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Work breakdown structure (WBS), a tool of project management for legal departments

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Your legal department has to ramp up to accomplish a large acquisition. Because large projects such as this involve many activities, your lawyers need some way to determine what will need to be done so that they can manage time, costs, and ultimately expectations. Skilled project managers often accomplish this, according to William J. Stevenson, Operations Management (McGraw-Hill, 2005, 8th Ed.) at 735, by developing a work breakdown structure, which is a hierarchical listing of what must be done during a project.

A WBS for a project (Level 1) looks like an org chart, with the major elements of the project at the next level down, Level 2. Each major activity (due diligence, corporate structure, tax coordination, financial issues) has several boxes below it, which are the Level 3 tasks. Level 4 lists the supporting activities for Level 3, and so on down if necessary.

It might take a legal department staff some time to develop a comprehensive WBS for a large acquisition, electronic discovery in a major investigation, or establishment of a joint venture, but the effort is the basis for developing time and cost estimates(See my post of June 24, 2007: project management with 5 references; and Dec. 2, 2007: Gantt charts.)

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3 responses to “Work breakdown structure (WBS), a tool of project management for legal departments”

  1. Project Management Hut says:
    June 15, 2009 at 10:58 am

    It’s interesting how Project Management can be adopted in almost in any profession.
    Is there a WBS example (in a legal department) that you can upload by any chance?

  2. Frank Greces says:
    June 16, 2009 at 2:40 pm

    Being both a Six Sigma and PMP professional with a legal bend who is now in the process of launching a best in breed Virtual Legal Services Firm, it never ceases to amaze me how often specific professions work in a silo and do not reach out beyond their practicing profession to integrate best practices across project management, technology enhancement, process optimization, etc. Only by doing so can a law firm understand the true Total Cost of Acquisition (TCO; to use another PMP term) of legal services of its client and thereby have a baseline for bidding on an RFP, fixed price scenario, etc…..inclusive of a reasonable profit for the firm.

  3. Project Management says:
    November 9, 2009 at 3:58 am

    Thanks for sharing this informative article. The WBS cannot be used as a replacement for the project plan or schedule. A WBS is not required to be created in any type of order or sequence. It is simply a visual breakdown of deliverables.