Legal
PMO & Audit-Ready Document Management
Primary Area
OPM
Service Area
Project Management (Demand, Document Management Approval Flow)
Products Used
Project Online, SharePoint, Power Platform
Roles Impacted
PMO Manager, Project Managers, Attorneys
Impact Highlight
50% reduced audit preparation time
Opportunity
A global law firm relied on region-specific spreadsheets, email approvals, and an aging on‑premise Document Management System (DMS)—making portfolio reporting slow and audit evidence incomplete. Leadership seized the moment to build a centralized PMO with enforceable document controls that could stand up to regulator and client review.
Pain Points
No single source of truth for project scope, budget, or status across regions.
Document versions scattered across file shares, legacy libraries, and personal drives.
Manual email approvals lost in inboxes; weak audit trails for policy, privacy, and client confidentiality reviews.
Difficult aggregation of KPIs for executive steering committee; data lagged.
Inconsistent project methodologies and templates across practice groups.
Solution
We partnered with the firm to align stakeholders, standardize PMO practices, and implement a Microsoft 365-based platform that connected project data with governed document workflows. We migrated historical project metadata and key documents from Excel, network drives, and legacy libraries into Project Online and SharePoint, automating routing and audit capture through Power Automate and surfacing collaboration in Teams.
People
Executive steering group spanning Legal Ops, IT, Risk, and regional offices.
PM and paralegal enablement program; role-based training in Teams; quick-reference SOPs.
Process
Standard PMO lifecycle (Initiate, Plan, Execute, Close) mapped to legal matter milestones.
Required document checkpoints with digital sign-off; automated escalation for overdue reviews.
Centralized portfolio intake form with mandatory compliance metadata.
Technology
Microsoft Project Online for portfolio, resource, and schedule management.
SharePoint Online structured libraries with matter/region metadata and retention labels.
Power Automate flows for document approval.
Microsoft Teams channels auto-provisioned per project; surfaced KPIs via Power BI dashboards.
Migration connectors pulled documents from legacy network shares; metadata mapped to SharePoint columns.
Impact
The firm now runs an IT PMO where active cross-regional projects are visible in a single portfolio dashboard, and every key document is governed with version history and approval lineage. Automated workflows cut audit preparation time by 50% and reduced compliance exceptions tied to missing documents.
50% reduction in audit prep effort (hours) across annual and spot audits.
IT and process-improvement projects captured through standardized intake.
Faster project initiation to first deliverable due to prebuilt templates and auto-provisioned Teams/SharePoint spaces and Project Online Project Sites.
Reduction in duplicate or misfiled documents after migration clean‑up and enforced metadata.
Increased on‑time completion of required stage‑gate reviews through automated reminders and dashboard escalation routing.
Consolidated reporting in Power BI improved executive decision lead time from monthly to weekly.
We helped the firm turn a compliance risk into a disciplined, data-driven PMO—advancing the firm’s vision for global consistency while realizing concrete regulatory and operational requirements.