AI isn’t coming for your job—but it is coming for your workflows. In this episode, you’ll learn how to cut through AI hype, protect client confidentiality, and use practical tools to automate the repetitive work that’s clogging your day.
In this episode, Steve Fretzin and Colin Levy discuss:
- Uneven adoption of AI and legal tech across the profession
- Evolution of legal technology from e‑discovery to modern AI
- Practical, low‑risk AI use cases for everyday legal work
- Data privacy, confidentiality, and paid vs. free AI tools
- Building real technology competence through experimentation and better prompts
Key Takeaways:
- Technology will not slow down to let professionals catch up, so it’s essential to actively close your own AI knowledge and usage gap.
- The most valuable AI applications today often center on document-related tasks—summarizing, comparing, and drafting from existing materials.
- Using free, open AI tools with client data can violate confidentiality obligations; controlled, paid environments are critical for sensitive work.
- Before buying any new platform, clearly define the problem you’re trying to solve so the tool doesn’t become expensive shelfware.
- True tech competence is built by experimenting, refining prompts, and learning from how different inputs change AI’s outputs—not by passively consuming AI headlines.
“The power of AI right now is in using existing knowledge and taking that to create something new or build something new.” — Colin Levy
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About Colin Levy: Colin S. Levy is a leading authority on legal technology, AI in law, and contract lifecycle management (CLM), currently serving as General Counsel at Malbek and an Adjunct Professor at Albany Law School. Widely recognized as one of the most influential figures in legal tech, he guides legal professionals through digital transformation, modern AI integration, and workflow innovation. Colin is the author of The Legal Tech Ecosystem—a definitive guide to legal technology and AI—and frequently speaks and writes on how technological advances continue to redefine the future of legal practice worldwide.
Connect with Colin Levy:
Website: https://www.colinslevy.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colinslevy/
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Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Steve Fretzin [00:01]
Hey everybody, before we get to the show, just a quick reminder about the Be That Lawyer community. From my podcast to my books, this is clearly the next step for you in your growth and development as a rainmaker. Stop doom-scrolling and start micro-learning, connecting, and getting fresh ideas from growth-minded lawyers from around the world. Visit bethatlawyer.com/community to sign up today. Build your book, own your future, and be that lawyer.
Narrator [00:33]
You’re listening to Be That Lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author, and lawyer coach Steve Fretzin will take a deeper dive, helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.
Steve Fretzin [00:55]
Hey everybody, Steve Fretzin here, and welcome to the Be That Lawyer podcast. I’m just so thrilled that you’re here. You guys know me. You know, been working with lawyers for over 18 years, helping them to be that lawyer, confident, organized, and skilled rainmakers. And you know, part of it is that’s becoming a much larger area of focus right now is AI and technology, and some of it seems to be a distraction. And Colin, you’re going to help us figure out, you know, what the my friend Colin’s hanging out in the wings, what’s a distraction and what’s like actually usable. How you doing, buddy?
Colin Levy [01:27]
Doing well. Glad to be here with you.
Steve Fretzin [01:29]
Yeah, good to see you. Good to see you. And glad to have you back. It’s been a while, and that’s on me. But it’s always great to catch up and talk shop. It wouldn’t be the Be That Lawyer podcast if we didn’t do our quote of the show. We’ve got a rock-solid one that you gave me this morning. I think this might be the first time I’m hearing William Gibson’s this quote. It’s: the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed. So, welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about that quote.
Colin Levy [01:55]
Yeah, absolutely. So, look, I think that what’s going on is we have technology now that’s more powerful than ever in the form of AI. The problem, though, is we have a level of disparity in terms of people’s level of use of it, knowledge of it, what they can do with it, what they should do with it, what they shouldn’t do with it, and so that’s kind of the unevenness and the disparity. And the problem is that really, or, well, problem and challenge really, is technology is not waiting for that disparity to go away. It’s continuing to advance. So it’s incumbent upon all of us really, I think, to make sense of this world and try to help ourselves best adapt to it. And by way of background, for those who may not know who I am, I’m General Counsel of Malbek. We’re a lifecycle manage contract management company. I’m a transactional lawyer by trade. Worked for a variety of companies and now write and speak a lot about technology and AI, and I also am an adjunct professor of law at Albany Law School, so I don’t just talk about it, I also teach it. And, you know, one thing that comes up all the time is just the fact that the world used to be somewhat more predictable, and now it seems like it’s not predictable at all. The The ground underneath our feet is shifting all the time, faster than we probably imagined or comfortable with, and amidst all that, there’s just a lot of noise that we have to kind of cut through to understand, okay, what exactly is going on here.
Steve Fretzin [03:27]
Yeah. If we could go back in time and sort of look at the history of legal tech and just to get your take on sort of where it started, where it’s been, and where it’s going, that would be, I think, helpful just to give everybody sort of, yeah, I don’t know if we call it a in legal I think I used to call it a slow-moving train, but maybe maybe that’s not the case anymore.
Colin Levy [03:44]
Yeah, well, look, legal tech really kind of started, I would argue, back with e-discovery. That’s really where things kind of started with, which is, for those that don’t know, kind of making sense of legal documents in the context of litigation and figure out what’s relevant, what’s not, what helps our case, what hurts our case. And there were tools to help sort of sort that out and sort through those documents, and I actually before law school worked for a law firm in New York creating and using those tools in that space, which first gave me my own taste of technology. And so, you know, back then I think what was happening was technology was viewed by lawyers as sort of a necessary evil. We don’t really like it, but it helps us, so we’re going to have people help us use it. And if it helps us make more money and brings more business to our firm or what have you, well, good for us. Well, that has had then continued to be the case. As technology advanced, lawyers continued to be fairly resistant to wanting to use technology because things were working just fine for themselves financially. There was no real incentive to change. Well, AI kind of threw that out the window. Now what’s happening is AI is everywhere, and it really is aimed at kind of changing the name of the game, if you will. And what’s most surprising to me is lawyers now are adopting it in many ways. But what they’re kind of forgetting about is, okay, we want to use it and we’re using it, but how, where, and why should we be using it? You know, kind of the basic things you would think that the skeptical lawyer would naturally want to know and be asking about. And that seems to not always be the case, partly driven by, I think, competition, and partly driven by curiosity, and the fact that AI is everywhere and so in your face all the time. Yeah. And I think it it,
Steve Fretzin [05:30]
you know, it can become, or it is already, you know, confusing because like I’m being sold all the time. People are calling me all the time with AI to automate, or like an AI idea, like one of my clients just came to me with this thing he created where all the AIs talk to each other and have this outcome, which is incredible. And I’m like thinking, that’s an incredible idea. Is that going to be even relevant in six months? Like is it Like something that you create now, is it even Like what we’re talking about now, is it even It’s just going to get run over in six months by someone doing it better, that’s using it better than you? I mean, are you Is that a concern people should have, is that what they get involved in now may not even be relevant in six months?
Colin Levy [06:09]
Well, I think the challenge is that what you’re doing now will help you in the future even if what you’re doing now may not necessarily be relevant or be what you want to be doing, you know, in six months, what have you. The bottom line, though, is the more you start using these tools and doing things with them now, the better positioned you will be for whatever is to come down the line in future, Yeah. because AI, you know, is adopting and and getting more powerful, but I think, as we’ve seen over the past year, it’s more powerful and capable of more things, but at its core, it hasn’t changed that much from how it first was in terms of these large language models and providing outputs in the form of text and imagery and all of that. Yeah. So, you know, while the way in which you do something right now may likely change in the future, the fact that you know how to do it right now with the tools that exist right now will make it easier to adapt to whatever comes down the line in the future. And really, the bottom line is just growing comfortable being uncomfortable, I think is the best way to approach it, because, as I said before, this technology continues to evolve and adapt and grow more powerful. So, it’s really up to each of us to kind of see where we are in position to where AI is, and make sure that that relative distance doesn’t change that much going forward.
Steve Fretzin [07:30]
Do you have a take on where a lawyer listening right now that maybe hasn’t used it beyond asking it a question: what’s a great restaurant in, you know, Santa Fe, New Mexico? We’re heading that way, where should we go? That’s the level of use from some for some people right now. What from a standpoint of getting your job done, being more efficient, being more effective, like you know, that’s going to benefit you, like where where should lawyers be taking this on the job?
Colin Levy [07:57]
Yeah, so I think one way in which they can take it is instead of kind of like the grocery list task and using it as a chatbot, how about, and I would suggest trying this with kind of non-private, non-confidential data of course, because you know you’re experimenting, just want to learn. But, you know, just take a couple of documents that could be anything and ask a tool like Claude CoWork, for example, to just review these two documents, figure out how they’re different or create a new document based off of these two, something that’s a little more complex and involves creating something new, because that’s I think where the power of AI right now is, and is is is in using existing knowledge and taking that knowledge to create something new or build something new. And one of the easiest ways to do that, I think from a lawyer perspective, is relating to documents and documentation. So that’s what I would suggest doing because when AI first came out, yes, it was basically just kind of a a chat experience. You chat, you ask a question, and it gives you an answer. It’s gone a long ways away from that now. Now it’s about building and about creating things, and the best way again to do that, likely in the area of sort of legal work, would be relating to documents and analyzing documents and risks and and that sort of thing.
Steve Fretzin [09:09]
Can we add a cautionary moment or tail in there about the paid models that are closed, that are private versus the open models? Because lawyers that are taking proprietary documents or they’re taking client work and putting it on an open system, there’s consequences to that versus a private system. Can you just open that up a little bit?
Colin Levy [09:28]
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this speaks to something that I talk about a lot, which is the role of judgment and using AI tools. So, you know, look, when you aren’t paying for one of these tools, really what you’re doing is you’re allowing that tool to more or less train on the data you give it, meaning whatever you provide to it, which is why I mentioned before confidentiality being an issue. Now, for lawyers, you have a legal duty of confidentiality to your client, so which means that any information you’re given, you have to keep confidential. And if you are just sharing that with a free version of some AI, you’re violating that duty because the AI is just using that data to train itself and grow more knowledgeable. However, when you pay for say like an enterprise license or a business license or whatever form it is for to use one of these models, what you then open yourself up to is the option to have it not train on your data, which I would strongly suggest you do. That way you can be more secure in using data with the tool. It’s not going to train on it. No one’s going to see it. The AI is not going to remember it. All of that, unless you want it to remember, of course. And this goes back to the fact that lawyers have this role as sort of applying their judgment, their legal and ethical judgment to something and figuring out what they should and shouldn’t be doing in the context of whatever matter they’re dealing with. And that applies the same whether it’s AI or some non-AI-related tool you’re using, which again is why I appreciate you bringing up this sort of open versus closed system and paying versus not paying, because you know, when you don’t pay for something, you often end up being the product. In this case, with AI, the product is the data you’re giving it, you know? So, you know, when you do pay for it, you are allowing, you are paying for basically a more secure version where data is you cannot have where you can have the data not be used to train the model.
Steve Fretzin [11:18]
Yeah. And I want to give a shout out to my client and friend Sophie, who who mentioned one other thing that I want to just put out there, is that if you’re sending your contract that you’ve worked over for a client to the client, the client then has your document on an open system and then asks it a bunch of questions about your document and runs it through, that could also be a concern because that’s taking that privilege and that private information and putting it out on a public network. So she put some kind of back-end structure to it so that it wasn’t searchable on AI tools. You know about what I’m talking about?
Colin Levy [11:55]
Yeah, a little bit. You know, there there are ways in which you can kind of ensure that whatever you create is not going to be accessed by a tool, or not be use not be searchable in some ways. Some of it’s a little more advanced, but there are ways in which you can protect yourself and the things you create from being kind of scanned or incorporated into AI models. Yeah. There also are are things like just using it in kind of private mode or or incognito mode, like you know, when you use a browser, there’s that option as well. And that allows the AI to not remember anything you’re doing, and also not allows it to kind of share it in any way. So there there are a number of ways in which you can protect yourself, and I I definitely think, and this is something I talk about often with lawyers, is thinking about how you’re using AI, why you’re using it, and your intentions behind it. What what is your what is the goal you have in mind when using the tool, and how that helps define the contours of your use of it and what your use case is.
Steve Fretzin [12:54]
Well, that leads me to a natural question, which is that there are you know individuals or legal teams that are buying and deploying AI or tech tools that they’re getting sold, that they’re excited about, and how do they know that it’s solving a genuine problem versus being expensive shelfware where it’s just like CRMs of the of the early 2000s, where, you know, you’re just paying all this money for these CRMs that then nobody uses?
Colin Levy [13:19]
Right. So that’s a great question. I get I think you have to start from the point of what is it that I’m actually trying to solve for? Just because you’re being bombarded with ads about some tool or another doesn’t mean you should be using that tool. Even if a friend recommends to you that they that a tool that they use, your circumstances may be vastly different from that friend’s circumstances. So context is everything here. And you really don’t want to just kind of use some tool because it seems could be potentially helpful in some way, unless you have a clear, definable task that that tool can help you with, and you know what that task is, and you have a problem with that task, because that helps you kind of separate sort of the, you know, the tools that actually going to be useful to you from just the tools that like to your point are just going to be shelfware that you’re just paying for, and then you’re asking yourself months down the line why am I paying for this when it’s not doing me any good. Yeah. And then, unfortunately, this is getting a little harder and harder to do because we’re just being bombarded with all these ads all the time for various tools that seem to just somehow magically solve one problem or another. And really, there’s nothing magical about it at all. There’s a lot of setup involved. There’s a lot of stuff they’re not sharing with you about how that tool works that if you can spend the time doing all that, yes, it can be helpful for you. But if you don’t want to be spending the time, or that’s not an or what it’s trying to solve is not a problem for you, you shouldn’t waste your time with it, which is why I think you really need to work with clear intentions and have a clear sense of what you’re trying to do, and use that to guide the questions you ask of a potential vendor you’re evaluating.
Steve Fretzin [14:55]
Thank you, Colin. That’s well said, and in the an angle to that that I think will resonate with a lot of the lawyers listening is consider, what are your repeatable tasks? There’s documents that you’re reviewing over and over. There’s you’re in email jail five hours a day in email, you can’t get out of it, and it’s a lot of repetitive, writing the same emails or writing or just like there’s all these things that are repetitive tasks. And there’s tools that are now available to get us out of a lot of those. Can you walk people through either a couple of examples of what might be repetitive tasks, and what are tools that either you’ve used or that you’ve heard about that would work to resolve that?
Colin Levy [15:31]
Yeah. For example, in my world, you know, repetitive task is get NDAs all the time. You know, I don’t like reviewing NDAs. They’re important, yes, but I don’t want to review them at this point of my career. It’s repetitive. It’s routine. You kind of look for the same things every single time in the agreement. So, thankfully, Malbek has an AI functionality that provides a first-level review of these NDAs so that I don’t I don’t even have to bother looking at it. And that saves me time, but more importantly, I’m able to focus. If I do need to look at an NDA, there’s a good reason for it, meaning there’s something that actually is a little bit of kind of a borderline issue. Because of the context or whatever, I may need to look at it. So that’s one one example. Another example is, you know, sometimes I get, say, you know, a more complex contract, and liability is always something I negotiate. There’s always a clause in there. It’s always usually open-ended or too high, too low, what have you. Well, now I have a tool that I use, again, through Malbek, that allows me to just simply I don’t even have to do anything. It automatically pushes back, flags it, says what it should be, and that’s just one thing less for me to worry about, and I don’t have to negotiate or rewrite. It’s just something I don’t have to focus on. Outside of kind of the Malbek world, I mean, I use Claude CoWork all the time for tasks like, you know, if I’m creating I create guides fairly often that I share on LinkedIn about stuff. I write it all myself, but the formatting, pain in the ass. So I use Claude CoWork to just format it, make it look pretty, because I don’t want to bother with that. It’s time-consuming, it’s fairly routine, standardizable, so I’m just not going to do that. So that’s kind of what I use Claude CoWork for in part. Now, there are things that I wouldn’t suggest using AI solely for, and those are really things that are very contextual, meaning that it’s really hard to explain why something is tricky to an AI tool because, you know, personalities, or just, you know, there’s some need to get this seemingly innocuous, fairly small deal across the line, or there’s a relationship involved that’s kind of tricky. Those are the type of things when you kind of have to rely on your legal judgment, and your relationship building, and kind of your understanding of other people to figure out what to do and what not to do. And yeah, you can have AI kind of help maybe craft a potential draft of a response or something, but it’s really on you to figure out what best is going to go over with the other side and help ensure either the relationship continues to be successful, or if you need to end it, you end it on relatively good terms, or what have you. You know, so it’s sort of the type of thing where AI is great with those things that aren’t don’t involve emotions and don’t involve sort of inherent human things. Yeah. But anytime emotion is involved, anytime a relationship is involved, AI is not going to do a very good job of that because it has no concept of any of that, what that means. And so that’s really where your judgment and your sort of humanness has to come into play.
Steve Fretzin [18:39]
Yeah, I love it. I love it. I would also add, and I’m still working through this myself, but I have a an AI tool for email that attaches to my Gmail. And, essentially, I can just voice-to-text, voice-to-email, tell it what I want to do. Maybe there’s 20 people I want to send the same email to. That would take me a half an hour to do. This, if I just copy and paste the emails or tell it who I want to email and add and tell it the basic gist of the email, include this link and that link, and it does it, and I hit a send, send, send, send, send 20 times, or I can tell it to just send it. That, I mean just that and like automating responses to, people want to be on my podcast and thank you. I love it. That’s great. I’m happy you want to be on my podcast. But I’m getting 7 to 10 requests a week and I’m having to send 7 to 10 happy. Oh yeah.
Colin Levy [19:31]
Email is a perfect. You know, when you get constant requests for the same thing over and over again, like exactly what you’re describing, yes, in that case, an auto response or just having AI craft something that you can send out every time, yes, that’s a great example. Because it’s routine, it’s time-consuming, low-risk, and it’s annoying to have to do. You know you have to do it. You’re not trying to dismiss people, but we’re taught, you know, our time is a scarce resource, so we need to be careful with how we use it.
Steve Fretzin [20:00]
Yeah. And you know, I have it I have it set so that it knows every email I’ve ever sent and every email I’ve ever received, so it really gets, you know, whatever it’s 100,000 emails or 50,000 emails that it knows before we even start. So it’s not so much that I have to direct it completely. It really gets like my tone. It gets my pace. It gets the way that I construct my emails and everything. So it can really be really be me in the background, which I love. Because I think we’re seeing, you know, on LinkedIn, AI slop and you know, there’s like a now a button for that to
Colin Levy [20:35]
Oh, yeah. I I can’t tell you how much of that how often I’ve used that button. It seems like I use it all the time because I’m just going to be blunt here. People are definitely lazy and some of the stuff they’re creating is just junk and crap. And I think they should rightly be called out on it to some extent. Regardless whether it’s an ad or a piece of content, whatever. It’s just we’re bombarded with so much stuff these days that we should be a little more judicious in what we actually take seriously or not.
Steve Fretzin [21:06]
Yeah. Exactly. And ultimately, we have to look at the the time management, the marketing, the automations within the legal profession. And you said something earlier that I want to just touch on before we move on to the next subject, which is it’s time to get basic proficiency down. I don’t think you’re going to survive in a year or two as a lawyer hiding under. It’s a little bit like business development, if I’m being honest, like there are lawyers just hiding under the table from business development, not the people listening to the show, by the way. But it’s going to catch up to you. Like there are people that are getting further ahead on you with their BD and their branding. Same thing with AI, and so you either get on the boat or you’re going to be sinking in the back.
Colin Levy [21:48]
Absolutely, that is so that is very true. And I think that’s why, like my teaching, for example, that I’m doing, I really enjoy because I really want to help people orientate themselves to this era of AI. And the best way to do that is to make things as simple and clear to understand as possible so that they have a foundation that’s solid to build off of before they move into more advanced things. Everyone wants wants to skip ahead to kind of all the more advanced stuff, but that’s not going to be very helpful to you if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. So you need to start from a place of, okay, I understand this, I understand this, I understand this. Now I’m ready for the next step. Yeah.
Steve Fretzin [22:27]
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Colin Levy [24:14]
Right. So, I mention this a lot. It really comes down to one word, which I know makes some lawyers perhaps feel slightly uncomfortable, and that one word is experiment. You know, you have to in order to learn about these tools, you really need to interact with them. You have to understand how they interact with you, how they go about providing output for you, and thankfully, these tools are getting more transparent about what they’re doing, so you can see what they’re doing. But, also, you get a sense from using it of, Okay, I provided this one input. It didn’t give me what I wanted. Let me try a different one and see if it provides with me with a different result. I realize that this may not be the sexiest topic at this point, but prompting, meaning what you give an AI, remains important skill to some degree, still, in terms of exactly what you ask, how you ask it, the amount of information you give, and seeing how big of an impact that has on what you get out of what you provide in.
Steve Fretzin [25:09]
Yeah. A hack to that, by the way, I heard recently is prompt it for the prompt, right? So, I don’t know the prompt, like I don’t have the prompt down, so I’m going to ask it and say, Look, this is what I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t know what the prompt is to get the results. What should I prompt you with?
Colin Levy [25:23]
Oh, I do that all the time. I do it all the time because it knows. It recognizes the text, understands what you are asking it to do, and then provides a way for you to ask it so it does what you’re asking it to do. That being said, it’s not a fail-safe, but it definitely will help you get there faster than otherwise, and it’ll help you better understand how to write a better input as well.
Steve Fretzin [25:47]
Yeah. Well, I think we have time for maybe one or two more questions, and I mentioned to you what the last question is going to be. We won’t get there yet. But if there’s a lawyer listening who is getting more engaged in AI, getting more engaged in the various platforms, is there a suggestion for how they take it forward? We talked about the newbie, but what about the person that’s already more advanced? Anything that they should be working on that may make them money, or maybe they start a legal tech company, or maybe they just become, you know, a world of efficiency?
Colin Levy [26:19]
Yeah, so I think there’s there’s a couple of things you can do. For those that are a little more advanced, both Anthropic and OpenAI, which are two of the big foundation model providers, actually have provided a lot of fairly substantive documentation that walks you through a lot of different things that are a little more advanced you can do with those tools. That will help you open your eyes to kind of what what these tools are actually capable of and get you a sense of what Anthropic and OpenAI are thinking about as well, in the context of what you’re trying to achieve. So that would be one suggestion I would have for those more advanced users. So I mean, I myself am starting to explore hosting my own private LLM model on my own machine. Yeah. And I’m not a coder or programmer, but it’s something I’ve been wanting to do. I just haven’t had time to really actually do it, but now I’m going to make some time for myself to do it, just to play around and see what happens. And that’s also something you could possibly do because it will allow you to get even stronger sense of how these tools work, but also give you ultimate privacy as well because it’s your own thing, no one knows about it, no one can access it, etc.
Steve Fretzin [27:25]
Yeah. I have a lawyer that did that I believe has done that, and he’s a good friend of mine. I’ll make that intro for you off offline if you’re interested.
Colin Levy [27:33]
Yeah, I would love that.
Steve Fretzin [27:34]
Yeah, because he’s already, you know, he’s already played around with it. So, kind of final question here. What’s Colin’s big mistake?
Colin Levy [27:41]
You know, I think that my biggest mistake was there’s two, I think. But if I had to narrow down to just one, it would be perhaps not actually shifting to technology as fast as I have. I think that I could have been even faster looking back now. I think that I could have done more earlier in my career than I did now. And that’s not it’s a bit it’s a mistake now looking back, sure. Hindsight is 20/20, though. I mean, you know, I’m my own worst critic, but I would say given my happiness and given how fulfilled I I am being in this space, I could have gotten there faster had I moved a little quicker years ago in terms of technology, if I’m really being honest with myself.
Steve Fretzin [28:33]
Okay. And so is the takeaway, the lesson learned that when you find something that makes sense or technology that accomplishes things, to to lean into a little faster?
Colin Levy [28:43]
Yes, I think that the lesson really is if you feel something nagging at you, pay attention to that. Don’t dismiss it. If you feel like it’s really something you you’re interested in, your body is telling you something. Listen to it.
Steve Fretzin [28:59]
Yeah.
Colin Levy [28:59]
Follow it.
Steve Fretzin [29:00]
Yeah. I would just give a one addition to that, as I tend to do, which is don’t put all your eggs in one basket, don’t get shiny penny syndrome. You might see, right, you might see an an AI million-dollar idea because you figured something out and you’re going to now leave your law practice and go do it, and I’m just going to caution you, you know, you don’t have, you know, millions of dollars behind you the way that some of these other companies, legal companies do that may figure it out, you know, month after you, or it’s not proprietary, or whatever. So I’m just going to say like if you come up with a great idea, like talk with some people, maybe get a partner, get someone to help you with it, but don’t necessarily throw like throw away your law practice to go after a shiny penny.
Colin Levy [29:44]
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean it lawyers I think are often rightfully so tagged with having shiny key syndrome and being most afflicted by it. And I definitely suggest really look for the signals amidst the noise, and one of the best ways to do that, I think, is to just hear about what people are talking about, what they’re happy with, what they’re not happy with, their lessons learned, to let them talk and share. And that’s a great way to kind of really learn about what’s actually real and what’s not out there.
Steve Fretzin [30:13]
Yeah. I mean, it would be how you’d advise your clients, you know: look at the risk, you know, make sure you validate, you know, get as much information as you can, you know, don’t put all, you know, don’t you know don’t make a huge investment in something that’s speculative, you know, the things that are just, you know, common sense, but yet we get excited about things. And you know, I I’ve learned my lessons from doing that for years, way in the past, but if you’re going to make mistakes, try to make them small.
Colin Levy [30:36]
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s partly what drives, you know, the content I put out there on on LinkedIn, you know, with my prior book and my forthcoming book, Code Switch, on AI, and really helping people kind of just orient themselves to this space in a non in kind of a neutral, accessible way without confusing people or really hyping things up to a degree which anything that that person says now is not credible.
Steve Fretzin [31:01]
Yeah. Well, since you brought it up, I’m going to lean into it. Tell us a little bit about the new book.
Colin Levy [31:05]
Sure. So, Code Switch: The Lawyer’s Guide to the Era of AI is really a accessible introduction to this world of AI, written by me and aimed at lawyers, helping them understand what AI is, what it isn’t, how to use it, and also something unique I would say about the book is it’s looking not just at the U.S. but other jurisdictions as well, and how they’re adopting and using AI, and also how courts are using AI. So it’s really kind of to give you a sense of just the landscape and where things are going, to the extent to which I can, say. And, you know, it was it was a passion project of mine, and probably the toughest part of writing it was the fact that writing it where things are changing so quickly and making sure that what I was writing about was going to be useful now and by the time it finally comes out.
Steve Fretzin [31:52]
Yeah. Yeah, just awesome. Hey, let’s take a moment and thank our incredible sponsors: Lawyer.com, LEX Reception, and PIMCON. And, Colin, when people want to get in touch with you, they want to get your book or they want to just learn more about you and what you do in the legal space, best digits?
Colin Levy [32:07]
Best way to get in touch with me is either through LinkedIn, Colin Levy, S. Levy, or through my website, which is probably a faster way, colinslevy.com. That’s c o l i n s l e v y.com.
Steve Fretzin [32:21]
Yeah, fantastic. Well, thanks for coming back, sharing your wisdom. I mean, whether you’re a AI enthusiast, and you’re you’re neck-deep in it, or you’re kind of a newbie to it, I thought you did a really great job of breaking it all down into, you know, simple terms that people can follow and see how they should engage. So, thanks, man.
Colin Levy [32:38]
Yeah, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
Steve Fretzin [32:40]
Yeah, all right, and thank you everybody for hanging out with Colin and I for the last 30 minutes. Hopefully, got a bunch of great takeaways. I know we do, you know, talk about AI, but if we don’t, we’re maybe we’re missing missing the mark on what what you all need to hear and get it broken down in a simple way. There’s a lot of stuff coming at you a million miles an hour, and it’s nice when we can have somebody on that just can slow things down and just kind of let you know what it is and how to play it. So, that’s all all good, everybody. Hey, it’s all about building that book, owning your future, and being that lawyer. Take care, be safe and well. We will talk again soon.
Narrator [33:17]
Thanks for listening to Be That Lawyer, life-changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website, fretzin.com, for additional information and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes.