King & Wood Mallesons has launched a new program to equip lawyers within the firm with high level project management skills.

All Australian-based lawyers with more than three years’ experience are being invited by the firm to participate in the legal project management (LPM) training program being run by Edge Consulting on behalf of the firm. LPM is a systematic and standardised approach for scoping, planning and managing legal work within an agreed time and budget. “In part this has been driven by us and a desire to be more competitive, but in a large part it’s also because clients themselves are asking for the delivery of legal services in a different way to how they have in the past,” said managing partner Beau Deleuil. “Managing legal spend and risk it is becoming more common for clients to be using project development tools in their own business, we want to be able to walk and talk the same language.”

Edge Consulting works closely with organisations to create workplaces that are committed to continuous learning for employee development. Recent clients of the consultancy include Accenture Financial Services and NAB. KWM spent the best part of a year assessing options for the training before deciding on Edge. “We traversed the entirety of the providers in that professional services space… We thought they would give us the edge,” said Deleuil. The firm has worked in conjunction with Edge to design the internal course which will see each participant undertake several three to four hour training sessions, with the option then there for them to become an accredited project manager. “Not every lawyer has to go that far, but I expect we will be surprised by the take up of this,” said Deleuil. “Nothing worse in my view then being asked by a client, ‘how much will this cost?’ and having to take a deep breath and take a guess. This [training] puts some rigour around that guess and gives lawyers the confidence to talk about it in a meaningful way.”

While the initial roll-out of training is focused on Australian-based staff, Deleuil says he is already receiving inquiries from the firm’s overseas offices. “In Asia and China it’s one step at a time. We want to get it right here first, and we will have to adapt it to those markets,” he said. Similarly, while it is not compulsory for staff to undertake, Deleuil expects those that do undertake it will become the “leaders of the pack” both in the firm and the wider legal services market.