This is Part I of a III-part series. Parts II and III will appear in
the September and October issues of Canadian Lawyer. Modi-
fied portions of this article will also appear in the upcoming
"Legal Project Management: A Quick Reference Guide", 4
th
Edition, by Jim Hassett, Mike Egnatchik and 24 contributing
authors to be published in Fall 2016 by LegalBizDev. Pre-
orders of the book can be made at: http://www.legalbizdev.com/
projectmanagement/quickreferenceguide.html
A
s more and more law firms
adopt Legal Project Manage-
ment (LPM) to increase client
satisfaction and firm profitabil-
ity, some are exploring "Agile"
approaches to project manage-
ment. Agile is an approach to
managing projects that originated
in software development in the 2000s and is increas-
ingly being applied to other industries, including law.
Sponsored by
Unlike traditional project
management, which creates
a rigid plan at the outset of
a project, Agile takes a more
flexible approach that pri-
oritizes a team's ability to
respond to changes that occur
over the duration of a project
as opposed to sticking to a
plan created before the work
even commenced (often a key
aspect of legal work). While
planning at the outset of any
engagement is important, for
certain types of work, over
reliance on a plan created
with limited information can
negatively impact results.
Flexibility and a willingness
to pivot and reprioritize tasks,
as new information becomes
available, is often critical to
the success of legal matters.
The focus in this Part I
will be on how to apply the
"Kanban" tool to manag-
ing legal projects. Kanban
originated in Lean manufac-
turing and loosely translates
to signboard or billboard in
Japanese.
Kanban is a highly flex-
ible tool for planning and
scheduling tasks that visual-
izes team work to create
transparency, accountability
and collaboration. Knowl-
edge work, such as software
By Paul Saunders, Ed Burke, Jim Hassett and Michelle H. Stein
An Agile Approach to
Legal Project Management
- Part I: Kanban
