Templates for Legal Profession

[Rick M]

I have begun an effort for a law firm that wants to use MS Project to define
and cost the work effort required to support their major types of legal work.
I was wondering if there are any template/wbs resources available that
address the legal profession?

Thanks

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

I'm not aware of any but you might be better off developing your own anyway.
Wouldn't each office and each case be radically different in terms of both
the workflow and the type of activities to be performed, documents to be
required, etc? I'm thinking that Case A might require depositions from 16
witnesses, case B only 2, while case C doesn't get any but has all sorts of
motions for discovery etc. Hard to come up with a generic template
detailing all the work activities when the requirements would be so
different from case to case.

 

[Rick M]

Steve, thanks - your expert opinion that I probably will not find any
standard templates is what I needed to know. While it is true that law firms
and cases are unique, firms have areas of specialty(or lines of business).
Within each line there is a process and a set of documentation that needs to
be generated. My initial effort relates to commercial litigation and will
involve two templates. The first template will use generic resources and
provide a prospective client a time and cost breakdown. This is an
improvement over "it could take years and cost millions". The second
template will update the generic tasks/resources with actuals and provide
firm management a tool to track large litigation efforts.