Throughout your professional life, you’ve probably noticed that some procedures work more efficiently than others. So, what exactly is responsible for those efficiencies? Simply put, agile operations emphasize collaboration and responsiveness to change – which ultimately leads to greater efficiency.
In this article, we’re going to review and discuss some benefits you’ll discover when you improve the agility of your legal operations. Let’s get started!
What does agility mean for legal businesses?
At its core, agility is a style of project management that divides tasks into smaller, easily accomplished pieces. By assigning small tasks more frequently, it’s easier to adapt when you discover new information or receive a last minute request from a demanding client. If your priorities are always evolving and deadlines are changing, your project management system should facilitate iterative work.
Still unsure how to think about legal agility? Look to the Kanban method to understand the core principles! The Kanban method uses visual signals to trigger specific actions. When you visually represent the steps of a large project, you can easily identify blockers and task dependencies. By creating a fully transparent project timeline, you can promote transparency, accountability, and collaboration across departments.
The legal system is a slow-moving beast, yet it demands immediate attention from its participants. For that reason, many law offices will immediately file a request for an extension whenever they are faced with a deadline – whether it is possible to meet that deadline or not! This usually happens because workflow is not standardized, and they’re unable to visualize the steps needed to complete the task. Fortunately, agile legal operations offer the solution!
What are the benefits of agile legal operations?
Some of the main benefits of agile legal operations include:
Reduces lost time and bottlenecks
Law firms work on multiple cases at the same time, which creates a high number of work-in-progress (WIP) items. When individuals are asked to frequently switch between cases to address these WIP items, it can lead to wasted time and inefficiencies. Using a fully transparent and visual project board that encompasses all active cases for your firm can reduce lost time and highlight any bottlenecks in your process.
Introduces planned flexibility
Think of agile operations as planning to be flexible! While it may seem counterintuitive, encourage your team to focus exclusively on the work that’s in progress. After each task is completed, team members can simply consult the project timeline and pick up the next task on the list. This strategy gives the project manager an opportunity to introduce new work items or change the order of upcoming tasks based on priority. (Best of all, those changes won’t disrupt the rest of the team because they don’t impact current work items!)
Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading! We hope these tips have given you some insight into how you can improve the agility of your legal operations. If you enjoyed this article, let us know on social media!
Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns. At First Legal, we’re here for you from File Thru Trial™!
