How Much of the Change Management Journey Does the Vendor Own?

A conversation with Jerry Levine (Leah), Colin Levy (Malbek) and Rich Robinson (Epiq)

Change management is an essential part of getting buy-in and ROI from legal technology investments. The gap between promise and outcome is already showing up in the numbers: legal AI adoption reached 78% in 2026, up from just 23% in 2023, yet actual time savings from these tools have averaged 18.3% against a median vendor projection of 41%, according to research from the Legal Stack. Clearly, more change management is needed to support ROI expectations. But where does “vendor support” end and organizational change management begin? What is it reasonable for buyers to expect from a vendor, and what requires wider, enterprise change?

We put the questions to three leaders who sit in different seats – a CLM platform, an e-discovery managed-services provider, and a legal AI company – and let them talk it through. What follows is an edited version of that conversation.

No vendor can own transformation on behalf of the customer

RICH ROBINSON (Epiq): I think the best vendors help organizations navigate change. What they can’t do is own transformation on behalf of the customer. We can provide the methodology, training, coaching, governance, and measurement. The organization still has to bring the leadership, accountability, and willingness to work differently. In my experience, the implementations that hold up are the ones where both sides share ownership of the journey.

JERRY LEVINE (Leah): That’s a useful distinction to draw out, because my role isn’t what Rich just described, and I think buyers often assume every vendor is offering some version of it. Someone in a role like Rich’s delivers a change management program as part of what Epiq delivers. My role is different. I get adoption questions constantly, usually from a GC asking how to get people using the tool. I’ll talk it through with them. What I offer is guidance. You need someone internally, often externally too, who owns that work.

COLIN LEVY (Malbek): I’d put myself closer to Jerry on that spectrum than to Rich. Malbek is a software vendor, not a managed-services business. Buyers want a partner now, not just a system. In my experience, that shows up as co-building the product with the customer, and staying in the relationship well past the sale. None of that is change management. It’s what separates a good vendor from one who shows up for the sale and disappears.

If neither side has the resources, bring in a third party

RICH: That’s why I think it’s important that whoever is running the selection and deployment process goes in with eyes open. You have to be honest about your own resources and about your vendor’s resources. Change management is critical to adoption. If neither side has the acumen or the bandwidth for it, my advice is to hire a third-party implementation partner rather than hope the gap closes on its own.

JERRY: That gap is where things fall apart in practice. A customer comes back and asks how to get adoption going, and the honest answer depends on questions that often don’t have consistent answers inside the same organization. What have you done so far? Who’s driving this, and who just signed off on it? If leadership is pushing AI initiatives from the top down without knowing why, those initiatives are going to keep failing, and it won’t be the tool to blame.

The “easy button” myth, and its mirror image on the vendor side

RICH: I see this from both sides now that I’ve moved to the vendor side. Too many buyers treat these tools as an “easy button.” They’re not thinking about the time it takes to implement and deploy them, and especially the time it takes to get lawyers to change how they work. From the vendor’s side, there’s a mirror-image problem: a feeling that adoption should be a “no-brainer.” So hesitation reads as friction, not a real concern. Add a market full of shiny things, and buyers freeze up choosing between them. The purchase ends up being treated as the finish line, when the real work is only just getting started.

COLIN: That “no-brainer” instinct is something I actively coach my own sales team out of. You can’t assume a good product sells itself, or walk in thinking, why wouldn’t you buy this? That doesn’t land well. You have to build the relationship first: understand who you’re actually talking to, their internal politics, their team, their specific pressures, not just the size of the deal. That takes time, and I’ll admit it’s a real tension for vendors who are also being measured on quarterly numbers. But skipping that step is how change management ends up as an afterthought instead of part of the deal.

RICH: If I had one piece of advice for both sides, it is to treat each other as a consultative partner. What a buyer says they need isn’t always what will solve their problem, and the seller has to be willing to listen long enough to get to what will. That’s what a real partnership looks like.

Where they landed

The three legal tech leaders don’t sell the same thing, and they don’t play the same role in a customer’s rollout. Rich delivers change management as a service, Jerry and Colin operate more as advisors, helping without owning the program directly. Three points held across all three seats:

• A vendor hands off the framework of training, methodology, coaching, and governance, but not the leadership, accountability, or directive to change. That must come from inside the organization.
• Guidance and ownership are different things, and buyers should ask a vendor directly which one they’re getting.
• If neither side has real change management capability, that’s a gap to close before the contract is signed.

None of that makes “how much change management does the vendor own?” a simple question. It does make it a fair one to ask before signing, not after the rollout stalls.