Unleashing the Power of Legal Tech with Colin Levy

Watch the YouTube version of this episode HERE

Are you a law firm owner who is looking to integrate more technology in your firm? In this podcast episode, Jim and Tyson discuss legal tech with Colin Levy, a lawyer and legal tech expert as they explore the role of artificial intelligence in law.

Colin provides his thoughts on practical tools that law firms can use to become more efficient. One of these tools is Clio. which is a practice management software that is accessible, easy to set up and is great when it comes to the learning curve. This means it is easy to teach first timers. Other tools like Joseph and Brighter (which are code and no code tools) are a bit more advanced and allow users to set up workflows for their teams. Time is money, so these tools are great to get things moving quickly!

Colin shares how many law firms are resistant to using technology and AI because of the misconception that it is expensive and time consuming. The biggest fear many lawyers have is using technology that will give them incorrect information and make their job harder. Most choose to stay within their comfort zone and use tools or methods of working that are not that efficient. AI and technology can help any business grow and innovate the way things are done.

Jim, Tyson and Colin talk through the ideal tech package that firms need if they are just starting out. Clio is great for administrative tasks like invoicing and billing, which is such a crucial part of any business and a good, reliable tool is needed to ensure things are kept in order. Having a tool to streamline intake forms or feedback forms is important so they are collected, received and actioned out to whoever needs to work on it. Another tool is some sort of project management tool that shows workflows, what needs to be focused on or what needs attention.

Listen in to learn more from Colin!

Jim's Hack: Read the book called “Extremely Online” by Taylor Lorenz, which talks about the history of different social media channels.

Colin’s Tip: Take time for yourself as the world moves very quickly. Take a few minutes to relax and listen to what your body is telling you.

Tyson's Tip: Experiment with building GPT’s through OpenAI.

Episode Highlights:

• 6:10 Accessible tools like Clio
• 16:01 The fear of technology in the legal field
• 18:16 Recommended tools for new law firms

Connect with Colin:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• X

Resources:

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• Subscribe to the Maximum Lawyer YouTube Channel
• Follow us on Instagram
• Join the Facebook Group
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Transcripts: Unleashing the Power of Legal Tech with Colin Levy

Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - Run your law firm the right way. The right way. This is the maximum Lawyer podcast. Maximum lawyer podcast. Your hosts, Jim Hacking and Tyson Matrix. Let's partner up and maximize your firm. Welcome to the show.

Jim Hacking (00:00:24) - Welcome back to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. I'm Jim.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:27) - Hacking. Um, Tyson Matrix. Jimmy, you've got some oomph into it. What's up Jimmy.

Jim Hacking (00:00:32) - Oh, I've been up since 4:00, so I went to the gym. I've been running around crazy. I'm hyped up on diet soda, so I am ready to rock and roll.

Tyson Mutrux (00:00:39) - I'm gonna one up. You okay? Just because I feel like it. I was up till 130 getting work done, and then I got up at 530 to hit the gym. So it's a reminder. Yeah, it's grinder baby. It's. I'm gonna I'm gonna feel it tomorrow, that's for sure. But very cool. All right. So let's get started though Jimbo and introduce our guest this week. It is Colin Levy. He's a lawyer and legal tech author and speaker.

Tyson Mutrux (00:01:01) - Throughout his career, Colin has seen technology as a key driver in improving how legal services are performed. I'm not gonna get into the rest of his bio because we're gonna get to that in a moment. I do follow him on act, so do definitely follow Colin there, because he does share a lot of cool legal insights. Colin. Her legal tech insights. Colin, welcome to the show.

Colin Levy (00:01:18) - Thanks for having.

Jim Hacking (00:01:19) - Me. Colin. Tell everybody a little bit about your journey into the law and then into the tech side of law, because Tyson's right. I love your posts on Twitter. I, I follow you often and you always have something smart to say, which is why we wanted to have you on the show.

Colin Levy (00:01:33) - Well, I appreciate that. It's very kind of you to say, yeah, you know, my journey kind of started off in somewhat a haphazard fashion, actually, because when I first kind of went to law school at that time, I thought to myself I was going to become kind of a.

Colin Levy (00:01:50) - Standard in-house lawyer, but I always had this nagging kind of bug in my ear about technology because prior to law school, I worked for a big law firm in New York making e-discovery databases. And so I got exposed to kind of the tech side of things and saw how useful technology could be in the practice and business of law. In law school, there was very little talk of that. And I thought, you know, that was a little bit weird because it was just sort of this bizarre alternative reality that didn't exactly reflect the the real world. So when I graduated from law school at that time, it was in 2010. And so it was kind of the tail end of the Great Recession. There weren't a lot of jobs available, so I kind of had to find work where I could, which meant taking on a number of different temporary roles for around a year and a half or so. But those roles gave me exposure to a lot of different areas compliance, document management, doc review, contract management and all those different areas I saw there.

Colin Levy (00:02:51) - I saw there to be potential for the use of technology to assist with all those things. In some ways saw a little bit of those technologies at play. So when I first started working, I was like, you know, I really want to learn more about this space, but I don't know who to turn to. So what I did was I just reached out to people who seemed to be doing interesting things in the space, whether they were teaching, creating things, trying to create things, had created something and failed, had created something and succeeded. And those conversations really helped inform kind of my perspective and my journey. And then I grew the nerve to start sharing a little bit about what I was doing online, and it was somewhat well received. And then I just continued to do it because I found it enjoyable for myself and got myself more and more connected with others, and it's just been a really kind of fun ride since.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:38) - Yeah, it's really cool how you're able to just kind of, I mean, do something very simple, just share your thoughts on things over time.

Tyson Mutrux (00:03:44) - And it just kind of grows and grows and grows. And you've done that with things like like Twitter, you know, now, now X or whatever. But so you, you did something that I think is very daring. You not not just writing a book, but you wrote a book, uh, recently, the legal tech ecosystem. And I think it's really daring because technology is this area that is so quickly evolving. And you, you, you did it. So walk, walk us through the thought process of writing the book and why you why you wrote the book.

Colin Levy (00:04:16) - Being completely honest, it was a bit of a messy project to begin with, because I had a whole bunch of just random writings scattered about that could possibly form the basis for a book. And back in 2020, when everything was locked down, I had not a whole lot of other things to do, really. So I decided to try to start putting together. But I also realized that if I was going to write a book, especially if it was going to be technology focused, it needed to be something that was going to be fairly timeless in that it would cover things, but not so specifically as to be naming things that were already out of date or potentially would be out of date.

Colin Levy (00:04:53) - So what I did was I thought about how I approach learning things and sharing things in general, which is sort of through an anecdotal, conversational type of way. And that's the same approach I took with the book, where I kind of share tidbits of conversations I've had with others, and my thoughts and reactions to those conversations and after to really kind of introduce people to the world of legal tech without being so specific as to, again, sort of date the book, because I think the way to look at any type of technology is the concepts underlying technology are don't change that much, really the tools themselves do. So I really focus more on the concepts and the themes and less on sort of specific tools per se, in an effort to help a kind of achieve that and also be help ensure that the book was sort of a high level, accessible introduction to this world that otherwise can be somewhat intimidating, I think to some con, I think.

Jim Hacking (00:05:45) - You know, that most of our listeners are like solo owners or law firms that might have a few attorneys in them, and, and I think sometimes there's a bit of a disconnect between sort of the ABA tech show crowd and sort of the legal futurists and the women and men running law firms sort of day to day.

Jim Hacking (00:06:03) - What are the practical things that those lawyers that our listeners need to know from your book?

Colin Levy (00:06:10) - So I think there's a couple things. One is that there's a plethora of tools out there that don't require any kind of implementation, don't require any coding. You don't require any kind of tech background at all. They're very easy to set up and just put in place. For example, Clio sort of this practice management software that is well known and been around for quite some time, easy to set up, very accessible, and really doesn't require you to engage in any kind of trouble learning curve, and also was quick and fast to get set up with. There also are other tools, low code or no code tools like Joseph or Brighter that allow you to kind of set up workflows and or potential small little apps for yourself that don't require any code. Are easy to do, low cost. And so I think that's another thing to keep in mind as well, because I to your point, Jim, I think there's a misnomer that technology is something that is expensive, clunky, intimidating, time consuming.

Colin Levy (00:07:06) - And if you're operating a small firm or a solo firm, you don't really have any time to waste at all, because literally time is money in that case. So I think these tools that are out there that I mentioned are aimed at at least a lot of them are aimed at small and solo operations because they understand that and they also understand that they want you to use it and be successful with it and not be frustrated with it. And also, they want you to be more successful financially. And these tools can help you get there by allowing you to spend your time more productively, as opposed to spending your time on things that you have to do but are time consuming, are taking you away from things that perhaps can bring more clients to the door and more revenue in.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:45) - All right. We're going to shift from that from the more simple the Clio, the very, you know, you know, out of the box, ready to go, kind of a platform. Now let's shift gears a little bit to AI because and Jim probably knew that was coming.

Tyson Mutrux (00:07:58) - I want to get your thoughts on what you think I what effects it's going to have on the legal field and whether or not you think it's going to be a net positive or a net negative.

Colin Levy (00:08:10) - Well, this probably won't come as much of a surprise either one of you. I think it can be a net positive, but I think that, as we've seen already, being sort of really early stages of AI use, at least more, more broadly speaking, there are going to be bumps in the road. You know, AI is itself is not new, it's accessibility is new. And I think people have to kind of play around and experiment with these AI solutions and understand that they're imperfect, that they are in some ways limited or biased based off of what they've been trained on. And and quite frankly, you know, that they're very data driven. So they're only as good as the data that that sort of provides the basis for these tools. That being said, I think we're going to see artificial intelligence continue to kind of replace work that otherwise will be done by humans.

Colin Levy (00:09:00) - That's routines generalizable, time consuming and data driven. You know, for example, you know, reviewing a basic NDA or contract or perhaps even drafting a basic agreement or, you know, looking for a trend out of a bunch of cases that came that you're researching for a potential litigation you may be involved in. You know, those types of things humans have been have been doing and can do well, but they take time to do. An AI can do those things much faster, more accurately. At the same time, you know, if you're looking for AI to provide you with, you know, a whole list of cases that support your position. As we've seen, that may not necessarily be the best use case for some of these solutions, because in an effort to help you, they're going to make up data because you've been asking the solution to provide you with something that it has to make up because it doesn't have access to that data. So I think you need to be careful using these tools, but really it's more a matter of just being competent when you're using them, i.e. being aware of the benefits and risks of using them, as opposed to just assuming that these tools are just going to be perfect right off the bat going forward.

Colin Levy (00:10:08) - I think AI is continuing to sort of, you know, ask the question, you know, what it means to be a lawyer, what it means to be practicing law, what it means to operate a law firm because AI is going to continue to grow in power and continue to be doing more and more tasks. So it really kind of, I think, is going to demand that lawyers be more creative and be more collaborative and be more focused on sort of creating solutions as opposed to just providing answers to legal questions.

Jim Hacking (00:10:36) - So al Gore famously said back in the 90s that the federal government was going to be paperless. And here we are, at least with USCIS, filing everything, almost everything still on paper. I'm wondering how how will industry we deal with the government if the government's not ready for all these technological changes? In other words, I would love to be able to file my clients applications completely online to have a portal where they just give us the information and it goes into the government. Like, have you given any thought or are there any thought leaders on the issue of the outpacing of commerce versus the government?

Colin Levy (00:11:17) - Yeah, I mean, I think I think there is, you know, always been this tension between business and the government when it comes, especially when it comes to technology, but plenty of other areas as well.

Colin Levy (00:11:27) - And I think when it comes to sort of regulation of technology, particularly I and others, you know, I think that the challenge for the government and the challenge for humans in general is that technology is going to continue to outpace anything that humans do or anything that the government does. And so rather than trying to keep pace with it, I think you have to always be keeping an. So you know how far ahead it is of you, as opposed to trying to sort of just keep up with it. Now, more specifically with regards to the government, I think that. The challenge really is that if you're going to be thinking about regulating technology, AI, you really need to have experts who have a sense of kind of their current capabilities and where they're going. And I think the problem for government often has been that they don't have that level of expertise easily accessible, and therefore come up with regulations or proposed regulations that tend to be. Sort of taking, you know, a hammer or something that would probably be better off using sort of a scalpel or something more specific to, to handle.

Colin Levy (00:12:34) - And so I think that's an ongoing challenge. That being said, I think the at least the U.S. government certainly, I think, is paying attention now to AI and the potential to regulate, given Biden's recent executive order on AI. That kind of lays out some basic themes and ideas around kind of how to regulate the EU. Likewise, has has come out with some regulation as well. But it's going to be a challenge because you need to develop these things that are not just sort of set in stone, but have some degree of built in flexibility because the technology is going to continue to change. So if you're going to regulate something, it has to be something that has the ability to kind of adapt to whatever comes down the pike, as opposed to just what exists in the here and now. And, you know, look, the government is not particularly good at doing that. And I think that's in part by design, because regulating, first of all, is hard. And second of all, there's a lot of competing interests around regulating anything.

Colin Levy (00:13:31) - And oftentimes, you know, different interests went out for the better or detriment of various interests. So it's definitely challenging. And I don't envy anyone in government who is trying to tackle this. But certainly I think there is a need for some form of ethical framework around the use of these technologies because, you know, if nothing else, to at least protect consumers and allow them to better understand the difference between something that's real and something that's been artificially created.

Tyson Mutrux (00:13:58) - So, Colin, whenever I think of people like you and Dennis Kennedy and our buddy Kelsey Bratcher and my CTO Kashif, I, I think like you all have like these, all these like, tricks and like all these little, like, tech tools that the rest of us don't really know about. So what would you say is like the number one piece of tech that's in your toolbox that you, that you think is like your favorite? And why?

Colin Levy (00:14:27) - It's a good question. Honestly, I, I find that, uh, since I use the Microsoft suite of tools, I find that Power Automate actually is a really great, easy way for me to just automate things.

Colin Levy (00:14:41) - Uh, whether it's automate the creation of a document or what have you. And no one knows about these tools because they're free and accessible. If you have the Microsoft Suite, but you don't really know that they exist because you just assume it can. It's just made up of word, Excel, PowerPoint, all these. So that's probably one of my favorite tools, just because of how easy to use it is and how accessible it is. And I also, you know, I would also have to mention that probably my favorite tool set of tools as well, or just, you know, I use a wide range of generative AI solutions. I kind of pretty much use them all and they're all very, very helpful. I especially like the new GPT kind of agent that you can create. It takes a little bit of time to get it right, but once you get it right, it's great because it just speeds up kind of the time that you spend doing things. So I would say those are probably some of my favorite tools right now.

Colin Levy (00:15:29) - I'm always experimenting. So I would say that, you know, my favorite tool now may not be the one that is my favorite, you know, in the next week, month, whatever. That's just the nature of, I think, my approach to technology and its use.

Jim Hacking (00:15:43) - Getting back to the book for a minute, there's a great quote in there that I, I liked and I wanted to hear you opine on. While technology continues to advance rapidly in so many areas of society, resistance to technology within the legal space remains formidable, driven in large part by fear. Let's talk about that. Yeah.

Colin Levy (00:16:01) - So I think that there is still, I think, a fair degree of fear of technology, but I don't think it's quite the same, same fear that has existed in the past, in the past, I think the fear was kind of of the unknown and of, you know, of sort of I don't know about this because I'm happy with how things are currently operating and all of that.

Colin Levy (00:16:23) - I think the fear that now exists is one of, well, if I use this technology, am I going to achieve the right result? Am I going to get what I want out of the solution? Is it going to help me, or is it going to potentially lead me astray by giving me incorrect information or what have you? So I, I think that fear, the fear has evolved, but the fear as an emotion still exists with respect to technology. And I think that lawyers in general, you know, look, they are risk averse, they remain risk averse. They don't want to be the first to do anything. They want to be kind of the second, the third, the fourth. When it comes to technology in particular, I think that they kind of they're more a little more open to experimentation, but they'd rather have someone else experiment first and fail and learn from that other person rather than them doing it. But they also, I think, acknowledge, tacitly and sometimes explicitly, the fact that technology is here to stay.

Colin Levy (00:17:16) - And it's and it's important. And I think we've seen that through the creation of a lot of subsidiaries and law firms that are focused on the creation of technology products in collaboration with clients in an effort to kind of help show that these law firms kind of get it there with it, and they understand that technology is here as a as a set of tools to help people. But nevertheless, I do think sometimes it is tinged with fear because, again, people in law often are just comfortable with being comfortable, don't want to leave their comfort zone. When I, I think that the only way you evolved, only we grow is by having some degree of comfortability being uncomfortable.

Tyson Mutrux (00:17:55) - I really do like that. So let's say that you're just starting out with, uh, as a brand new lawyer, so you're just starting your firm. So whether you're in the new lawyer or you're leaving an established firm, what do you think is the basic tech stack that someone should set up with if they're just going to launch their firm for the very first time?

Colin Levy (00:18:16) - Sure.

Colin Levy (00:18:16) - So I think that you need a few things. You need one thing to handle sort of the administration of the firm. So, you know, a tool like Clio, for example, it handled kind of billing, invoicing, all of that stuff. Second of all, probably some form of a document automation tool, whether it's gavel or some other tool to just kind of help you automate the creation of, say, intake forms for new clients and the handling of data that's created, that's created on those forms and put it in the right place so you can track correspondence and things like that. And then potentially a workflow tool like proxy, for example, in immediately I saw on the advisory board of proxy, just for full disclosure, to help sort of automate your workflow and understand kind of, you know, what's currently worked on, what needs your attention and so on. So those are, I think, some of the basic tools you probably should have in place, and they're all accessible and inexpensive, because the last thing you want to be doing when you're first starting out, a firm is having to worry about kind of, you know, some of the administration stuff.

Colin Levy (00:19:14) - You want to focus on getting clients and helping them, not on billing or like this person, pay this invoice. Did I pay that invoice and all of that stuff? All right.

Jim Hacking (00:19:22) - Since I'm going through this right now, any advice? For when you're leaving one CRM and moving to another, or when you're working on one piece of software and your team is switching over to something else, we're switching our our sales software or our CRM for cases and our phones all sort of at the same time. And I probably have some lessons for other people, but I'll share those in another episode.

Colin Levy (00:19:47) - Well, I think that I would suggest, if you're in that position, to kind of get a sense of kind of how things are currently in your existing system and how the new system will handle those things. And before you transfer anything over, really document sort of how things will shift so that that way when you're loading things in, you're not worrying, you know, you don't necessarily set yourself up for making a lot of mistakes in terms of where things end up going.

Colin Levy (00:20:18) - As you transition over, I think also it's important to, you know, I think there's a tendency for people to move quickly and shifting. And I think when you're shifting something, especially with CRM or something else, that's very, sort of very much a foundational piece of your business structure, you want to make sure that you're taking your time and moving things over and doing it in a systematic, logical fashion, because otherwise there's a tendency for data to get lost, things to get corrupted, or what have you. So I really think you want to take kind of a systematic approach in slow down to speed up. And what I mean by that is take your time initially, and that will save you time later on from having to fix things that may have gone wrong when you kind of are completely in the new system. That being said, no matter how systematically you do it, there will be a bit of a learning curve. There'll be kind of a oh, right, this is over here and it's not here anymore.

Colin Levy (00:21:11) - This is here, what have you. So that I think, you know, you just have to get used to with any kind of shift along those lines. But I again, I can't stress enough the importance, I think, of taking a systematic approach to, to shifting because you just don't want to move everything all over at the same time, because again, things can go easily astray. And you also want to understand that people move at different paces, so you don't all want to, you know, you don't want to force people to do things that aren't necessarily the best for them and how they work. You want to kind of meet people where they are and ensure that they're all moving over. They're moving over, but they're moving over in a way that works for them and allows them to still be productive and be helpful to those that they're seeking to serve and help.

Tyson Mutrux (00:21:51) - I love the whole idea of going slow to go fast. It's a common refrain at our office where we we talked about it slow down, slow things down a little bit, and then, you know, you'll be able to go faster because you're not, you know, having to correct a bunch of mistakes.

Tyson Mutrux (00:22:03) - So I really do like that. I think that's that's great advice. All right, Colin, we do need to wrap things up. Before I do. I want to remind everyone to join us in the big Facebook group. There's a lot of activity going on there. If you want to join us in the guild, there's like great people in the guild, very high level conversations going on. They're sharing a lot of great things there. Maxwell guild.com. And if you join the Guild, you can also join us for our quarterly masterminds. The next one is going to be in Scottsdale, which is my favorite place to go. So I'm really looking forward to it. And if you're while you're listening the rest of this episode, if you got something great from this episode that you really enjoyed, Colin's already shared a bunch. If you give us a five star review, we'd greatly appreciate it. Jimmy, what is your hack of the week?

Jim Hacking (00:22:44) - Sometimes you have to understand the past in order to move forward, and there's a great new book out by a Washington Post reporter named Taylor Lorenz.

Jim Hacking (00:22:51) - It's called Extremely Online. It's about the history of the different social media channels. I'm learning a ton. I also find it very inspirational to make me want to go out and create good content. So real good book. Gary Vee had Taylor on his show. That's how I found out about it. And uh, highly recommend.

Tyson Mutrux (00:23:07) - Say the title again.

Jim Hacking (00:23:08) - Extremely online streaming.

Tyson Mutrux (00:23:10) - Online. I like the title. Very good. Thanks, Jimbo. All right, Colin, we always ask our guest to give a tip or a hack of the week. Could be a book, could be a podcast, could be you name it, which you got for us.

Colin Levy (00:23:21) - I would say that my probably hack of the of the week is, um, has nothing to do with tech or books at all. But really, just take time for yourself. You know, we all move at a at a quick pace. The world moves at a quick pace. Honestly, we all probably would do well to give more time to ourselves and listen to ourselves.

Colin Levy (00:23:40) - So that would be my hack of the week is listen to yourself. You know, if you need to take a few minutes to slow down, relax, whatever. Do it. You know your body is very communicative with you for a reason. It's just a matter of you listening to what it's telling you.

Tyson Mutrux (00:23:55) - I love it, that's fantastic advice. Very good. All right. I am going to. My tip of the week is something that you actually started to talk about. And that is I've been playing around with different GPT. You can build with OpenAI. And so I've built several myself. One of them I'll give you a couple of examples. One of them, it analyzes settlement releases for me to pick out certain things that I do and don't want, which is which is good. And then it'll also draft them for me, which is kind of cool. And then another one where I've got a crafts arguments for me, where I'll upload documents to it, like their pleadings, my art pleadings, and then it'll help me craft an argument for whenever I'm arguing to the judge.

Tyson Mutrux (00:24:35) - So and I've given it a specific instructions about the audience and the style and the tone. So it's kind of cool there. I always had the tweak a little bit, but I think that there's there's really some really cool advantages to it. It can identify very easily clauses that, that, I mean, it would take me, I would have to read through the whole thing to identify it. So what I it takes it seconds. So what I do is I upload it I it identifies those red flags for me. And then I go through and I'm and I read it again just so I can make sure I understand everything fully. But it, it just allows me to not miss things which, which is pretty cool. But the, the option, what you can do with it is just limitless at this point. So it's really cool. So check it out. All right. Colin, thank you so much for for joining us. For people that want to follow you, how do they follow you and how can they get in touch with you.

Tyson Mutrux (00:25:23) - Absolutely.

Colin Levy (00:25:24) - So they can follow me on x c love underscore law co v underscore law Melissa on LinkedIn can find me by my name and also go to my website called Honest love.com. Stay tuned for a refresh of the website coming out next early next year. And of course, if you haven't already gotten a copy of my book, please feel free to grab a copy. Legal tech ecosystem available on Amazon.

Tyson Mutrux (00:25:47) - Love it. Thanks, Colin. Really appreciate it.

Colin Levy (00:25:50) - Thank you.

Jim Hacking (00:25:51) - Thanks, guys.

Speaker 1 (00:25:54) - Thanks for listening to the Maximum Lawyer podcast. To stay in contact with your hosts and to access more content. Go to Maximum lawyer.com. Have a great week and catch you next time.