A Guide to Legal Project Management Software
Why legal project management software is a game changer for the legal industry
In today’s competitive legal industry, clients demand greater efficiency, transparency, and value from their legal teams. Dashboard Legal by Bloomberg Law is a purpose-built solution designed to streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and enable collaboration – tailored to the unique needs of legal professionals.
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Modern law firms and in-house legal teams face increasing pressure to demonstrate the value of billable hours, while organizations demand measurable proof of productivity from their legal departments. Coupled with rising competition from third-party legal service providers, these challenges have driven the legal industry to invest in project management tools.
Investment in legal technology can transform legal service delivery, but to maximize their ROI, it’s crucial that these tools be tailored to meet their unique needs. In this guide, we’ll explore the importance of legal project management and the features that can address industry-specific challenges.
What is legal project management?
Legal project management (LPM) applies core project management principles to legal service delivery. It ensures that legal work is completed effectively, on time, and within budget. By streamlining workflows, improving communication, and reducing wasted resources, LPM helps legal professionals meet client and stakeholder expectations.
The three pillars of legal project management
Effective LPM relies on three key components:
- Structured processes: Organizing project phases from start to finish
- Specialized tools and expertise: Leveraging industry-specific solutions
- Clear communication: Ensuring transparency and alignment with budgets and goals
The LPM framework is versatile, serving different purposes across legal settings. For instance, law firms may use it to manage caseloads, while it may help in-house legal teams align legal services with broader business objectives.
How legal project management software drives efficiency
The current legal services market demands a higher level of management and efficiency on legal matters than ever before. Legal project management software equips legal professionals with the tools to manage projects more effectively, ensuring better outcomes for clients and stakeholders. Here’s how LPM solutions transform legal projects:
- Goal clarity: Establishing clear objectives and aligning them with client expectations
- Enhanced communication: Facilitating collaboration between teams and stakeholders
- Defined project scope: Preventing scope creep and ensuring budget alignment
- Workflow templates: Streamlining processes with standardized project templates
- Continuous monitoring: Tracking budgets, milestones, and risks in real time
- Post-project evaluation: Capturing lessons learned for future improvements
The benefits of legal project management software
Legal project management software delivers measurable benefits to both law firms and in-house legal departments, improving profitability, efficiency, and client satisfaction.
For law firms
- Improved client relationships: Build trust with better communication and transparency
- Competitive edge: Differentiate your legal services from competitors
- Increased revenue: Improve client satisfaction, which leads to repeat business and referrals
- Risk mitigation: Proactively address potential issues, delays, or blockers
- Streamlined knowledge management: Centralize access to institutional knowledge
For in-house counsel
- Budget adherence: Keep costs predictable and controlled
- Process efficiency: Reduce duplication and ensure alignment with organizational goals
- Vendor transparency: Improve oversight of outside counsel and vendors
- Cost reduction: Identify inefficiencies and savings opportunities
How Dashboard Legal helps associates succeed
Gunderson Dettmer’s Brent Armitage explains how Dashboard Legal has been a game changer for him and his team. Read more.
Key features of legal project management software
Modern LPM tools offer a suite of features designed to improve efficiency, profitability, and client satisfaction. Below, we discuss the features that make these tools indispensable.
Bloomberg Law’s Dashboard Legal consolidates these essential features into a single solution, empowering teams to work smarter, not harder.
Organized workflows
LPM tools map out workflows by addressing:
- Goals and objectives: Why is the project needed?
- Deliverables: What will be done?
- Resources: Who will do it and with what budget?
- Timelines: When will tasks be completed?
- Execution plan: How will tasks be carried out?
With visuals such as dashboards and task dependencies, legal teams can identify inefficiencies, automate routine tasks, and focus on high-value work.
Oversight and project controls
Project dashboards and reports provide real-time updates on task assignments, progress, and deadlines. This transparency ensures that projects stay on track and that deliverables meet client needs, even in hybrid work environments.
Data insights for cost savings
Post-project reviews powered by data analytics help legal teams identify lessons learned, improve processes, and uncover cost-saving opportunities.
Risk mitigation
By providing visibility into task dependencies and bottlenecks, LPM tools enable teams to anticipate and address risks before they escalate.
Stronger client relationships
Standardizing processes and leveraging insights from past projects allow teams to deliver tailored solutions, strengthening trust and client satisfaction.
Collaboration and knowledge management
Centralized platforms ensure that institutional knowledge is preserved, shared, and leveraged in future projects, which reduces duplication and improves efficiency. The enhanced knowledge management capabilities of Dashboard Legal are also useful for tasks such as reviewing a high volume of legal documents during litigation, e-discovery, or due diligence.
Types of legal project management tools
Navigating the array of legal project management tools can be daunting. Here are the core types of tools that every legal team should consider.
As a comprehensive, purpose-built legal project management system, Dashboard Legal integrates these functionalities into a single platform. With features such as robust project dashboards, automated notifications, and advanced integration capabilities with common collaboration and document management systems, Dashboard Legal strengthens coordination and collaboration across legal teams.
Task management tools
Even the simplest legal project can include dozens of complex tasks. Task management tools ensure that team members keep up with their responsibilities and offer transparency into task and project status.
Organize, assign, and track tasks with features such as:
- Notifications and updates
- Timelines and calendars
- Progress tracking and analytics
Reporting and analytics
Reporting and analytics tools can help analyze progress and establish performance baselines. These reports can provide legal departments and law firms with quantifiable evidence of the value they bring to their stakeholders and organizations.
Generate visual reports to track metrics such as:
- Task completion rates
- Time spent on tasks
- Budget adherence
Document management systems
Track document versions and changes with features such as:
- Version control
- Accountability tracking
- Centralized storage for project-related documents
Calendars and Gantt charts
Dynamic calendar tools are useful to keep every team member in the loop on project status and overall timelines. A project dashboard with a calendar, reminders, and task assignments can help visualize timelines and dependencies to ensure tasks are completed on schedule.
Transform your legal workflow with Dashboard Legal
In today’s competitive legal landscape, efficiency, transparency, and client satisfaction are more critical than ever. As a result, project management capabilities are now an integral part of the legal services market.
Legal technology equips legal professionals with the tools they need to meet these demands while delivering superior outcomes. By adopting legal project management software, law firms and in-house teams can not only improve their service delivery but can also build stronger relationships with clients and stakeholders.
Dashboard Legal by Bloomberg Law sets a new standard for legal project management. By incorporating established project management principles into a platform tailored specifically to the legal industry, it empowers teams to meet today’s challenges head-on. With a user-friendly dashboard built within a secure, centralized environment, Dashboard Legal provides unparalleled visibility into each phase of legal work – without the distractions of unnecessary features found in general project management tools.
See how a Silicon Valley law firm improved their task management and client response times with Dashboard Legal.
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