The Transformative Power of Legal Tech

Insights from Colin S. Levy on Building Solutions and Navigating AI

One of the more fascinating parts of the Business of Tech is getting to interview customers. Speculating about the customer experience is one thing, but actually talking to someone on the ground offers a whole other level of valuable insight.

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That’s why I welcomed Colin Levy , a well-known legal tech expert and corporate lawyer, onto a recent bonus episode. In addition to receiving tech services as a customer, he’s also an editor of the Handbook of Legal Tech with over 25,000 followers on LinkedIn. Who better to talk to about the state of the customer experience?

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From the merging of legal and tech to building in-house products to the role of AI, our conversation spanned a slew of timely topics. Here’s a rundown of everything we got into.

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Tech + Legal: the Current Lay of the Land

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Every once in a while, we IT services folks need a bit of a reality check to see where our customers are at. So, I kicked off our chat by asking Levy for a refresher on where the intersection of legal and technology currently stands.

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Levy pointed out that things have evolved a lot in recent years. While there’s historically been a lot of tension and resistance between technology and law in general…

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“We’re now seeing a much tighter integration and collaborative efforts between tech and legal folks to support solutions, develop solutions, and iterate on existing solutions, both for internal purposes as well as for external clients,” said Levy.

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This is coming up in a variety of ways, particularly with the rise of law firm tech subsidiaries, which are devoted to the creation of tech solutions in conjunction with clients and the incubation of new solutions for both internal and client use.

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In case you’re curious, Levy made it clear he’s excited by this evolution.

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Valuable Tech + Legal Investments

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We’ve spoken before about how every business is becoming a technology business, and everybody is invested in has to be technology. But in Levy’s case, this is about a lot more than just computer help.

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I asked him to share a bit more about what the most valuable technology investments look like, and he pointed out a few: workflow and business management tools to manage invoices, vendors, and project management; automating the creation and submission of documents; portals where firms and clients can collaborate on documents and workflows – essentially what Levy calls ‘tactical solutions.’

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“I personally am a big advocate of those before you turn to some of the larger, more complex platforms out there, because often, you want to have a solid digital foundation before you start putting in place something more complex, that assumes you already have that foundation in place,” he said.

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Building Technical IP

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Levy alluded to cases where law firms (so, our potential customers) are building specific products to use with their own customers. I asked for some clarity on what types of technical IPs are being produced, and he shared a couple of examples.

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At a big law firm in Chicago, one of Levy’s friends has a tech subsidiary focused on workflow management solutions specifically for the firm and its clients.

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At other firms, Levy has also heard of document review platforms or document automation tools that are often created by lawyers, either for just their specific team or bigger organizations within the firm.

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For Levy’s work specifically, he told me that the contracts management solution his company offers and makes has helped drive revenue thanks to faster collaboration.

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Of course, Levy also mentioned that AI is gaining traction in this space.

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The AI Factor

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Law is one of the fields with the most buzz surrounding AI implementation. Once Levy brought it up, I of course had to know more about how he and his legal colleagues are thinking about AI.

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“There's this existential question of what it means to be a lawyer because artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, is automating a lot of the day-to-day tactical work that lawyers do… So that's raising a question of, what else does a lawyer do beyond that and what should the lawyer be doing versus what should you have technology like AI be doing?”

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Levy caveated that there’s no full answer to this query yet, but there’s also a lot of experimentation of AI in terms of its use for reviewing documents, creating documents, and using it to drive trend analysis, analytics, and litigation and case data.

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As this experimentation ramps up, Levy explained that the biggest challenge is around the safe use of data and keeping things confidential. This risk is giving a lot of lawyers pause, which Levy thinks points to the current debate about the regulatory landscape of AI, what it should look like, who should be enforcing it, etc.

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Of course, that larger ‘who should decide how AI grows in power and influence’ question is one all of society is grappling with.

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Levy’s General AI Guidance (not legal advice)

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Knowing Levy can’t offer specific legal advice to listeners, I asked him what kind of guidance he’s giving to customers when these big-picture questions come up.

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“The guidance generally is you want to experiment, you want to learn, because AI is not going anywhere. So the best case is to try it out with data that is not confidential, does not matter, but is just basic data, that you don't mind sharing. But you need something done with that data that would be time-consuming,” he said.

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So, create kind of a safe sandbox for you to go about creating work, and try it out on things that would otherwise take you a long time to do.

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And when it comes to working with vendors, be vigilant about choosing ones that are transparent and forthright about how they use and protect your data.

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Again, this isn’t legal advice – just educated insight as someone steeped in the space.

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The Role of IT Service Companies + Building Products the Right Way

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I asked Levy for his take on my premise that IT services companies can be incredibly valuable and can deliver expertise and advisory services that help customers answer questions about AI, ethics, and data privacy.

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He generally agreed that we can offer expertise and technical insight, but he pointed out a challenge:

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“There may be different levels of both technical and business expertise around the use of these tools. And some of that may get mixed in with sort of a passion for wanting other people to use it. So I think there has to be a little bit of tempering of the passion for it with realistic use of it in ways that are sound both practically and legally.”

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So while there’s room for our advisory services here…

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“While you want to be passionate and knowledgeable, you have to think about it from the client's perspective and approach them from that perspective,” said Levy.

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That’s certainly a fair point, so how can we go about developing products and services for customers the right way in today’s landscape?

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I ran this by Levy, and he shared a few simple steps:

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1)??? Identify the problems specifically. Understand what you’re trying to solve and why it’s a problem.

2)??? Identify the people who are experiencing it. Talk to them about what they do, why they do it, where the issue comes up, and how it's an issue for them.

3)??? Bring those people along as you evaluate potential solutions.

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Levy emphasized the importance of Step 3 because, as we all know, change is really difficult for most people.

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“Bringing them along gives them buy-in to the process as well, which makes them more likely to want to work with the solution and also use the solution.”

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These steps are certainly easier said than done, but it’s important to remember that at the end of the day, the solutions we build should always be focused on one thing: the on-the-ground customer experience.

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This is just the tip of the iceberg of Levy’s insight, so if you want more, head to his LinkedIn, X @clevy_law,www.colinslevy.com, or check out his book The Legal Tech Ecosystem.

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Have you had similar conservations with clients? As always, my inbox is open for stories, musings, insight, and or whatever else is on your mind.