a chart in Word or Excel or even on a handwritten document

A Gantt chart can be quite useful to team members, since it shows tasks and deadlines in a form that clarifies what must happen first, and when certain tasks might conflict with one another.

In Part 2 of this blog series, we will present valuable tips on how to increase engagement by improving virtual team meetings.

By Tim Batdorf and Jim Hassett

This post completes our interview with Paul Saunders, Stewart McKelvey's Practice Innovation Partner.

Q: In Part 1 of our discussion, we talked about your position at the firm and some typical LPM success stories. You probably know that in the most recent (2019) Law Firms in Transition survey (p. 22), Altman Weil found that the single most effective tactic for improving firm performance was “rewarding efficiency and profitability in compensation.”  So, in this next part of our discussion, I’d really like to focus on your firm’s new compensation system.  Changing compensation can be extraordinarily controversial, so I’d like to start by hearing about how you laid the groundwork.

A:  We actually started several years ago by creating a new committee that included members of our compensation committee, our partnership board, and other influential partners.  We made sure that we got a really good cross-section of different levels of seniority in our partnership.

That group then hired a compensation consultant who analyzed our financial data and interviewed over half of our partnership. They then brought all that information back to the committee to inform our strategy. 

At our partner retreat three years ago, we shared the results of the research interviews. The year after that we shared our new profitability model and financial dashboards.  At the most recent retreat, we launched new guidelines to align compensation with profitability.

Of course, there were some folks who pushed back and said, “Why rock the boat and create all this disruption and inevitable resistance for a system that's working great?”  The answer was simple: Just because we’ve been successful in the past doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily be successful in the future. It is better to align compensation with the behaviors we need for long-term success before we are forced to.

So, right from the start we discussed possible changes with compensation.  We heard what they had to say, and factored that into the development of our new system.  Since then, we’ve continued to provide them with information, so none of this is coming as a surprise to anyone.

Q:  What advice would you have for other firms that want to change compensation to reward efficiency?

A:  Plan for enough time to build consensus, and start with a widely-shared model for measuring profitability. Learn the basics of change management. Anticipate resistance. Engage partners in the process. Don’t make them feel like the change is being forced on them but rather that they are part of the change.

Q:  How does Stewart McKelvey define profitability?

A:  Profitability is a very difficult concept to wrap one’s head around in a law firm. The issues largely revolve around the idea that partners are both workers and owners. Is partner income a cost or profit?  Any profitability model must answer that question somewhere in the middle if it’s going to make sense.

The precise details of our approach are proprietary, but the model effectively answers the question “What is your break-even point?” for every timekeeper. 

For example, suppose I look at a particular client or matter and see that we're having problems with a fixed price deal based on significantly discounted hourly rates.  One possibility is that partners with high hourly rates are putting in more hours than necessary.  If junior partners, senior associates or paralegals might be just as capable of doing that work at a much lower price point, that would indicate that more effective delegation is required. But we don't want to be obsessive about using this one metric in every situation, because all the metrics have flaws. We think of our profitability model as a framework that helps drive better decisions, but it isn’t the only consideration.

If you look at the compensation submissions that partners have prepared and the feedback they provide on other partners, as well as financials, you can get a pretty good picture of how effective somebody is at client matter management and project management. It's not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.

Q:  Can partners keep track of their personal profitability in real time?

A:  Yes, we’ve just launched a new automated compensation app along with a highly flexible financial dashboard system that we developed in-house that is uniquely customized to our needs.  Each partner can log into at any time and within a few clicks have instant access to eye opening trends and patterns that can lead to better decisions.  I had several IT developers working with me, and this will be the conduit for managing LPM activity, smart goals, and all relevant metrics.

Initially, partners build a practice plan in the app that tracks all matters a partner is involved in.  This goes beyond matters where you are the billing lawyer or the responsible lawyer.  It also includes matters that you’ve referred to colleagues or matters where you helped develop the business in some other way. Our compensation committee can also view your practice plan at any time with a click of a button on our home page.

In the past, compensation was based on dozens of different data points and written submissions.  This made it difficult for a partner to track their contributions in practice, and difficult for the compensation committee to assess their performance at the end of the year. Now it's all packaged up into a single application.

I'll also be able to work with partners in developing their plans and then check in with them throughout the year to see how they're doing. If our goal is to improve realization, revenue, or profit for a particular client, I'll be able to track in real time how they're doing with a couple of clicks.

Q:  Do you think this new app will change the way lawyers behave?

A:  Yes, I do.  I think too often what happened in the past was lawyers were just so busy doing the work and sending their bills out and writing off fees, that they didn’t understand the impact it had on the firm. And it's been an eye-opener to have these dashboards now that can be used to instantly diagnose a problem.  It is built around very compelling visuals showing downward and upward lines. 

I think a big part of becoming more profitable is not just about my team working directly with lawyers in LPM, although that definitely helps.  But, it’s also about building an increasing awareness of the impact of a reduction in fees.  In the past, lawyers too often thought, “What if I offer a 5% discount on a $100,000 matter?  It's just $5,000 off the total, so no big deal. The client gets a little value-add and a little reduced cost.”

But that $5,000 might eliminate half the profit on a particular matter. If partners don't understand the economics behind it, they’re probably going to make less than ideal decisions. And so, I think increasing the awareness of profitability metrics through this app will make a real difference.  We're talking about percentage increases in firm-wide realization as a result of these initiatives.

Q:  What do you have planned to further accelerate your LPM initiatives?

A:  This year we plan to follow the process recommended in one of the templates in the online fifth edition of your LPM Quick Reference Guide.  We’re going to organize a panel discussion of lawyers that have already experienced the benefits of LPM first-hand. We are targeting specific Client Service Team Leaders with large clients and asking them to sign up for our LPM coaching program.   Then we’ll get these people to champion the program and speak about the benefits that they've seen. And we're hoping that will drive even more usage of the app as we move into year two of this new compensation system.

Q:  So, between the new app and the new compensation system, your firm has created a huge incentive for lawyers to talk to you and your team and ask for LPM assistance.

A:  Yes, that's absolutely right.   We will be providing more coaching and rigor around LPM best practices.  This will be a critical part of effective matter management. And now lawyers will be compensated for changing their behavior, so the firm can continue to meet client demands in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Q:  Are you currently seeing an increase in lawyers coming to you and looking for LPM advice?

A:  There’s no question about it. We’ve seen an increase because everyone knew these changes were coming.

Q:  Are you confident that the combination of LPM training, tracking profitability in the app, and changing your firm’s compensation system will boost profitability for the firm?

A:  Totally confident. Just the idea that we have successfully been able to realign our compensation system to reward certain behaviors is a hugely positive outcome for our firm.

I think we’re well positioned now to be able to drive more and more LPM activity, now that it’s factoring into compensation decisions.