"Joint project plans, creative problem solving sessions, clear performance management, and accountability enables the right work to be done by the right people at the right time." — Mohammed Ajaz, Global Head of Legal Operational Excellence, National Grid, UK

You know that clients will summon you to participate in debriefs and explain why an engagement has gone off track, not met budget or timeline. Primarily, clients expect their law firms to ensure this doesn't happen, by actively managing the work they are given. In the client's own businesses the importance of actively monitoring a project is a familiar discipline, and they hope and expect law firms to apply it to legal projects. Being a firm with built-in procedures to monitor and manage legal projects will set your firm apart from others. This may not be an innate skill which law firms have, but it's very learnable and habit forming.

Monitoring a legal project has three stages: observation, evaluation, and correction.