ARTICLES
Welcome to Colin S. Levy's Articles on Legal Technology and AI.
Colin S. Levy is a legal technology leader, author, and educator helping lawyers and legal teams navigate the intersection of law and technology. As General Counsel at Malbek, Adjunct Professor at Albany Law School, and author of "The Legal Tech Ecosystem" and "CLM for Dummies," Colin brings a practitioner's perspective to every piece he writes.
Here you'll find his articles and long-form writing on topics including contract lifecycle management (CLM), artificial intelligence in legal practice, legal operations, and the tools reshaping how lawyers work. Whether you're a legal professional exploring new technology, an in-house counsel evaluating AI solutions, or someone curious about where the legal industry is headed, Colin's writing cuts through the hype.
Writing
Through essays, articles, and interviews aimed at practitioners, innovators, and decision‑makers I explore how artificial intelligence, legal tech, and legal technology are reshaping law and business.
MEDIA
The Role of AI in Modern Law: Explained by Colin S. Levy - CanadianSME Small Business Podcast
In this enlightening episode of the CanadianSME Small Business Podcast, we are thrilled to welcome Colin S. Levy, a renowned figure in the legal tech industry. Known for his innovative contributions and recognized on the Fastcase 50 list in 2022, Colin’s insights have shaped the landscape of legal technology. As the editor of ‘Handbook of Legal Tech’ and a regular contributor to prominent legal outlets, he has become a pivotal voice in this field. His blog, ranked among the top legal tech...
Apr 8, 2026
MEDIA
AI is Crushing Margins & Taking Jobs: A Wake-Up Call for Law Firm Owners — with Colin Levy - Grow Law
Your margins are shrinking fast. Your associate is about to become… AI! In this episode, Sasha Berson sits down with Colin Levy, a 17-year legal tech expert, for an eye-opening conversation about how AI is rattling the legal world, shrinking profit margins, and threatening legal jobs. Colin gives law firm owners a jarring wake-up call: “The fastest way to become LESS in demand is to pretend the world isn’t changing.” How do you plan to stay relevant over the next 3–5 years? This episode is...
Apr 8, 2026
MEDIA
EP 29: Building a Legal Tech Brand with Colin Levy & Innovating the Future of Law - Legal Leaders
Episode Description I spoke with Colin Levy, General Counsel at Malbec, an innovative CLM company. Colin shares his in-house journey, his passion for legal technology, and how he's helping bridge the gap between law and tech. Colin discusses the importance of building a personal brand, embracing AI in the legal industry, and the future of law schools adapting to tech innovations. He also offers insightful advice for new lawyers looking to break into the legal tech world. Tune in for a...
Apr 8, 2026
MEDIA
The Legal Tech Reality Check: Why AI Won't Replace Lawyers—But Will Transform Them - The AI Sidekick: Banishing Legal AI Anxiety
Legal AI adoption requires a strategic, people-first approach that balances technological innovation with practical implementation and organizational readiness. In this episode of The AI Sidekick: Banishing Legal AI Anxiety, host Ryan Heath from Robin AI speaks with Colin Levy, General Counsel at Malbek and author of multiple legal tech publications, to explore how legal teams can effectively integrate AI while maintaining healthy skepticism and focusing on practical outcomes. What You'll...
Apr 8, 2026
MEDIA
Colin S. Levy Returns - Pioneers and Pathfinders
Today, we talk with a returning guest, Colin S. Levy. Since he last joined us on the podcast, Colin has become general counsel at Malbek. Malbek is a CLM provider that helps large companies manage their entire contracting function, including using AI. In 2023, he released The Legal Tech Ecosystem, a book exploring the evolving legal world and how to leverage technology within it. He also teaches legal tech courses at Albany Law School and is working on a new book aimed at using AI in...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
AI and Human Judgement
In this guide, I examine how judgment and AI interact in real legal work, arguing that artificial intelligence changes how lawyers process information but not the core value of human decision-making. Drawing on recent studies, I show that AI tools increase speed and sometimes accuracy, yet true judgment still depends on human reasoning, experience, and ethics. I outline what AI does well (document review, research, drafting, data extraction, regulatory monitoring) and explain that...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
A Guide to AI Implementation
In this playbook, I present a practical implementation roadmap that helps legal teams move from curiosity about AI and artificial intelligence to disciplined, sustainable use across clearly defined workflows. I begin with a structured needs assessment and prioritization matrix so teams select narrow, high-impact implementation candidates instead of buying generic AI solutions in search of a problem. I then outline how to implement internal AI governance: approved tool lists,...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
AI in the Courtroom
In this guide, I explore how AI and artificial intelligence have entered the courtroom, from the first headline-grabbing failures like Mata v. Avianca to the more recent and unsettling episodes where judges themselves relied on AI-generated drafts that smuggled hallucinated facts and citations into judicial opinions. I show how these incidents triggered a wave of standing orders, local rules, and certification requirements that now shape what lawyers must disclose about their AI use in the...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
A Guide to Legal Tech Resources
In this guide, I offer a curated roadmap to the people, publications, events, and tools that matter most in legal tech and legal technology , helping lawyers cut through noise and focus on resources that move their practice and operations forward. I explain why legal technology is now central to how firms and in-house teams manage documents, contracts, compliance, and risk, and how developments in cloud computing, data analytics, workflow automation, and AI have made technology strategy a...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
AI Agents and Data Handling
In this guide, I explain why AI agents built on artificial intelligence are not ordinary software, showing how autonomous agents decide at runtime which data to access, which tools to invoke, and which actions to take across enterprise systems, creating unpredictable scope and cascading risks that traditional SaaS contracts and security models cannot handle. I highlight how AI agents chain tools and APIs, cross system boundaries, and maintain persistent memory, which complicates attribution...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
Contracting with AI Vendors
In this guide, I explain why AI and artificial intelligence vendor contracts differ from standard SaaS, focusing on who owns AI outputs, whether your data trains third-party models, how hallucinations are handled, and how to measure performance for systems that behave probabilistically. I highlight how boilerplate terms on training data, subprocessors, output ownership, model drift, bias, and unilateral changes usually favor vendors, and I provide concrete replacement language and...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
AI For Lawyers
In this guide, I provide a practical roadmap for how lawyers can use AI and artificial intelligence responsibly across contract drafting, legal research, document review, and knowledge management, starting with clear explanations of how large language models work and where they fit into real-world legal workflows. I show how AI and artificial intelligence can boost efficiency while also creating new risks around accuracy and AI hallucinations, and I explain how ethics rules and opinions...
Apr 8, 2026
AI
Managing AI Hallucinations
In this guide, I explain how AI systems used in legal practice can generate “AI hallucinations,” meaning confident but fabricated or unsupported legal content that looks real, especially fake case citations, misdescribed holdings, and invented statutes. I stress that these AI hallucinations are not rare glitches but a structural result of next-token prediction, training data gaps, and architectural limits, and that even specialized legal tools still show measurable hallucination rates on...
Apr 8, 2026
AUTHOR
Responsible AI in Legal Practice: Managing Accuracy, Confidentiality, and Ethical Risk
Legal teams already use AI across contracts, research, and workflows, but adoption has outpaced understanding. This article explains how generative AI works, why risks like hallucinations, data exposure, bias, and accountability are unavoidable, and what responsible use looks like in practice. It translates bar guidance and real-world experience into concrete steps legal teams can take to adopt AI deliberately while keeping judgment, confidentiality, and professional responsibility in control.
Feb 13, 2026
AUTHOR
When Everyone Has Information, Judgment Becomes Everything
When AI handles routine legal work, judgment becomes the scarcest resource. It's not abstract wisdom. It's filtering signal from noise, asking right questions, and knowing when to override algorithms. Lawyers must develop judgment systematically to deliver value clients will pay for.
Feb 12, 2026
AUTHOR
The Al Didn't Replace Us - It Revealed Us
AI reveals what lawyering actually is: not document review and contract drafting, but human judgment, empathy, and creative problem-solving that no algorithm can replicate.
Feb 11, 2026
AUTHOR
On Agentic AI for Legal Teams
Introduction AI agents represent a meaningful shift in how legal teams use technology. Traditional generative AI responds to prompts by producing content. Agents go further. They act. By combining language models with goals, tools, and memory, agents execute multi-step workflows across connected systems. For legal teams, this expands automation beyond isolated tasks into coordinated processes. Agents can review intake requests, extract key facts, validate deadlines against matter management...
Feb 10, 2026
AUTHOR
Generative AI for Legal Teams
Generative AI is already embedded in legal workflows, from contract review to intake and research. This article explains how generative models, AI agents, and multimodal systems actually work, where they add real leverage for legal teams, and why human judgment, review, and accountability must remain firmly in control.
Feb 9, 2026
AUTHOR
Three Questions Every Legal Team Should Ask Their AI Vendor
Legal teams evaluating AI vendors typically focus on features and pricing, but three fundamental questions often get overlooked: Where is client data stored? Is that data used to train AI models? What happens when the relationship ends?
Feb 8, 2026
BLOG
The Sales-Legal Divide (And How To Repair It)
In most growing B2B companies, these two functions are bound together by necessity but separated by mindset. Sales is rewarded for closing new business. Legal is rewarded for preventing costly mistakes. Both are essential, yet their incentives and instincts couldn’t be more different.
Oct 29, 2025