Spotlight on legal project management – Q&A with Helga Butcher

At Ashurst Advance, we have an established team of legal project managers who apply project management discipline to matters to ensure they are delivered on time and on budget. The team works alongside our legal subject matter experts to offer our clients legal excellence with efficient delivery.

In this article, we speak to Helga Butcher, Interim Head of Legal Project Management and Process Improvement (EMEA) about her career so far, evolving trends within LPM and her hopes for supporting legal project managers into the future.

In your career to date, you have moved from marketing systems to legal project management (LPM). Tell us about that journey to LPM.

Over my career, I had built a lot of expertise in programme and project management and following seven years in marketing systems management roles, I felt the time was right for a change.

At the same time, Legal Project Management (LPM) was emerging as a new discipline which presented me with an opportunity to switch into a client-facing, fee-earning role as Senior Legal Project Manager, which utilised my project and programme management skills.

While I’d had some client interaction from working in marketing for years, it was an exciting challenge to bring my project management experience to an externally facing role.

How have you seen LPM evolve in the legal sector?

It took time to define and establish what LPM is across the sector, in terms of both LPM as a function and service offering, and the role of the individual legal project manager.

As with any new area there was initially some scepticism. To establish LPM as an effective discipline, the priority for firms was two-fold:

• Defining the role of the LPM function and the service it provides. The focus was on delivering the operational aspects of some of the largest, most complex matters, developing toolkits, a communications plan and providing education (such as training for both lawyers and clients).
  Proving the value of the service; using case studies, for example, was critical for comms and education.
• Each firm took a different approach. Some firms jumped in at the deep end with LPM focused on supporting high-value, high-risk matters, often cross-jurisdictional. With more complex matters, project management support was needed to manage the operational aspects and to free up lawyers to focus on legal tasks and issues. Some firms started with more of a framework approach, slowly introducing client interaction.

What kind of candidates suit an LPM role?

A big challenge in LPM has been attracting and retaining talent in the function, and it’s been key to think laterally. There is an ongoing question of who is better suited to LPM – project management professionals or lawyers. The jury is still out on this one!

In my view, the background of the candidate isn’t as important as being able to keep the focus always on project management. Having legal knowledge and understanding key legal processes is of course essential in this role, so long as LPMs focus on delivery, rather than picking up legal tasks. Sometimes the lines between operational and legal aspects of a matter can be blurred. LPMs play a key role in ensuring that the right resource performs the right task.

LPM roles are demanding:

• Junior roles in particular involve lots of number crunching and research, often at a fast pace and to tight deadlines.
• Mid-senior roles require advanced communications skills, as well as the ability to interpret complex data sets to enable effective decision making, technology, project management best practice and legal knowledge.

It’s an incredibly broad and multi-faceted role.

How do you determine which matters to support in LPM?

As with most business services functions, there will always be a scarcity of support available, so you have to prioritise matters.

There are various factors which contribute to deciding which matters to support:

1. Logistical: size of the team and their level of knowledge.
2. Commercial: the business value of the matter, including the financial value, risk, how strategically important it is, whether it’s a key or growth client, a groundbreaking area/deal, etc.
3. How many external/additional parties are involved, such as barristers or advisors, and how many jurisdictions it crosses.

Ashurst offers a tailored solution for each matter. The services on offer range from self-service – e.g. toolkits and training - to full LPM support throughout the lifecycle of a matter. LPM support can also be provided on a flexible basis, such as at the beginning of a project or during a more complex phase of the matter. This ability to deploy LPM support more dynamically has meant LPM can support more teams and makes the function more effective.

What trends do you see going forwards in LPM?

One area that is currently lagging is technology to support LPMs.

Many law firms have developed toolkits but there is a real need for technology, as most LPMs still rely heavily on relatively manual tools and processes. It would be great to have LPM technology that enables better workflow, matter and ultimately portfolio management. Consistency is key in the legal sector and technology could make a real difference, particularly when integrated with existing systems.

LawAdviser, where I worked prior to joining Ashurst, has been working on developing a new product in this area, Fibonacci, so there may be interesting things to come in this respect.

Can you tell us more about the LPM competency model you are working on?

I am collaborating with a group of experienced senior leaders in the LPM field from firms with advanced offerings to devise the LPM Competency Framework in order to drive consistency across the LPM community.

The goal is to professionalise the role of Legal Project Manager and credentialise it as a recognised career option.

The model is based on five competency pillars across four levels of LPM, which practitioners need to succeed in LPM and provides a way to measure a legal project manager’s development:

1. Technical project management skills
2. Other technical knowledge – data, industry knowledge, information and technology skills
3. People skills – i.e. in communication, relationship-building, leadership, etc
4. Organisational change – change management, process improvement & management, training others
5. Commercial knowledge – around industry/sectors, bidding processes, pricing, etc.

The competency model provides the basis for the knowledge all LPMs should have/need. There is more generalist training available from bodies such as the Association of Project Management (APM) and the Project Management Institute (PMI), but this model is specifically tailored to project managers in the legal sector.

The goal is to get accreditation for this framework to be adopted in training processes across the sector. I hope this more structured training and development will help nurture talent in the sector, as well as grow the talent pool.