Why legal tech adoption should work like a kitchen apprenticeship
And for everyone involved, meaningful change in legal operations happens through evolution, not revolution.
Many legal tech initiatives fail. After two years of watching deployments go sideways and listening to the sharpest minds in this space discuss these challenges, I can see why. Several specific misconceptions keep derailing adoption. These are the counterintuitive patterns I keep seeing in successful deployments.
Stop writing, start talking
We ask AI to write first drafts of complex contracts and compliance documents, then spend hours editing mediocre output that misses every nuance that matters. But the organizations that succeed with AI flip the entire interaction model. Instead of asking AI to generate content, they use it as an interviewer, asking targeted questions about their topic. When you explain your thinking to an AI conducting an interview, you're not editing garbage—you're structuring your own expertise. Product teams building legal AI tools have it backwards. The interface shouldn't be built around prompt engineering. It should be built around dialogue and knowledge extraction.
Respect beats replacement every time
Legal tech crashes and burns because it arrives with a replacement mindset, treating centuries of legal practice like outdated software. But successful changes start with deep respect for existing structures. This isn't about being polite. Legal work runs on precedent, trust, and interconnected systems that took generations to build. The organizations that succeed don't try to overhaul everything—they enhance what works. For legal teams evaluating new technology, follow this: the technology that understands your workflows outperforms those promising to reinvent them.
The art of mode-switching
Organizations get stuck between maintaining current operations and building for the future. The problem isn't prioritization—it's mental mode-switching. Successful organizations deliberately cultivate two distinct thinking modes. They conduct rigorous analysis of their department's position (not wishful thinking, but brutal honesty about capabilities and constraints). Then, in separate contexts, they create space for open exploration of new possibilities. Organizations are trying to do both simultaneously, which produces neither a clear strategy nor genuine innovation. Schedule distinct sessions for operational planning versus innovation exploration, and be explicit about which mode you're in.
Learning like apprentices, not students
Many deployments fail because we've forgotten how people learn complex skills. Think about how apprentice chefs learn knife skills. They don't read manuals or watch videos alone. They stand next to experienced chefs, observing grip, wrist movement, and technique adjustments for different ingredients. The learning happens through proximity, repetition, and trust. The technology is the easy part.
For product teams building for legal departments, your deployment strategy matters more than your feature set. For legal teams evaluating tools, look beyond functionality to consider how the tool fits into your organization's learning culture and strategic direction. And for everyone involved, meaningful change in legal operations happens through evolution, not revolution.
