How to Monitor Budgets in Legal Project Management?

If you wish to properly manage projects, you need to break down the project into tasks and sub-tasks, and assign a time volume and a budget to each of them. You then have to monitor the project by checking, in real time, that tasks are performed by the planned deadline, within the time volume and budget. If these limits are exceeded, the project manager must take action, by talking with the lawyer in charge (has she been wasting time? What happens?) or with the client (time to negotiate a change of project scope?).

But how do you actually know how much time has been allocated to which task or subtask? Many project managers in law firms find this hard to do. They have access to the timesheets of those working on the project, but how do they figure out whether "tel con with client re: project X" must be allocated to task a, b or c?

There is actually a very easy way to solve that problem. The entries in the timesheet must simply refer to the task. For example, if the project plan has defined certain tasks as task A.1.1.a, A.1.1.b, etc., the lawyer, when filling in her timesheet, should write "A.1.1.a_Tel con with client re:..." Even with simple software, this can be automated and the project manager can immediately see how much time has been billed on each task. It is really that simple: using the same task definitions in the project plan and in the timesheets.

This requires, of course, to make a real project plan, to identify tasks and subtasks, to allocate time and budget to them, to inform the lawyers about it, and enforce the discipline of using appropriate terminology in the timesheets. A small step for project management, but a big step for attorneys...

Antoine Henry de Frahan

Comments

[Etienne]

To simplify your life, you could always get your employees to use software that tracks their computer activities, then automatically generates timesheets for them. Clever Timesheets is an example. http://www.clevertimesheets.com

[lacoste]

s are performed by the planned deadline, within the ti