Talk:Legal project management

PM items with no equivalent

This seems a very odd assertion:

• Gates - civil cases should be regularly reviewed, to examine if they are worth continuing with. Even in criminal cases reviews to establish likelihood of conviction and expected cost, or in the case of defendants whether to "cop a plea", abandon or peruse specific lines using expensive expert witnesses and so forth seem sensible.
• Requirements - again a legal case is not an end in itself, nor does it stand alone. Requirements may include budget, avoiding certain lines of questioning, producing certain pieces of evidence for PR value that outweighs the case itself and so forth, not to mention the possibility of achieving the goals outside the courtroom, that become explicit if the requirement is say "£10,000 in net compensation" rather than a vague unwritten "secure a conviction for wrongful injury and hope we get enough to cover costs and a bit left over".

Rich Farmbrough, 14:19, 20 November 2010 (UTC).

All that can clearly and unarguably be stated about legal-project management is it involves managing legal projects. If there are specific LPM methodologies that clearly deviate from more widely known project-management standards (PMBOK, PRINCE2, etc.), then the methodology should be clearly stated. Legalprojectmanagement (talk) 13:05, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Some proposed changes

Note: I have now addressed the changes requested by Spintendo on 27th Nov 2018 regarding correct referencing (namely, connecting references to each claim statements) - please re-review the proposed edits in-text below.

COI declaration:

I am the Head of LPM for a law firm (paid) and lecture in LPM for a university and college (paid); I'm also on various committees for the Australian Institute of Project Management (unpaid), and an LPM working group for the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (unpaid). I've recently co-authored an academic paper on the history of LPM and causes of acceptance/resistance to LPM adoption by lawyers (unpublished).

Extended content

Information to be added or removed: To be deleted: "Legal-project management is the application of the concepts of project management to the control and management of legal cases or matters.[1]" "The practice of legal-project management varies from the schema in Steven Levy's book[1] to law-firm-specific regimens such as Seyfarth Lean[3] to corporate initiatives such as Cisco’s core-and-context[4] approach to legal work." the provided reference for e-discovery, which goes to a commercial ediscovery product. To be added: Legal project management (LPM) is the application of project management approaches such as PMBOK, Prince2 and Agile project management to the delivery of legal services. LPM can also include the application of organizational design approaches such as Lean Six Sigma to the delivery of legal processes, and which is alternatively referred to as Legal Process Improvement. LPM requires the adaptation of project management and organizational design approaches to meet the unique requirements of the legal profession. History and adoption: Whilst project managing legal services first arose in the legal process outsourcing of patent renewals in 1969, LPM as a distinct area of expertise arose in response to a 'perfect storm' of changes to the legal market instigated by the Global Financial Crisis as well as concurrent developments in legal technology and regulation. The first literature on LPM appeared in 2009-10, for example by Steven Levy and the American Lawyer; and LPM approaches were first formally adopted by large US-based law firms such as Dechert’s firm-wide LPM training in 2010 and Seyfarth Shaw’s launch of SeyfarthLean in 2011. Shortly thereafter, LPM approaches were soon also adopted in the UK and Australia. Academics specialising in the future development of the legal profession (such as Richard Susskind) argue that LPM-related skills will become increasingly relevant to the legal profession. LPM is becoming increasingly common, especially in law practices working under alternative fee arrangements such as fixed, capped or collared fees, and which the require management of schedule, risks and costs in a more rigorous and measured manner than previously; equally LPM is also becoming a more accepted practice for legal practices using hourly billing, and which are faced with pressures to deliver more efficient legal services. However, whilst surveys of US law firms have shown that "nearly unanimously, law firm leaders see a need to focus on improved practice efficiency", implementing process and behavioural changes remains a challenge for many law practices. Frameworks: A variety of LPM frameworks have been developed by niche consultancy and training organisations; industry experts (for example such as Steven Levy, Jim Hassett and Therese Linton); corporate associations (for example the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium); individual corporate initiatives; and law practices themselves. Additionally, national project management associations have initiated their own LPM work streams – including the Project Management Institute, the Australian Institute of Project Management, and the UK’s Association for Project Management; as well as commentary on LPM from the International Project Management Association. Examples: Practitioners of LPM (including lawyers and specialist legal project managers) apply LPM to the mechanics and business of providing legal services (such as legal matter management). Examples of LPM include: up-front strategic planning about legal and non-legal considerations relevant to delivering the client’s objectives in a legal matter, planning the tasks required to deliver a legal matter, and then documenting, tracking and reporting upon the delivery of these planned tasks, approaches to enhance the communication within the team working on a legal matter, and methods to help continuously improve the delivery of similar types of legal matters. LPM meets 'traditional' project management particularly in the area of electronic discovery. Electronic discovery consists of regularised, repeatable, and measurable processes, and has been subject to cost-control pressures for many years, making it highly suited to project management approaches. References: Explanation of issue: After a number of new contributors (including myself) recently proposed edits to the existing LPM page which (unintentionally) breached a range of Wikipedia's policies including COI and OR, an editor wrote the above text and deleted our edits. We have subsequently up-skilled in Wikipedia policies and are now prepared to have another (more collaborative and policy-abiding) attempt at this. The proposed text from the editor is problematic for many reasons: the source of the definition is from 2009 (one of the first books on this topic) - this definition (and indeed the LPM profession) has evolved significantly over the past 9 years, and there are now many established authors in this area that provide better definitions. there is a documented history of when LPM first arose in the market which is not mentioned. LPM it is not hyphenated. LPM is practiced by both lawyers and specialist LPMs across firms of all sizes (and is not limited to law firms operating under specific conditions) - there is a lot of published research on both the causes and rate of adoption of LPM across the US, UK and Australia (again not mentioned). the article does not provide examples of LPM in practice. the article refers to 'traditional' project management without defining this (there is an entire discipline of references about this), nor does it reference other forms of project management such as agile. there are numerous LPM delivery and competency frameworks from national professional project management bodies, corporate associations, academics, large law firms, and private sector consultants - the current text has selected only three examples of this very broad area, and is mis-representative of this area. References supporting change: Inserted into proposed text, above.

Pdombkins (talk) 12:45, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Reply 27-NOV-2018

  Unable to review edit request   Your edit request could not be reviewed for two reasons.

1. It is unclear whether or not your paper constitutes original research. According to WP:NOR, this type of information is not acceptable for use in Wikipedia. To demonstrate that this is not original research, please supply additional sources which verify the claims made in your research.
2. It is unclear which references are connected to which claim statements in the text of your proposal. When proposing edit requests, it is important to highlight in the text through the use of ref tags which specific sources are doing the referencing for each claim. The point of an inline ref tag citation is to allow the reviewer and readers to check that the material is sourced; that point is lost if the ref tag is not clearly placed. Note the example below:

N INCORRECT

The Sun's diameter is 864,337.3 miles, while the Moon's diameter is 2,159 miles. The Sun's temperature is 5,778 degrees Kelvin.[reference]

References

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      1. Sjöblad, Tristan. The Sun. Academic Press, 2018, p. 1.
      2. Duvalier, Gabrielle. "Size of the Moon", Scientific American, 51(78):46.
      3. Uemura, Shū. The Sun's Heat. Academic Press, 2018, p. 2.

In the example above there are three references provided, but the claim statements do not indicate which reference applies where. Additionally, although the word "reference" is supplied in brackets at the end of the claim statement, this word does not indicate which reference it is referring to. Your edit request similarly does not specify where the references you have provided are to be placed. These links between material and their source references must be more clearly made, as shown in the next example below:

Y CORRECT

The Sun's diameter is 864,337.3 miles, while the Moon's diameter is 2,159 miles. The Sun's temperature is 5,778 degrees Kelvin.

References

---

In the example above, the links between the provided references and their claim statements are clearer with the placement of ref tags which indicate which references go with which portions of the text. Kindly reformulate your edit request so that it aligns more with the second example above (taking care to include other sources which verify that this is not original research) and feel free to re-submit that edit request at your earliest convenience. Please see this page for any additional questions you may have regarding the placement of ref tags. Regards,  Spintendo  21:06, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Reply 29-NOV-2018

Spintendo many thanks for reviewing and the provided examples regarding citation - I'll link all of the claim statement to their references over the next few days; yes I'm aware of WP:NOR and will abide! Pdombkins (talk) 00:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Reply 02-DEC-2018

Spintendo The requested edits to references have been made in-text (above) - I hope this is the correct process (rather than reproducing the text again in another response), and wasn't able to find any advice on this - please advise if elsewise. Pdombkins (talk) 11:02, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Reply 02-DEC-2018

  Unable to implement  

1. Large portions of the proposed text appear to be paraphrased directly from the AIPM website (two examples are below). It is not Wikipedia's purpose to mirror this type of promotional information, per WP:NOTPRESSRELEASE.
2. References #5, #9, #10 and #12 are invalid URL's.
3. Other provided references do not originate from reliable sources and/or are connected to AIPM or its industry. To guarantee WP:NPOV, please provide references from reliable, secondary sources which are unconnected to the subject or its industry.

Regards,  Spintendo  13:29, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Comparison of texts

Text as it appears in the proposed Edit Request	Text as it appears in the Source Material
LPM requires the adaptation of project management and organizational design approaches to meet the unique requirements of the legal profession.	Its aim is to drive the professionalism of project management and to be regarded as a world authority and advocate on project management practices and competency.
Legal project management (LPM) is the application of project management approaches	Its mission is to foster the application of project management skills

References

Reply 03-DEC-2018

Many thanks Spintendo - I have fixed the broken urls, apologies (there was simply an "/" at the end of the urls which was causing the issue). I note that reference 5 is also a press release, so I'll find another primary source for that fact.

I do appreciate that you've taken the time to review my proposed changes (and read the sources), and hope the following comments are taken in the spirit they are intended.

In terms of "Large portions of the proposed text appear to be paraphrased directly from the AIPM website": I'll remove the reference to the AIPM's press release (again, apologies - I wasn't aware of WP:NOTPRESSRELEASE) - this was reported by respected independent legal news channels (which I assume is sufficiently primary?). However, I am struggling to elsewise understand your characterisation of 'large portions being paraphrased' since the provided excerpts are not similar in meaning or content.

In terms of the provided references - I've used independent news articles identifying specific events (ie primary sources), or elsewise referenced textbooks from the acknowledged leading academics and thought-leaders in the area (who themselves have substantiated their claims on substantial research). I thought that these textbooks by definition were secondary sources, and they are published by entities such as the American Bar Association, and elsewise by leading publishing houses - would it assist you if I included links to their publishing information?

Given that LPM is a niche area, there aren't any other secondary sources (unconnected to the legal and/or project management industries) that would likely ever discuss LPM, and as such I'm unsure how to provide you with the types of references you are requesting (particularly if the leading text books themselves are not accepted). If you could please advise me on how other niche areas have solved this, it would be very appreciated indeed.Pdombkins (talk) 14:21, 2 December 2018 (UTC)