Quality control involves two essential approaches:

Transaction components. This approach treats the components of a project as an interconnected whole. In a commercial legal context, the components are the various workstreams involved in a transaction, and the stakeholders. These include not just the client, but also members of the wider team, such as specialist departments, network offices, local and outside counsel and the client's other advisers.

Continuous improvement. The essence of this approach is encapsulated in the words of Winston Churchill: "To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often". This means that each process in a project should be monitored constantly, and the knowledge gained fed back to bring adjustments and improvements.

In a complex legal transaction, this requires adequate systems and organisation to ensure that tabs are kept on all the moving parts. It also calls for effective communication and co-ordination with the legal team inside and outside the firm, the client and the members of the wider team. This may sound obvious, but common sense is often at odds with the "draft; produce; deliver; sign" instinct and silo mentality (where departments or groups do not communicate and share with others) prevalent among many lawyers.

So what can be done in practice to translate quality control thinking into effective and profitable legal transaction management? The answer lies in good teamwork, communication and feedback.

A strong team has common objectives that are communicated clearly by the team leader. It has shared values and methods, trusted relationships, accountability, enthusiasm and confidence. Many of these qualities emerge naturally in an environment where information circulates openly and freely. Two other important ingredients are a "wider team" mentality, and the allocation of clear roles.

The wider team. It is helpful to think of the deal team not just as immediate colleagues, but also as all those whose common purpose is to get the deal done. This will include members of the wider team, both inside and outside the firm. For example, thinking about the involvement of specialist departments and local counsel early in the transaction, if only to give them advance notice, is good for team relations and will ultimately create trust and a sense of partnership. What often happens instead is that their input is sought for the first time far down the line, when matters have become urgent and courses of action have been chosen that may be incompatible with their advice.

Responsibility allocation. A clear allocation of responsibilities is also important. Team members will feel empowered if properly briefed and given well-defined responsibilities. This, in turn, requires the transaction to be broken down into workstreams, and the division of responsibilities for those workstreams to be planned. For example, it includes determining who will act as workstream co-ordinators; prepare and update step plans, term sheets, transaction documents and checklists; be responsible for briefing and communications with the client, internal team members and other team members (such as network offices and local counsel); and manage billing updates and the billing process.

Good teamwork and effective communication go hand-in-hand. However, lawyers tend to be good at doing their bit of the deal, but not so good at peripheral vision; that is, looking at the overall picture of the transaction and wider team, or bothering about dovetailing their bit neatly with the other parts of the picture. In order to improve communication, lawyers should consider:

An initial briefing. This should define what is expected from each team member in terms of work product and deadlines. It is also helpful to give information on background and overall transaction objectives, especially for juniors.

Updating the team. Regular update briefings are essential. They should be planned in advance, included in electronic diaries as a recurring event, and agendas should be circulated beforehand. For the sake of efficiency, not everyone should be invited to every briefing: invitations should be organised by workstream, with an occasional whole team meeting. This is where "wider team" thinking has its benefits: including all the relevant stakeholders in briefings builds trust (because everyone knows what everyone else is doing in real time), creates buy-in and fosters respect, understanding and a sense of shared ownership of the transaction.

In complex transactions involving many workstreams, it is helpful to designate a team member with overall responsibility for keeping tabs on, and broadcasting developments promptly to, all workstream leaders. That person should circulate a transaction summary and update it regularly with input from all the workstream leaders and wider team members. This will keep everyone abreast of what is going on and help considerably with document drafting, among other things. There should also be responsibility lists, checklists, and signing and closing agendas to keep everyone informed and focused on their tasks. These will be most effective if their content is prepared collaboratively by all team members, as opposed to being imposed centrally.

Managing expectations. Regular briefings and communications with the client and the wider team also serve to manage expectations. Cost reporting is a good example. A system that gathers time, cost and expense updates from all departments, network offices and local counsel on a regular basis, combined with periodic reports to the client, will help to control cost overruns by overenthusiastic team members and to manage the client's expectations about fees. This is clearly vital for transaction efficiency, profitability and good client relations.

How things are said. The method of communication, and the way that things are said, can also affect trust and understanding in a team. Face-to-face meetings are best. Making the effort to see people, particularly in the same building, is preferable to calling or emailing. Team leaders should send out instructions to other departments, network offices and local counsel in the initial phase of a transaction, preceded by a "heads-up" communication. On the other hand, having instructions sent out by a trainee on a Friday evening asking for a first draft by close of business on Monday will not go down well. When briefing wider team members, it is best to take account of local differences: English law and market practice are not universal in their application. So a "this is the way we propose to do things, does that work for you?" approach is preferable to instructions couched in directive "this is the way we want things done" terms.

People tend to be fearful of feedback, and so it is rarely solicited or given by lawyers. However, it is key to project management philosophy. The twin quality control principles of interconnection and constant improvement require effective feedback.

Performance feedback. Performance feedback sessions, managed well, identify what people (clients and team members alike) value and do not like. Feedback, good and bad, is sometimes very different from expectations, and should encourage adjustments in working methods and behaviour. A good feedback system creates motivation and corrects mistakes. It builds a sense of trust, accountability, responsibility to the client and colleagues, and encourages collaborative support.

Quality of feedback. A hallmark of good feedback is that it is open and constructive. It requires speaking honestly and listening for understanding. It focuses on what went well, but also brings out what did not go so well based on specific examples, and determines actions for better performance and relations in the future.

Another attribute of a good feedback system is regularity. In any transaction, large or small, there is room for feedback in every conversation with the client and between team members. In any event, it is helpful to set up regular feedback sessions (both with the client, and separately with the team) throughout a transaction. These will bring tangible benefits and, above all, they will help defuse the tensions that inevitably build up in an environment of pressure, complexity and deadlines.

Once the transaction has closed, three final, but important, feedback mechanisms should come into play: a client review session; an internal team review; and a know-how and business development review. Clients and law firms will each benefit from the first two, particularly if they result in commitments to improve, and if those commitments are actually implemented. In addition, by reviewing the transaction and its documents, valuable know-how resources and useful business development information can be extracted, written up, and fed into the firm's know-how and business development systems. However, experience proves that unless these reviews are conducted very soon after the transaction closes, they never get done at all.