Introduction 1.1. What this workbook can show you

These days you can easily get the impression that “Agile” is a buzzword that has little to do with the Agile methodology and principles as they are known, especially in software development. When taken out of context, Agile is often misunderstood to be anarchy and planless, aimless working. This is far from the truth. In software development, Agile has proven to be a valuable system to organise work in contexts where the outcome and the way to the Goal are not clear from the outset. Due to this uncertainty, the frameworks used to get there needed to be even more well-defined. Many of these principles don’t seem to be applicable for law firms, yet we want to show you what you can learn from them and how you can use them in your firm. This also means that we will, at times, tweak the Agile standards and methods to fit better into the workings of a law firm, rather than following them to the letter.

In addition to giving you handy tools to implement in your daily working life, we want to show how Agile can improve your work, both internally and what you deliver to your client.

Some of the aspects that can be improved with Agile are:

• Transparency (e.g. clear requirements for your associates)

• Communication (e.g. clearly defined meetings with a clear outcome)

• Quality (e.g. clearly documented standards)

• Productivity (e.g. defined and standardised workflows)

This workbook is intended as an easy starter for you to implement your first Agile working setup, irrespective of your previous knowledge of Agile or project management in general. We will guide you through an Agile setup containing all the essentials but will strive to keep it to that and not to open advanced topics.

In this workbook, we won’t teach you how to use all the Agile frameworks in detail, but rather what the core ideas and principles are and how you can use them to improve the work in your law firm as well as collaboration between you and your client.

This means that you don’t need to implement all the tools we present and describe in this book, but we strongly recommend that you try them out to see how and when they can work for you.

Agile working setups differ between organizations. This book can apply to all shapes and sizes of law firms—from solopreneurs to big law, generalist to boutique.

It is also okay to tweak the tools you find here but beware that this can quickly lead to re-labelling of existing working methods. That said, you can, in our view, decide to adopt only parts of the setup we describe. When you choose to adopt a tool, you may change details to make it fit. We strongly suggest that you experiment with the contents of this book and try to fi gure out how it can be applied in your context. If needed, you can always consult with an Agile expert to support you in doing so.