lpm-skills

Operational billing execution for legal matters. Monthly bill prep and billing instructions, LC invoice review and disbursement treatment, client billing query responses, cashflow modelling (LC payment obligations vs client receipts), and leverage and burn analysis (staffing mix, predicted total cost, margin trajectory). Trigger on: 'prepare the bill', 'billing instruction', 'end of month billing', 'LC invoice', 'local counsel invoice', 'pass through as disbursement', 'client querying the invoice', 'billing dispute', 'cashflow gap', 'when will we get paid', 'LC payment due', 'leverage analysis', 'staffing mix', 'predicted total cost', 'burn rate by grade', 'are we on track', 'what will this matter cost'.

Matter budgeting and ongoing WIP/variance monitoring. Build phase-based fee estimates at matter setup, run bottom-up budgets by jurisdiction or workstream, calculate contingency, and structure AFA arrangements (fixed fee, capped fee, phased fixed fees). Ongoing monitoring: WIP tracking against budget, proportionality assessment (spend vs progress), variance commentary with root cause analysis, forecast-to-complete, realisation monitoring, write-off analysis. Trigger on: 'build a budget', 'fee estimate', 'what will this cost', 'WIP review', 'budget vs actual', 'how are we tracking against budget', 'we're over budget', 'realisation is poor', 'what's our ETC', 'budget for the German workstream', 'model the financial impact of this scope change', 'draft a fee adjustment', 'write-off analysis', 'how much contingency', 'AFA structure', 'fixed fee estimate', 'budget update', 'forecast to complete'.

Collaboration platform configuration methodology for legal matter sites. Site architecture, workflow identification, dashboard design, data quality governance, and user adoption for SharePoint, Teams, and equivalent platforms. M365 is the reference implementation — outputs are platform-agnostic enough to brief IT or build simple automations without becoming a Power Automate manual. Use when setting up a matter site, identifying workflows to automate, designing reporting dashboards, managing platform data quality, or driving user adoption. Trigger on: 'set up the matter site', 'configure SharePoint', 'build a dashboard', 'what should we automate', 'brief IT on this workflow', 'nobody is using the platform', 'data quality is poor', 'set up Teams channel', 'matter site structure', 'alerts and notifications', 'user training', 'platform governance', 'status dashboard', 'what workflows can we automate', 'matter site template'.

Capture, structure, and recycle lessons from active and closed legal matters. Three modes: in-flight capture (triggered by scope changes, risk events, status updates — highest value), mid-matter review (phase gates or quarterly), and matter close retrospective (full structured findings). Lessons are formatted for immediate reuse, not filed and forgotten. Use when a risk materialises, a scope change lands, a phase completes, or a matter closes and you want to convert what happened into something useful for the next matter. Trigger on: 'capture a lesson', 'what did we learn', 'matter close', 'retrospective', 'lessons learned', 'what went wrong', 'what worked', 'phase gate review', 'debrief', 'extract the learning', 'close the matter', 'what should we do differently', 'pattern from this matter', 'improve the next one'.

Produces a portfolio-level morning briefing for an LPM running two or more active matters. Reads email, call notes and matter state across the portfolio and produces a triage surface structured around meetings (today and this week), deliverables (what is due, when, to whom), issues (current problems requiring action), and risks (plausible future problems requiring monitoring). Also reads Outlook Calendar to surface upcoming matter-relevant meetings and to flag past meetings where no follow-up correspondence has been identified. Use when the user asks "run my daily briefing", "portfolio briefing", "what do I need to know today", "what's landed overnight", "Monday sweep", "pre-09:00 briefing", "weekend catchup", or pastes correspondence spanning two or more matters. Not for single-matter briefings (use matter-drill-down) or for audience-facing status reports (use status-report-drafter). Produces a .docx working surface for the LPM's own consumption, not distribution.