Spotlight on legal project management – Q&A with Sim Bains and Jon Gale

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 series, Spotlight on legal project management, we speak to members of both our legal project management team and our legal teams about how they collaborate and work alongside one another to provide clients with seamless delivery of legal services.

Today, we hear from Sim Bains, Legal Project Manager, and Jon Gale, Partner, who have recently worked together on disputes matters.

Sim, you've been with Ashurst Advance for 18 months - can you give us a bit of background on how you came to find yourself in this role?

Sim: It's been quite a journey that led me to this role. I studied Law at Queen Mary University and then attained a Masters in Women and Child Abuse. I started my career by working for domestic violence charities and then eventually fell into project management roles in both the third and public sectors. Before joining Ashurst, I was working at the Metropolitan Police Service as a project manager responsible for overseeing the transformation of specialist crime, which was very interesting! It provided me with an excellent opportunity to further develop my project management skills and enhance my understanding of the methodology, while applying this successfully in practice.

When I saw an advertisement for the legal project manager role at Ashurst, it really appealed to me as I thought it was the perfect way to combine my law degree with my project management skills. It also seemed like a progressive and forward-thinking environment that I could see myself thriving in, and I'm glad to say that I still feel the same way more than a year in!

Jon, you've been with Ashurst for 17 years - can you tell us a little about your role and a brief overview of your experience working with the legal project management team?

Jon: I am a partner in our Dispute Resolution practice, and I head up the commercial litigation team. We act on a broad spectrum of cases ranging from commercial and contractual disputes to regulatory litigation involving competition and procurement issues. Over the last few years, I have had the privilege to work on a number of big disputes, some of the biggest going through the English courts, and it is on these matters that I first encountered the legal project management team. There is simply so much going on and so much to get done that having professional legal project management is essential to ensure that tasks are completed, and allocated in the most efficient way possible.

Legal project management is still a relatively new offering in the legal industry. How have you both witnessed this capability develop recently, and how do you think legal project management will affect the legal industry more widely in the future?

Sim: We are definitely seeing an increase in clients requesting specialised project management support as part and parcel of the high quality legal work our lawyers deliver. Driven by the "more for less" market, clients want more transparency on the legal work being undertaken and more certainty on costs. I believe this is where legal project management can really play its part. We integrate ourselves into the legal teams to apply project management discipline to our clients' matters to ensure they are delivered on time, and on budget.

I believe the demand for project management in the legal industry is only set to increase. For example, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increased demand from clients for matter estimates to provide greater clarity on fees, even on smaller matters. Our legal project management team is equipped to effectively meet this demand and we provide a range of legal project management services that help to make the complex simple.

Jon: We are witnessing an increase in demand directly from our clients with regard to legal project management. Increasingly, our clients are expecting this service and asking us to provide details of our experience in this area in our pitch responses. They expect legal project management to form part of the core team, and expect to see them involved from the outset. Although legal project management is a relatively new offering, it is growing and I expect to see an increase in uptake and for it to be used more widely across the industry. The combination of dedicated project management, lawyers and the use of technology as an integrated approach to legal service delivery will become increasingly important.

Jon, prior to working with a legal project manager, did you have any preconceptions as to how deploying LPM on a matter might work? Do you feel your views were correct, or has your attitude towards LPM changed as a result of working with Sim?

Jon: There is a perception that project management is merely one of skills that partners and senior fee earners are expected to develop as part of their role, and with that in mind I suppose there was previously some scepticism as to what a dedicated project manager would bring to a matter. However, having learnt from experience by working with the legal project management team, it is clear that they are true specialists in this area and the value they add is evident - right down to the fundamentals of a matter in determining what resources are required to complete a task. I was certainly open-minded about the benefits of legal project management, and in reality it is a discipline that has proven far more effective than I could have imagined.

Sim and Jon, you have both worked together recently on disputes matters. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you approached this matter together and how this differs from traditional matter management?

Sim: The legal project management team was interwoven with the wider legal team at a relatively early stage in the disputes matters. As a result, we were able to effectively support during initiation, planning and monitoring of the matters. This included working with the team to develop project plans and cost estimates, and then tracking our progress against these to ensure we continued to align with the agreed timescales and budgets. Having dedicated legal management support allows the matter teams to concentrate on providing our clients with the best strategic advice in their respective areas of expertise.

What were the main benefits of deploying legal project management discipline on this matter?

Sim: I believe one of the benefits is that it helps to increase transparency for the client. Through cost estimates and regular cost reports we are able to provide the client with regular updates on the budget, something that is particularly important in the current climate. Furthermore, the use of legal project management discipline helps to ensure that the team are aware of upcoming milestones and actions, and supports the partners in providing the next steps for the matter.

Jon: As Sim noted earlier, the legal project management team form part of the core legal team, often from the very outset of a matter. They are completely integrated into the team, attending weekly calls and constantly monitoring the matter progress. This allows the legal project management team to make interjections and challenge our approach when required in a constructive manner, ensuring the matter stays on track and is delivered in the most efficient way possible. Importantly, they also play a key role in resource planning. By taking on these elements of matter management, they free up time for the senior associates and partners to focus on providing the best possible advice to our clients, and this is how we can add significant value for our clients and achieve a strategic advantage.

Sim, our legal project management team work directly alongside our legal teams on client matters. Can you tell us a little bit about how this works in practice and how you manage to work as an extension to the legal team?

Sim: Early adoption of the legal project management team by the legal team helps us to create a "one team" approach. It means that the legal project manager can support the team in matter-planning by creating project plans, outlining the milestones and developing cost estimates. We will then embed ourselves into the matter team to ensure that we can best support by tracking progress against the plans. One way we achieve this is by developing the structure and attending regular progress meetings, but we will always be flexible according to what the partner thinks will work best for that particular matter.

What factors made this matter suitable for legal project management discipline and how early did the team get involved?

Sim: Within larger disputes matters, the legal project management team tends to be instructed at a relatively early stage and will continue to provide support throughout the life cycle of the matter. Factors that tend to make matters suitable for legal project management include a larger budget, where cost-estimating and reporting may be required.

As well as supporting on larger disputes matters, the legal project management team also provide 'lite' support on smaller matters. This is where we provide discrete support on specific tasks within a matter. For example, this can be support for scoping, pricing or putting together a project plan.

Jon: As Sim notes, the sheer size and scale of these large disputes matters mean that effective project management is essential. There is simply so much to do, across a number of different workstreams, that having a dedicated legal project manager keeping track of the entire matter and ensuring delivery is transparent for our client is crucial. The legal project management team are key in coordinating and tracking workstreams, as well as ensuring that we have the required resource.