Legal Project Management and Budgeting
This domain tests planning, staffing, budgeting, and monitoring a matter so scope, cost, and timing are managed rather than discovered at invoice.
Core concepts
- Matter plan: scope statement, deliverables, milestones, work breakdown structure, dependencies, roles, and assumptions.
- Budget: bottom-up estimate by phase and task, rate card, disbursements, contingency, and assumptions. Alternative fee arrangements need a pricing model and a risk margin.
- Monitoring: budget versus actual by phase, burn rate, percent complete and earned value, variance thresholds, and escalation.
- Scope change control: change request, fee and timeline impact, written approval.
- Reporting: status against milestones, risks, decisions needed, and forecast at completion.
Worked example
A matter budgeted at 120 hours across three phases has used 70 hours after phase one, which was budgeted at 50. Earned value shows 60 percent of phase one complete. Reasoning: spend alone does not prove overrun; compare actual cost with earned progress. If forecast at completion exceeds the threshold, re-plan or issue a change order before phase two, not after the invoice.
Traps
Pricing from the last matter's total; no documented assumptions; hiding overruns until invoice; no contingency; tracking hours instead of deliverables; verbal scope changes.