Are Law Firms Ready for SAFe Agile?
When clients demand faster results, greater transparency, and more predictable outcomes, law firms often turn to technology and process improvement. Yet, while many industries have embraced Agile practices to deliver value quickly and iteratively, law firms remain rooted in tradition, precedent, and hierarchy. Enter the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
What is SAFe?
SAFe is a structured methodology for applying Agile principles, not to run a project, but instead to help run large, complex organizations. It builds on core Agile practices such as iterative development, backlog management, and continuous feedback, but scales them to multiple teams working together on enterprise-level initiatives.
SAFe organizes work into tiers (Team, Program, Large Solution, and Portfolio) to align strategy with execution. It emphasizes many desirable qualities in managing an organization:
Alignment
Transparency
Quality
Program-level planning
As you would expect, leadership plays a key role, shifting toward servant leadership while still ensuring governance and compliance. SAFe also incorporates Lean portfolio management, allowing organizations to prioritize investments and manage capacity effectively. Overall, it provides a balance between flexibility and structure, helping enterprises deliver value more predictably at scale.
Why do SAFe?
The question is can SAFe really work in a law firm? What are the benefits?
Faster Delivery of Client Value - Clients are increasingly unwilling to wait months for results without visibility. Agile’s iterative approach, scaled through SAFe, allows firms to deliver incremental updates, whether in document review, contract drafting, or compliance projects. Instead of waiting until the end, clients see progress earlier, which builds trust and helps course-correct before costly mistakes occur.
Enhanced Responsiveness to Regulatory Change - Legal work is highly sensitive to new laws, regulations, and court rulings. SAFe’s cadence of shorter planning cycles makes it easier for firms to adapt quickly when rules change. A corporate practice group, for example, can pivot its workstreams when a new compliance requirement emerges, without derailing long-term strategic projects.
Better Alignment with Client Expectations - Many corporate clients, particularly those in tech and finance, already work within Agile frameworks. By adopting SAFe, law firms can align their operating models with clients, making collaboration smoother. Clients familiar with concepts like backlogs, sprints, and velocity may find it refreshing to see their legal partners adopting similar ways of working.
Improved Transparency and Collaboration - Legal work can be siloed. Litigation teams, corporate lawyers, and support staff can operate in isolation, which slows down case preparation and client delivery. SAFe emphasizes cross-functional alignment through Program Increment (PI) Planning and regular ceremonies, encouraging transparency between teams. For law firms, this can translate into better communication between practice groups and more consistent client service.
Better and More Structured Governance in a Risk-Averse Industry - Unlike lightweight Agile approaches, SAFe retains a strong focus on governance, compliance, and metrics. This could resonates well as with law firms that must carefully manage risk. Tools like Lean Portfolio Management can help leadership balance innovation with risk control, ensuring new initiatives don’t conflict with ethical or regulatory obligations.
Some Potential Pitfalls to Avoid
While SAFe has some strong positives, it isn’t all smooth sailing when implementing SAFe in a law firm.
Cultural Resistance - Law is a tradition-driven profession. Partners accustomed to command-and-control leadership may struggle with SAFe’s emphasis on servant leadership and distributed decision-making. Convincing senior lawyers to participate in ceremonies like retrospectives or to share visibility into their work can be an uphill battle.
What is Value in Legal Services - SAFe thrives on metrics like business value and velocity. But in a law firm, what constitutes “value”? Billable hours remain the dominant measure of success, yet they are poorly aligned with Agile principles. Reconciling SAFe’s value-driven metrics with the billable-hour business model can be a major structural challenge.
Overhead and Complexity - SAFe is intentionally comprehensive, with layers of roles, events, and artifacts. For firms just beginning to explore Agile, the framework may feel overwhelming and bureaucratic. Without careful tailoring, SAFe can introduce additional complexity rather than simplifying delivery.
Difficulty in Scaling Knowledge Work - Unlike software, legal outcomes cannot always be broken down into user stories with predictable effort. Drafting a novel legal argument or negotiating a merger doesn’t always fit neatly into a backlog item. Applying SAFe requires thoughtful adaptation to the unique uncertainties of legal work.
Risk of “Agile in Name Only” - If a law firm adopts SAFe without cultural buy-in, the result can be a façade of agility. Teams may go through the motions of PI planning or stand-ups while continuing to work in the same old way. This “check-the-box” adoption wastes effort and can discredit Agile entirely in the eyes of skeptical partners.
How to get started?
It is an enormous undertaking to affect large change in an existing organization. It will take time, careful planning and management support. The following is just an example outline of how your organization could get started adapting SAFe. The goal should be to demonstrate that these new practices (at a small scale) can deliver measurable improvements in collaboration, transparency, and client value while maintaining legal rigor.
Awareness & Foundations
Educate Leadership and Staff
Run short training sessions on Agile principles and introduce SAFe at a high level.
Emphasize benefits relevant to law firms: client responsiveness, efficiency, and transparency.
Select Pilot Area
Choose one practice group or legal operations function (e.g., compliance tracking, contract review).
Ensure it’s a low-risk, repeatable process where value can be measured.
Form a Pilot Team
Include a mix of partners, associates, paralegals, and IT/operations staff.
Assign a Product Owner (client-facing role), Scrum Master (process facilitator), and team members.
Initial Agile Practices in Action
Set Up Tools & Workflows
Use Kanban boards (Jira, Trello, or MS Planner) to track tasks.
Define a simple backlog of client-focused tasks (“As a client, I want…”).
Start Core Ceremonies
Daily stand-ups (15 minutes max).
Weekly backlog refinement and sprint planning (keep sprints 2–3 weeks).
End-of-sprint reviews with feedback from internal stakeholders or even clients.
Introduce Portfolio Thinking (at Partner Level)
Present Lean Portfolio Management: how to balance billable work, innovation, and internal improvements.
Create a simple visual portfolio board of ongoing initiatives for visibility.
First Steps & Learning
Run a Mini Program Increment Planning Session
Hold a half-day planning workshop for the next 8–10 weeks.
Align team goals with firm strategy (e.g., faster turnaround for contract reviews).
Identify risks and dependencies openly.
Deliver & Demonstrate Value
Complete 2–3 short sprints delivering tangible outcomes (e.g., quicker client drafts, improved workflows).
Invite feedback from partners and clients.
Inspect & Adapt
Run a retrospective to gather lessons learned.
Document improvements, challenges, and outcomes in terms of client value, not just internal metrics.
Plan for Expansion
Share pilot results with leadership.
Identify the next practice group or team for rollout, building on lessons learned.
Where is the all going?
The legal sector is changing under pressure from clients, technology, and competition from alternative legal service providers. While SAFe is not a perfect fit, it offers law firms a structured way to modernize their operations without abandoning the governance they require.
Over the next decade, we can expect to see hybrid models emerge, where select aspects of SAFe, such as portfolio alignment, client collaboration, and iterative delivery are tailored to legal workflows. Ultimately, the firms that succeed will be those willing to adapt traditional practice models to meet client demands for speed, transparency, and value, while carefully balancing the profession’s obligations of ethics and rigor.
