I wrote “The Client Calls Make Her Miserable” featuring a lawyer tired of all the client calls, e-mails, texts, etc. She hates being “pinged” by her clients most of the day.
Guess what? Lawyers aren’t the only people reading the articles posted here. They are read by business owners, mental health professionals, financial professionals, and others. But who knew our clients were reading? Not just my clients, but your clients as well.
This comment was quickly posted by someone’s client shortly after the “pinging” article went up. Is she your client? Maybe so. Here’s what she said:
Speaking from the client side …
I am a project manager, and I expected my lawyer to approach my divorce as a project to manage, e.g., with a kick-off meeting, a schedule, deliverables, and regular reports. It was a surprise to discover that my first lawyer would only work on my case with prompting. Perhaps she was responding to the clients who pinged the most often? (Notice I said “first” lawyer.) My husband’s lawyer also is content to wait for something to respond to rather than taking the initiative, dragging out the process and shifting the financial burden.
I like the creative parts of my job more too. Please don’t make your clients, who are in emotional and financial crisis, manage you. Proactive communication might result in fewer annoying pings.
Why You Should Adopt a Project-Management Approach
I hear this kind of feedback from clients all the time. We get involved in a case, and we fail to manage the project. They find it odd that we treat every project as a one-off undertaking. In their work, they’re required to learn and apply project-management principles and concepts, but they see us reinventing the wheel with every case. They’re befuddled as to why they’re having to pay, hourly, for that reinvention. They want to know why we’re not more efficient, effective, and calculating in our approach.
At a minimum, they want to know why we’re not providing a structure like a “kick-off meeting, a schedule, deliverables, and regular reports.” We have rationalizations for our lack of a systematic approach to our practices. We explain that every case is different and that each matter involves a multitude of unpredictable variables. That’s true, but is that any different than the projects managed by our clients?
One of our clients, a PhD in health outcomes research and policy, spends her days managing drug research. She’s looking for cures to cancer. She uses a structured approach to project management. Is her approach to her work systematic? Of course. Does she manage many unpredictable variables? Of course. Does she think our excuses for winging it when we manage her case are bullshit? Of course.
The thing that annoys the client quoted above is that she has to do the “prompting.” Ironically, the thing that annoys the lawyer quoted above is the constant “pinging” by the client.
Could we stop the “pinging” and the “prompting”? Sure, with a proactive approach to project management.
When you’re alerting and updating clients systematically, they stop prompting, and you stop feeling pinged. When you give the client
- a kick-off meeting,
- a schedule,
- deliverables, and
- regular reports,
you stop the constant pestering.
With a project-management-oriented approach to the handling the case, you make the client happy, you free yourself up to get your work done, and the case gets finished. What’s not to like about that?
Of course, you still have variables to contend with: things like unpredictable judges, difficult opposing counsel, and changing court schedules that get jumbled by bureaucrats. Many variables are unpredictable, except that they’re totally predictable. You never know exactly what’s going to happen, but you know exactly what’s predictable and what’s not. All project plans incorporate unpredictable elements. There are always unpredictable elements (which is entirely predictable).
Project management is an established discipline. It’s taught all over the world. Stanford offers an online program. Udemy has a bunch of low-cost online offerings. Of course, you’ll find local programs if you’re interested in attending in person. This is a discipline widely followed outside of the legal profession.
Learning project management is a hugely valuable investment in your career. Why? Because the net effect of a project-management approach to handling cases is happier clients. Happy clients send their friends. Friends pay fees. You get to spend that money on vacations to Fiji. Register for a course and go to Fiji. See how that works?
Legal project management isn’t a new idea. It’s widespread practice in matters paid for by sophisticated consumers of legal services (think insurance companies, large businesses, etc.). Unfortunately, it’s not something generally taught to or learned by lawyers in smaller firms. It’s a discipline that, when incorporated into our practices, proves incredibly valuable. Maybe it’s time for the old dog to learn some new tricks?
