October 2026

You’re exhausted, but can’t stand still: So how do you make real progress with AI?

By David Curtain

In-house legal teams are being asked to make big changes at a moment when their capacity for change is low.

After COVID, hybrid work, economic uncertainty and repeated organisational changes (many of which fail to deliver promised results), change fatigue is everywhere. People have watched initiatives launch with energy, then stall when a sponsor moves on or priorities shift. Many legal leaders are also at a peak-busy stage of life, with family, financial pressures and ageing parents waiting when they log off. A lot of people are just knackered.

Now AI has arrived, with new tools, new expectations and a steady stream of commentary about how fast everyone else is moving. Legal leaders know they can’t ignore it, but another ambitious transformation program is unlikely to be the answer.

A better approach is to cut through the noise, choose a small number of changes that matter, put the right people around them and build confidence through visible progress.

Why resistance is rational

It’s easy to label people as resistant to change. More often, they’re responding sensibly to experience.

If someone has worked successfully in a particular way for years, asking them to change carries an immediate cost and real uncertainty. They need to know what’s in it for them. Scepticism grows when earlier projects have gone nowhere. People may reasonably wonder whether the latest initiative will create more work before quietly disappearing, and whether they can just sidestep the storm.

Change fatigue is not an excuse for standing still. Leaders need to make the practical case, involve the people affected and show that the initiative matters, is properly resourced, and will be completed.

Don’t believe the hype

LinkedIn can make it appear that every legal team has become fluent in AI overnight. Vendors and enthusiastic early adopters add to the impression that everyone else is racing ahead.

I speak regularly with leaders of Australian in-house legal teams, and the reality looks very different. Most are curious and ambitious, but still working out what these tools mean for their team. If that’s you, you’re in good company.

Understand the total cost of AI

Many teams are starting to realise the cost of successful AI adoption is a lot more than the cost of a Copilot licence – you also need to consider factors like:

• Who will map and improve your workflows?
• Who will build and manage your automations?
• Who will create and maintain your playbooks?

And that’s before you get to project management, time required of subject matter experts (both legal and stakeholders) and communications. 

There’s a lot to managing change well, and most in-house lawyers have spent much more time supporting change led by others, rather than leading the change process themselves. The main areas we see people stumble are in planning and resourcing.

Choose progress over transformation theatre

Large transformation projects can be necessary, particularly for enterprise-wide systems. But they carry many dependencies: technology, culture, procurement, data security, budget, people and sustained executive sponsorship.

For many changes, an iterative approach works better. Start with something contained. Test it. Ask what worked and what didn’t. Improve it, then decide the next step.

This puts runs on the board. People can see the work is real and that their feedback shapes the result. That builds trust and makes them more likely to take part in the next stage.

Give change real capacity

In an exhausted team, change can’t simply be added to the day jobs of people who are already stretched. It needs time, ownership and often specialist skills.

Sometimes the capability exists internally and time can be carved out from BAU work to support the initiative. Increasingly, teams also need internal legal ops support to define the problem, do the work, coordinate stakeholders, track progress and keep things moving. That doesn’t have to mean a permanent hire. A specialist on secondment or a fractional basis can provide focused capacity without long-term complexity. 

Before embarking on your next transformation, take a beat to check if you’re solving a problem that really matters, and what’s realistically needed to achieve your goal. If you need help, Front Foot provides solutions for these resourcing challenges. 

In an exhausted team, credible progress is more powerful than another ambitious promise.