Remediation

One of the pioneers of legal technology, Ron Rust, used to tell clients at the beginning of every project, “I can guarantee one thing. There will be mistakes.”

That’s a fact of our industry. (And a fact of life, for that matter.) Any non-trivial project is going to have a hiccup somewhere. The good news is that our clients (the experienced ones, at least) know this. They can deal with the fact that something went wrong. What they will judge us on is how we recover when things go wrong.

It will fall to you as project manager to communicate issues surrounding remediation to the client. As a rule, you should:

• Make sure we (senior management as well as the project team) understand what went wrong and why.
• Tell the client at the earliest opportunity. Be direct. Don’t point fingers. Take the fallout.
• Work with the CLS project team to formulate a remediation plan. This includes discussing cost implications with senior management.
• Communicate the specifics of the remediation plan to the client.

This is one of the less pleasant duties of a project manager, but if you handle it well, you can actually turn a negative experience into a positive and cement a productive relationship with a client.