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In the race to embrace AI, many legal teams moved fast but overlooked the foundations of successful implementation, with a new Axiom report revealing the biggest mistakes they made and the lessons they believe are essential to getting AI adoption right.
As artificial intelligence rapidly reshaped the legal profession, legal teams found themselves in a race against time to embrace one of the industry’s most transformative technologies.
But while many moved quickly to avoid being left behind, hindsight has prompted legal leaders to reflect on what they would do differently and the lessons they believe every legal department should learn before embarking on its own AI journey.
A new report from Axiom has revealed the biggest lessons legal leaders have learnt from AI adoption, uncovering the mistakes teams made during adoption and the changes they believe are essential for turning AI from a promising technology into a long-term success.
The 2026 Axiom In-House Legal AI Report gathered insights from over 500 in-house legal leaders across six countries, including Australia, the United States, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom, to offer a snapshot of how legal teams are embracing AI and the obstacles preventing many from realising its full potential.
Rather than identifying a single defining misstep, legal leaders pointed to a range of areas they wished they had prioritised earlier in their AI journey, with each receiving broadly similar levels of support from respondents.
Establishing stronger measurement practices from the outset emerged as the top lesson for legal leaders, with 37 per cent saying they would prioritise tracking outcomes from day one if they had the opportunity to begin their AI journey again.
Close behind, 36 per cent of respondents said they would focus on building internal expertise before deploying AI, recognising the importance of developing in-house capability and equipping their teams with the knowledge needed before rolling out new tools.
Rounding out the top three, 35 per cent of legal leaders said they would place greater emphasis on conducting more rigorous evaluations of AI tools before selecting a solution, underscoring the importance of choosing technology that aligns with their legal department’s specific needs and long-term objectives.
The findings also revealed that legal teams believe a more measured approach could have improved their AI journeys, with respondents saying they would have started with fewer, more focused AI use cases (34 per cent), invested more in upfront training (34 per cent), and prioritised securing stronger executive buy-in before rolling out AI initiatives (33 per cent).
Reflecting on the findings, Sara Morgan, chief legal AI and talent officer at Axiom, said the greatest barriers to successful AI adoption are not rooted in the technology itself, but in the complex process of embedding it into everyday legal practice.
“The top disappointments teams report are not about AI performance. They are about the work of adoption: tool selection, implementation time, training burden, and ongoing maintenance,” Morgan said.
Morgan argued that successful AI adoption is not simply about selecting the right platform, but about creating the right environment for that technology to deliver value through careful planning, clear strategy, and investment in people.
“What ranks first is strong integration with existing workflows. What follows are well-defined use cases, investment in training and change management, and internal expertise. None of those is a tool decision. All of them sit around the tool,” Morgan said.
Drawing on the lessons shared by legal leaders, Axiom identified five key principles to help legal departments get AI adoption right from the outset and avoid the costly mistakes many organisations now wish they had avoided.
These included:
Invest in your people – prioritise training and change management to ensure teams have the skills and confidence needed to use AI effectively.
Start small – begin with low-risk, targeted use cases before scaling AI initiatives across the organisation.
Set the rules first – establish clear AI governance frameworks and policies early to support responsible adoption.
Know what problem you are solving – align AI initiatives with clear objectives and measure outcomes to ensure the technology delivers meaningful value.
Phone a friend – leverage experienced users, internal champions, and external partners to help guide implementation and accelerate success.
Morgan highlighted that the legal teams achieving the strongest AI outcomes are not those moving the fastest, but those taking a disciplined approach – identifying the right problems, proving value through focused use cases, and building capability before expanding further.
“The teams getting AI right are not the fastest movers. They are the most disciplined ones. They started with a problem worth solving. They picked one use case to prove. They configured their tools for the actual work. They measured from day one. They brought their people along. And when that worked, they did it again,” Morgan said.
“The majority of the market cannot do that today. That is the gap. The services layer is where the gap gets closed. And the data makes clear [that] the market knows it.”
