ATLANTA, April 10, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- In a recent survey of in-house lawyers with Atlanta-based companies, 95% of the respondents believed that project management would increase the effectiveness and/or efficiency of their legal departments.
The survey was conducted by Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP in conjunction with a luncheon roundtable on "Managing Outside Counsel: Using Legal Project Management to Increase Efficiency and Control Costs." The roundtable, hosted by GC South magazine, will be held Wednesday, April 12 at 11:30 a.m. at Maggiano's in Buckhead. Morris, Manning & Martin is the exclusive law firm sponsor. More survey responses will be unveiled at the event.
Of the in-house lawyer respondents to the survey, 56% reported their outside legal firms are within budget only half the time, and 44% said outside counsel provides them with no formal project updates.
"While these results are preliminary, they clearly support the idea that project management, which is used in virtually every area of business except law, could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of in-house legal departments," said Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP Partner Grant Collingsworth, who helped initiate the online poll.
Almost three-quarters of the survey respondents are responsible for managing some or all of the budget for outside counsel.
The Roundtable will be moderated by Steve Korn, publisher of the Daily Report, and former vice chairman and chief operating officer for Cable News Network, Inc. The keynote speaker will be Linda Klausing, Morris, Manning & Martin's Director of Legal Project Management, and a member of the Project Management Institute.
The panelists include Michael J. Kline, The Coca-Cola Company's Counsel for Intellectual Property Litigation; John Sabine DeGroote, BearingPoint, Inc.'s Deputy General Counsel and Chief Litigation Counsel; Kristen McGuffey, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Simmons Bedding Co.; and Grant Collingsworth, a Partner at Morris, Manning & Martin and leader of its Project Management Initiative.
GC South, which is distributed to in-house attorneys in 11 Southeastern states, hosts bi-monthly roundtables on a variety of business and legal topics affecting company lawyers. An edited transcript of the roundtable discussion will be published in its June 2006 issue. GC South is part of the ALM family of publications, which also includes American Lawyer magazine, the National Law Journal and the Daily Report.
There is no cost to attend the roundtable, but attorneys interested in attending must pre-register. For more information or to reserve a seat, contact Rachael Fishkind at rfishkind@alm.com or 404-419-2821.
Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP, (www.mmmlaw.com) enjoys national prominence for its corporate finance, securities, litigation, technology, telecommunications, insurance, healthcare, environmental and real estate practices. The firm has offices in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, and Princeton.