Every architect, from the highest paid to lowest, will tell you the same thing: the strongest, most enduring structures are built from the ground up. When building for the future, the focus starts with a solid foundation, followed by walls, systems, and infrastructure. Each layer depends on the stability beneath it.  Only at the end do you add a roof to close in and protect all the future memories and successes you will have in this perfect building.

This roof and building can be modified, upgraded, even replaced over time, but only because the foundation was set correctly in the first place.  No architect will ever start with the roof. If they did, the structure would never stand, collapsing well before a single raindrop lands, gust of wind sweeps across the surface or guest knocks on the front door.

I think about this constantly as I watch legal teams build their technology stacks.

The logic is identical to constructing a build. Foundation first, point solutions and add-ons come later, and top it off with the secure, protective roof, right? Teams aim to install legal tech on something solid that holds everything together and turns plans into a structure that delivers high ROI, 100% adoption, and longevity.  That’s the goal anyway!

Yet I see highly capable, experienced, and well-resourced legal teams doing the opposite. They start with point solutions and add-ons. In other words, they start with the roof and then wonder why nothing stands.  These projects are then tabled, abandoned, or endlessly supplemented until the stack becomes a collection of separated tools with limited value.

In our scenario, the problem was never the tools. Whether it is document storage, contract review, compliance, legal research or any number of legal technologies, these tools are valuable and are needed to build the right tech stack. The issue is almost always the order the stack was built. So, what should form the foundation of a modern legal tech stack? My belief is straightforward. The foundation must be something that brings everything together, unifies the stack, and enhances every layer built on top of it. That foundation is legal-tuned AI.

Too many teams treat AI as an afterthought, once your systems are in place and people become ‘ready’.  The most successful teams realise that AI has to be the foundation, not the finish line!

For decades, the legal technology stack has followed a predictable pattern.  Contract lifecycle management, eBilling, matter management, document automation, and more were carefully selected and thoughtfully implemented. Where possible, tools were integrated. Where not, manual intervention filled the gaps.  These technologies were all built around one central goal; making existing processes more efficient.

These tools were all highly valuable (and still are!) and solved point-specific problems well. Some even exceed past the point solution and materially improve the legal team’s lifecycle. Teams learned to connect to what they could, operate where they could, and accept varying levels of ROI. Then AI arrived. The world shifted, and most organisations did exactly what they had always done. They bolted AI onto the stack.

AI was assigned tasks such as summarising contracts, flagging clauses, routing requests, and automating workflows. It became a finishing touch on an already entrenched stack that was optimised around the way things had always been done. The roof was already up, and AI became the new shingles or renovation piece to maximise a spot in the overall legal teams’ lifecycle. The AI for legal revolution came and is here.  Legal teams are getting budgets to buy it, and whatever it can do is secondary to getting AI bolted on.

Teams don’t want to miss the waves, and they want to meet their goals and do more with less.   And yet, I see teams wondering why nothing feels different. As I work to address this problem, I often see that we built the roof now are patching it as the foundation shakes. Bolting AI onto a broken process or point system doesn’t transform it.  It can automate dysfunction or narrow the potential value to a point solution instead of enhancing the full lifecycle.

The conventional approach to legal transformation is built outside in. Organisations identify pain points such as contract cycle times, outside counsel spend, headcount pressure, then work backwards to find tools that address each symptom. Each tool is implemented to solve a specific issue in scope, with its ability to integrate with the other systems addressed later, often over time and through manual effort. Now, with AI at the forefront, it is frequently treated the same way, slotted in at the end and assigned tasks tied to the point solution it touches or is embedded within, rather than being integrated into how teams think and operate. The results are that the sharpest legal minds still spend much of their time on work that does not truly require them, not because they lack skill or judgment, but because the system around them was never designed to elevate them. They continue answering the same questions, reviewing the same low-complexity work, and fighting the same fires they were fighting before the transformation began.

So why is this happening? I believe it is because, in our above scenario, when legal teams finally receive funds, it is tied to aggressive ROI goals. The instinctive question becomes ‘What can AI automate?’  Having helped teams through this, I believe this is the wrong question.  The better question is, ‘What does AI make possible that wasn’t possible before?’ And answering that question honestly requires a fundamentally different starting point, one where AI isn’t the roof you add at the end, but the foundation you build everything else on top of.

A foundation-first approach doesn’t necessarily begin with tools.  It begins with knowing what your team needs to know, decide, and act on. From there, intelligence becomes part of the system day one.  In this model, AI and AI agents are teammates. Like legal subject-matter experts, they become part of the backbone of success.  Built into our legal tech stack, these agents carry our knowledge, surface insights at the right moment, and actively move work up the value chain toward the work that needs their expertise.

This is not theoretical. It is already happening. Many of the tools in today’s legal tech stacks now include embedded AI, which can help at the point solution level. Certain tools go further and connect across systems. But this only works when AI is intentionally designed into the foundation, a step many teams overlook.

There are now tools in the market that operate with high efficiency and deliver meaningful ROI because they are not designed to bolt on to an existing stack. Instead, they are purpose-designed and deployed to fill in missing foundation and infrastructure. These solutions are designed to create AI agents without heavy technical lift or system overhauls, focusing instead on change management and thoughtful design, supported by legal AI teams who work hands-on to help build agents that address what wasn’t previously possible.

Whether leveraging existing tools or evaluating new ones in the market, I see this approach working in practice through my colleagues at Elevate, who are doing exactly this for legal teams globally today through ELMA, our agentic AI tool. This tool, among many other marketing leading Agentic AI tools, provides legal teams with an intelligent partner embedded directly into how they work. It does not sit idle waiting for a prompt like a search engine, nor does it require constant monitoring or system initiation.  These tools act as a teammate. So, when your subject-matter experts have that kind of partner alongside them, something meaningful shifts, and they stop showing up as the person who must know everything and begin operating as the strategic force that creates additional value for your companies. The right question isn’t whether AI can do the work but whether your team is freed up to do the work only they can do.

What I see changing when you build a foundation first is that teams realise the full value of tools in their legal tech stack. They no longer feel they are only using a fraction of what is possible from when they first bought the point solutions. Regardless of which technologies you have in your stack, these tools perform significantly better when the team using them has greater insight and clarity enabled by an AI-driven foundation. You’re not choosing between AI and your existing technology investments. You’re choosing to build in the right order. Teams that start with agentic AI at the foundation report efficiency gains, better decisions, clearer prioritisation, and a sharper sense of what work deserves their attention. The stack stops being a collection of expensive tools and starts functioning as a system that genuinely thinks alongside your team.  The foundation holds everything built on top of it and finally stands!

Before signing your next contract or approving your next platform, ask three honest questions:

• Does this tool make our people smarter, or just faster?
• Are we solving the right problems, or just the most visible ones?
• Is AI at the centre of how we work, or still waiting at the end of the line expecting a different result?

Transforming your legal tech stack is more than just a technology project. It is infrastructure work grounded in change management and intentional design. Just like any structure worth building, it starts with what you put at the bottom, and not what you add at the top.

The legal teams that excite me most right now aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets or the longest list of platforms. They’re the ones who stopped treating AI like a late addition and started treating it like a founding member of the team. The difference in what they’re able to do and who their people get to be in their legal lifecycle is fantastic. The best part is that this approach is available to any organisation willing to build in the right order and focus on the right things.  You don’t have to change the valuable tools and processes you already rely on. Start with the foundation. The foundation is always the answer. Most of us just started on the roof.

When you look at your legal tech stack today, where is AI? At the foundation, or is it at the top, tough to reach?  If it’s a question you are pondering, feel free to reach out, as we may be able to help.