International law firm Pinsent Masons today announced the launch of its Client and Legal Project Management (CLPM) division to help support delivery of client matters on time and on budget.

Led by Dee Tamlin and comprising more than 20 project managers and staff, the firm has so far won project management mandates in the UK, mainland Europe and South Africa. Pinsent Masons is continuing to recruit in the UK, Asia Pacific and the Middle East while already offering the service on a global basis.

Pinsent Masons’ CLPM division offers project management on major transactions delivered by lawyers or dedicated professionals and additionally will embed professionally certified project managers directly in to the client team on major projects, litigations and transactions – irrespective of whether Pinsent Masons is delivering legal advice on the matter.

Dee Tamlin said: “Pinsent Masons has always trained its people and offered tools that help us to come in on-time and on-budget. Over the years we have developed and honed a methodology that marries project management principles and best practice with the innate uncertainties of complex legal work.

“Clients have responded to that and increasingly ask us to deliver training and input on project management at the outset of matters that they themselves then administer. Some are now asking us to place professional project managers into teams to coordinate mandates that may involve multiple firms, geographies, jurisdictions and workstreams, irrespective of whether we are delivering all or some of the legal work. This is very-much about responding to that existing demand for project management as a more ‘front of house’ discipline.”

Katharine Hardie, Chair of Pinsent Masons in Scotland and Northern Ireland, said: “Pinsent Masons has been transitioning from being an expertise-based law firm to a professional services firm with law at its core. Project management is a great example of a skillset which is adjacent to legal services in the excellent delivery of projects and transactions. This level of take-up from clients already demonstrates the level of demand as progressive organisations seek to better-support and leverage their in-house legal  and commercial resources.”

Pinsent Masons operates a number of businesses and technologies which complement legal resource. In 2013 the firm was in the vanguard of legal firms to offer contract legal resource through its Vario business, which has subsequently launched into Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore. In 2016 the firm appointed Andrew Henderson from RBS to grow its Public Policy Unit, acquired consultancy Brook Graham in 2017 to help clients develop effective diversity and inclusion strategies and also hired Chris Richardson from EY to lead the firm’s Forensic Accountancy Service.