Agile and responsive legal arrangements will be key enablers of adaptation. Current models deal poorly with conditions of ongoing change, favouring legal certainty over flexibility. The principles of adaptive management, including monitoring, evaluation, modification, and compliance, are considered essential to successful climate change adaptation, yet there are strikingly few examples of their formal implementation in legal frameworks, and even fewer studies of how to improve their use. This paper examines the ways in which the principles of adaptive management have been incorporated into law in Australia and internationally. It looks at the broad mechanisms by which laws can be made more adaptable, then identifies five specific tools by which the concept has been operationalized to enhance decision-making under uncertainty: the inclusion of climate change, resilience and adaptiveness in statutory objectives; formal requirements for monitoring and evaluation; staged or tiered decision-making processes; triggers and conditional approvals; and decision rules based on proportion or resource abundance. The paper considers the potential application of these tools in adaptating to future climate risks.