Legal Project Management (LPM) assigns extraordinary importance to providing legal services that deliver value as perceived by the client. Yet over and again we observe that while in-house counsel tend to view legal matters in terms of broad business issues and the pressures of “commerciality,” law firm lawyers tend to focus on identifying narrow legal issues upon which they can focus their formidable expertise.

Accordingly, a constant challenge in our LPM training workshops is to design exercises and case studies that give participants hands-on experience with LPM processes without indulging lawyers’ insatiable drive to dive into practicing law on any set of facts they’re provided.

Recently, one of our exercises produced an important “teachable moment” about attitudes, assumptions and instructions.