Key contacts
Tracking the right metrics can be the difference between a smooth legal project, and one that struggles with delays and overspending. By utilising KPIs and dashboards legal teams can have the insights and oversight needed for success.
Key Performance Indicators
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that shows how a project (matter), team or individual is performing against a defined objective. KPIs provide a way to measure success and improvements - they measure progress, highlight areas that need attention, and create accountability across teams. When used effectively, KPIs help teams focus on what matters most, ensuring a project remains on track and aligned with client expectations.
Despite their importance, KPIs are not always consistently followed or prioritised. This can occur when goals include unclear outcomes, are poorly defined or are presented in a way that is difficult to monitor. Without clear KPIs, a project risks inefficiencies, budget overruns, and missed deadlines - all of which can negatively impact client satisfaction and overall project success. Utilising dashboards for tracking KPIs can enhance their use and value – making it easier to track goals and improve project performance.
In the context of Legal Project Management, KPIs can help maintain the following:
- Budget Management – by comparing planned budgets against work in progress (WIP) and billed amounts.
- Phase and Workstream Deadlines – by tracking tasks to ensure projects remain on schedule and are completed on time.
- Resources and Utilisation – by monitoring how tasks are assigned or completed across teams and individuals.
- Client Satisfaction – Ensuring a client is happy with the service, and capturing key client notes or feedback.
- Managing Change – by understanding how a requested change may impact KPIs, teams can clearly plan for and agree with the client to ensure the KPI’s stay relevant and achievable.
Dashboards
A dashboard is a tool to visually display key information in an easy and accessible way. It is able to capture anything from financial data to progress of key tasks within a project. It can track updates and changes to documents, to provide a clear view of how work evolves throughout the duration of a project.
Dashboards can streamline traditional reporting methods, reducing the need to manually create reports such as spreadsheets or regular status reports. A project dashboard allows for internal and external stakeholders to access instant and reliable data in real time. A dashboard can include charts or graphs to include:
- Calendar displays of upcoming deadlines or tasks - This could include key dates, project milestones or task due dates. Mapping and displaying these details in one place, including their current status (in progress, completed etc) allows for smooth project delivery and keeps everybody accountable and aligned.
- Visual graphs and live financial metrics - Compared with reviewing spreadsheets which many find overwhelming visual graphs allows for easier interpretation of financial information. This transparency supports stakeholder alignment by keeping everybody updated and allows for better decision making.
- Visual displays of resource utilisation - Dashboards can assist with monitoring workload across teams, such as through charts to show hours spent across different phases of a project, or to highlight upcoming capacity or unavailability. If progress deviates or there are changes, the dashboard can help facilitate replanning and work allocation.
Use of dashboards allow for key advantages:
- Gaining Oversight – Dashboards enable teams to spot potential issues early, before impacting the outcome of a project or relationship.
- Increasing Transparency – By providing clients and stakeholders with accurate, real-time updates, dashboards foster trust and ensure everybody is informed on project developments. It can allow stakeholders to work effectively without any surprises.
- Driving Efficiency – By being the source of truth to monitor budgets, timelines, and resources, teams can focus and be clear on priorities. They eliminate the need to manually update or track documents, allowing stakeholders to spend more time on what matters. This also minimises the potential of any duplication or any miscommunication.
- Supporting Smarter Decisions – By transforming complex data into clear dashboards, teams can draw insights to make informed decisions that improve outcomes and success of a project.
How we can help
At CMS, the Legal Operations and Project Management team collaborates with our lawyers, clients finance and legal technology teams to design and build standardised dashboards. We also create bespoke and tailored dashboards for clients when required.
Using and building effective dashboards is one example of how CMS transforms complex data into insights, helping us stay ahead, empower teams and delivery high quality results and services for our clients.
