Legal Project Manager

New York, NY

Summary

The Legal Project Manager (“LPM”) will be responsible for supporting the delivery of the full matter lifecycle, from pricing and inception through to the completion of post-closing activities, for a portfolio of significant matters (or work streams within those matters) to ensure that they are delivered in accordance with the client’s needs, efficiently, on budget and within agreed upon timeframes.

In addition, the LPM is expected to take responsibility by contributing to the development of legal project management tools and Firm best practices, and provide training in project management techniques and best practices to lawyers.

The LPM will work with and report to the Continuous Improvement Portfolio Manager (“CIPM”).   The LPM will engage with key Partners and Associates, in addition to external clients, in achieving measurable benefit from the matters that he or she is involved.  

Key Responsibilities

Work with Partners, Associates, colleagues and external clients to:

• Confer and prepare scope, resource and budget proposals for relevant matters and work streams
• Track progress against plan, promptly alerting relevant stakeholders to variances and recommend and develop contingency plans when necessary
• Working with Partners, Associates and Resource Managers  to ensure that relevant matters are adequately and appropriately resourced at all times
• Arrange kick-off meetings and send communications to ensure that the teams are adequately briefed about the matter and the client’s expectations, and arrange for appropriate communication channels and resources
• Ensure that any applicable information barriers and/or insider lists are established and maintained
• When appropriate, act as the interface to the client, external vendors and internal stakeholders
• Develop matter timetables to track milestones, deliverables and dependencies, and produce periodic reports to provide status internally and externally
• Proactively identify any risks and issues that arise, provide options for their mitigation or resolution and take or coordinate the appropriate responsive actions
• Assist partners and associates with the billing process, and provide status reports for the client as required
• Arrange post-closing matter reviews and lessons learned exercises

The successful candidate will

• Be credible, engaging and authoritative and have the ability to build close working relationships at all levels and with clients across the board
• Have a solid background in project management, preferably gained in a professional services environment
• Understand law firm financial and performance metrics, the link between effective matter management, profitability and delivering value to clients
• Engage in problem solving with commercial insight to absorb and explain complex issues clearly and concisely
• Be able to analyze financial reports of varying levels of complexity
• Rise above the detail to see broader implications, in terms of both long-term consequences of action and effects on the business analysis
• Willing to challenge and question assumptions and propose alternative solutions, including justifying recommendations and rationally handling objections and counter-proposals
• Produce clear, high-quality documents (e.g., timetables and status reports) that clients can readily understand
• Have excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Strong planning skills to ensure client matters are resourced, monitored and progress in accordance with client expectations and within deadlines
• Able to work under pressure, multi-task, prioritize appropriately and delegate to others
• Be experienced in cross-functional team settings and demonstrate commitment to the team by supporting colleagues and collaboratively deliver high quality service to clients

Requirements/Preferences

• Bachelor’s Degree preferred
• High School Diploma or equivalent required
• Documented project management experience
• A formal project management qualification is a plus (e.g. PRINCE2 or PMP)
• Must be independently legally authorized to work in the United States