Colin Levy – Malbek

Colin Levy operates at a junction where legal practice, product design, and artificial intelligence intersect in real time. As general counsel for Malbek, he is responsible for the company’s legal function, but his influence extends beyond traditional boundaries, shaping how modern legal technology is conceived and deployed. That dual vantage point has positioned him as both practitioner and embedded product voice a role that increasingly defines the next generation of legal leadership.

Colin Levy | Malbek | General Counsel

Malbek is a modern, AI-powered contract lifecycle management platform that brings every stage of the contract lifecycle into one intuitive system for legal, sales, procurement, and finance. It eliminates manual, disconnected contracting by centralizing contract data, automating creation through renewals, and embedding intelligence directly into workflows, so organizations can accelerate deals, reduce risk, and uncover the revenue, risks, and commercial decisions hiding inside their contracts. Within that environment, Levy’s role is unusually integrated. He negotiates the company’s commercial agreements while contributing directly to the platform’s evolution. The separation that once existed between legal and product teams has largely dissolved.

“Most GCs advise on products they’ll never use. I’m actively contributing to improving the one I work in every day,” Levy says.

He describes a workflow where legal observations translate into product enhancements. Patterns identified in negotiations can quickly inform new features, and customer feedback can move directly into development. That compression of feedback loops reshapes how legal problems are understood and solved.

Levy’s proximity to engineering has also influenced how he conceptualizes risk. Rather than viewing contracts as static documents, he sees them as dynamic systems of obligations that evolve over time. That perspective informs both his legal advice and the tools he helps improve, aligning legal reasoning with technical design.

Designing for real-world legal work

Serving as a direct user of Malbek’s platform gives Levy insight into what determines whether a legal tool succeeds. He experiences the same constraints as other lawyers, including fragmented time and high-pressure decision-making.

“I am, in the most literal sense, the person the product is trying to make less miserable,” he says.

That perspective sharpens his focus on usability. He notices when workflows assume uninterrupted time or when AI-generated suggestions are technically correct but misaligned with negotiation realities. These observations help steer product decisions toward solutions that reflect how legal work actually happens.

Levy is also attentive to the relational dimension of contracts. A clause may be legally sound yet ineffective if it disrupts the tone of a negotiation. By embedding that awareness into product design, he helps ensure that technology supports the human dynamics of legal work rather than undermining them.

His approach extends to how legal teams interpret data. Tools must align with the questions legal leaders are asked to answer, particularly in conversations with executives. A system that prioritizes visualization over substance may look impressive but fail to deliver meaningful insight. Levy’s dual role allows him to bridge that gap with practical clarity.

Rethinking AI in legal practice

Levy’s work places him at the center of debates about artificial intelligence in law. He challenges narratives that frame AI as either a threat or a flawless solution.

“The misconceptions come in matched pairs,” he says.

On one side is the belief that AI will replace lawyers. On the other is the assumption that AI outputs can be trusted without scrutiny. Both, he argues, lead to a dangerous abdication of responsibility and a misunderstanding of what legal work actually entails.

Instead, Levy emphasizes a measured understanding of AI’s capabilities and limitations. He distinguishes between capability, reliability, and appropriateness, noting that a tool can perform well in general yet still be unsuitable for a specific legal task or context.

He also challenges the idea that AI’s primary value lies in drafting. While automation accelerates document creation, he sees greater impact in areas such as diligence, obligation management, and portfolio-level risk analysis, where significant time and risk are concentrated.

Ensuring that AI tools are both defensible and useful remains central to his work. Levy advocates for systems in which outputs are traceable, human oversight is meaningful, and data boundaries are enforced through architectural constraints. These are not optional features but foundational requirements for trust.

Human judgment in an automated world

As AI becomes more embedded in legal workflows, Levy is clear about what should remain unchanged. Human judgment, he argues, is not diminished by technology but made more essential.

“Judgment is the irreducible core of legal practice,” he says.

He describes judgment as emerging in the margins, in situations that are novel or deeply contextual. These moments are shaped not just by rules but by relationships, timing, and an understanding of how decisions will be received.

Levy points to everyday decisions that define legal practice, such as adjusting tone in a negotiation or choosing not to send an email. These rely on an understanding of human dynamics that cannot be fully captured by algorithms or training data.

In practice, that means AI handles the work that doesn’t require judgment: first-pass review, standard clause identification, obligation extraction. What’s left is the work that actually matters, the call where you decide whether to push back or let something go, the moment where you read the room and adjust. That, Levy argues, is where lawyers have always earned their keep, and where no model is close to replacing them.

The path forward

Levy’s career reflects a deliberate effort to bridge traditional legal practice and emerging technology. As general counsel at Malbek, he oversees commercial, privacy, employment, and regulatory matters while contributing to product strategy and innovation.

Beyond his corporate role, he has established himself as a thought leader and educator, helping legal professionals navigate the impact of AI through writing, teaching, and industry engagement.

“I’ve got a book coming out later this year l that’s written for lawyers who are trying to make practical sense of what AI really means for their work and their clients,” Levy says.

He describes the book as a practical guide offering tools and strategies for adapting to change while staying grounded in the human skills that define effective lawyering.

“My goal is to make the topic approachable, useful, and firmly rooted in the realities of day-to-day practice rather than abstract theory,” he says.

Looking ahead, Levy is direct about what he believes the profession needs: lawyers who stop waiting to be consulted and start helping to build. Engagement in design, governance, and regulation isn’t optional, he argues. It’s how the profession retains its relevance.

His career is the argument made visible. At Malbek, he is not watching AI reshape legal work from a distance. He is inside it, using the tools, questioning them, and helping determine what they become. That position, practitioner and contributor at once, may be the clearest model the profession has for what comes next.

The book arriving this fall is the next step in that work. For Levy, the goal has never been to predict where AI takes the law. It’s to make sure lawyers are in the room when that’s decided.