Legal AI vendors are hoovering up a lot of the legal engineering/innovation talent from law firms and then selling their time back to them at 4-5x.

These people have been underpaid and in many cases under empowered in law firms for many years.

If your legal engineers' compensation looks anything like the 2026 Jameson Legal salary guide, stop what you're doing.

Pull every legal engineer worth their salt into a room. Double or triple their pay. Ask them what they need. Then give it to them.

The Jameson Legal salary guide below puts Senior Legal Technologists at the equivalent of $80k to $120k USD.

That's WAY lower than what I've seen here in the US.

However, I've seen many legal engineering roles pay less than first/second year associates.

These are the people who make your technology investments actually work.

Many firms are paying them less than a second year associate.

Buying AI tools is the easy part. Any firm can write a check.

The hard part is layering your firm's knowledge and judgment on top of those tools to deliver something clients will pay a premium for.

Legal engineers make that happen.

AI vendors recruit these people out of firms, give them significant raises, and sell their expertise back to you at 4 to 5x the cost.

You're outsourcing your competitive advantage and paying more for doing so.

The most important investment a firm can make right now isn't another AI license.

It's compensating legal engineering and change management talent like the revenue drivers they are.

Firms that treat these roles as back office will lose them to vendors who won't.