LegalTechTalk 2026: Inside the Event and What the Future of Legal Looks Like – Merlin Beyts – E01

You can hear Rob and Merlin discussing:

Connect with Merlin Beyts here: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/merlin-beyts-652ab0168/

Transcript

What happens when the brightest minds in legal, technology, and innovation come together to shape the future of our profession? Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast Legal Tech Talk 2026 miniseries. As the UK’s number one legal podcast and show ranked in the top 1% of podcasts globally, we’re delighted to be returning as the official media partner for Legal Tech Talk for the third time. Having supported this event since the beginning.

We’ve witnessed firsthand how it has become Europe’s largest legal technology conference, bringing together the people, ideas, and innovations transforming the legal industry. Across this special series, we’ll be speaking with some of the world’s leading legal professionals, founders, technologists, change makers to explore what’s next for law. Because our mission remains the same. Inspiring legal minds, transforming legal futures. Let’s get into it.

Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, recording live here at Legal Tech Talk 2026 in London. Joining me now is a very special guest. Please kindly introduce yourself, name, title, and organisation. Hi everyone, my name is Merlin Beyts. I’m the content director at Legal Tech Talk. And yes, he just said content director of Europe’s largest legal tech conference. It’s been an incredible year. How do you feel? ⁓ I will start feeling feelings again around six pm tomorrow, I reckon.

⁓ pretty much full robot mode for the last day and a half. But no, it’s starting to sink in a little bit. Feels feels good. ⁓ lots of compliments. Yeah. ⁓ you know, lots of sessions going on, lots of movement. I’m hearing people talking about great meetings. Can’t ask for more than that. You you really can’t. And I think we were here since inception, and one thing that everyone has commented on is the speed of growth, the speed of impact, the speed of value that legal tech talk has really brought to

the legal industry. Has that helped from outside the legal industry? People coming in? Or is it sort of just a strategy you knew all the way along? I think we always had it in our minds that we wanted we knew what we could achieve. Yeah. And so the idea was was essentially just why not? Yeah. For well at least for at least from my perspective. We knew that we had the capacity to go big very early on.

And there’s there’s there’s a lot of people that ask us, you know, why don’t you do sort of smaller events here and there? And actually it’s it’s for us, it it works better for our kind of MO to focus on sort of big ticket items, thinking about, you know, how do we expand, how do we just keep on, you know, providing the same service and then and then working on it year on year. ⁓ I think it’s it’s a lot a lot of its mindset and I mean I have to, you know, doff my cat to Brad and Michael, you know, no sycophant I am.

But they they consistently find great people and find ways for us to achieve things that I would have told you I would have given I would have given you a sort of a look of despair ⁓ beforehand. But there’s honestly so much of it is down to just just the team working day and night at times. You know, the last three months have been, you know, very intense period for everyone. It’s this culture of just everyone everyone just wants to get it done. There’s no one who disagrees with the vision and I think that

has been really crucial. You know, sometimes we disagree on the tactics, how we get to where we want to get to, but no one disagrees with how we want people to feel when they’re here. No one disagrees with how we want to pro how much we want to prepare and how we want people to feel when they get here and, you know, feel about coming back again.

And you know, obviously people here have had that feeling, but for people that will be hearing about legal tech talk, you’ll obviously be owning a lot of the social media ⁓ platforms over the coming weeks. What is that feeling you want people leaving with and what is that vision that you do have for legal tech talk? In terms of the feeling, so for if I can give you from a content perspective, I I want people leaving feeling inspired to change and develop and enlightened as to how.

I always say that our sessions, because of the way they’re formatted and the way they’re structured, we usually do one of two things. If we manage to do both, then great. But we either show people how to change or we show them why they should. I mean in terms of the vision, you know, ex like extra extra growth is is great, but it’s not for growth’s sake. There is always a purpose behind everything that we do. and yeah, do you know like the the

Going, we’ve gone from so many thousand to so many thousand in a short space of time is fantastic. But there is a point with events where you you hit a tipping point and actually you can’t provide the service that you want. And we try to as much as we can, you know, make people feel that they’ve had a white glove service, they do have a premium product that they can engage with. And so so everything is quite carefully curated. And we honestly we disagree about things that

S no one in their right minds should feel like they should be disagreeing about. You know, like the colour of something, or you know, should something go in this corner or that corner. But but all of it is is is is carefully curated with the experience of mind that you are coming here to get a premium event. What whoever you are of the industry, and that’s it’s tough to be everything to all people at all times, but that’s in our mind, like, okay, but just if you’re a person.

Yeah. What do you want from an event? How do you want to feel? Yeah, and like you say about colours, but those little touches have big impacts overall, right? So it’s it’s absolutely you you really fascinate over the sweat the small stuff sometimes because it can have an overarching impact. And like everyone today has got smilers smiles on their faces. Have they have the whole week really ⁓ in terms of legal tech talk? You are on the content side, so for people that are probably hearing about this conference or people who have attended, how do you go about

Implementing a content strategy, and obviously we’ll come on to talk about your future plans as well. But just give people an idea about how you actually piece it together to put on something like this from a content perspective. Well, we have no legal training at all. There’s a couple people who work for us who you know maybe they’ve studied law at some point, but but ultimately the training it just isn’t there. I I I I I benefit from the fact that I am a weapons grade incorrigible nerd.

So I love to be in an industry that I I’m never gonna be an expert ⁓ in in in legal at all. Far from it. But I can know sort of what’s make what’s making people tick, and I can understand the trends and what people are going through. Ultimately, we rely quite a lot on the community. Yeah. ⁓ I rely a lot on speaking to people. You know, I pr I’ve probably spoke just in terms of getting people on stage, I’ve probably spoken to about

four hundred people over the past sort of nine to twelve months exclusively about how do what how do we get you on stage in a way that works for you but also in a way that drives the industry forward. So so it’s thinking about like those key people from all of those different kind of sectors. So like what’s what’s happening in the in house, what’s happening to law firms, what’s happening in the tech space, but also what’s happening in the ac in the world of academia. ⁓ what what are the associations saying?

what are the regulators saying? You know, all of all of all of that comes together. And sometimes it’s a matter of speaking to kind of you know, you can speak to two people from a law firm, they’ll give you, depending on what team they’re in, they’ll give you very different answers if you ask them about something like the billable hour. Yeah. ⁓ so really i it it in terms of putting the putting the content strategy together, the information is key. The we we standardize the formats, we get pushback.

We push back on that pushback because that’s because it’s how we want to deliver it. so much of it comes down to you know, we could still be talking about machine learning, you know, we could talk about cloud migration. That’s probably useful to some people, but it’s not where we wanna that’s not where we wanna be. So so it it starts with speaking to the industry. It starts with speaking to people who have a voice and you know, sometimes they want that amplified.

And what I’ve been so impressed by, I don’t know, in in you know, in over the pa over the past couple of years is how willing people are to share. And in a in a way that’s usually pretty kind of it’s it’s pretty giving, they’re not necessarily expecting anything in return. You know, if I say to someone, Hey, can I can I pick your brain about, you know, anthropics mythos or something, ⁓ do you like can I can I have a chat to you about it? They’re gonna be like, Yeah, that’s fine and or have a chat.

Forty five minutes, half an hour, an hour, whatever it is. And you know, they’ll just go, That’s great, yeah, if you need anything, just let me know. And then, you know, the the Zoom call dies down and and so so yeah, it’s it’s it’s very reliant on people’s willingness to share and I’ve been so blown away by how much people do really want to drive it forward. I think that’s a spirit of community, isn’t it, as well. And y you know, also the the team that you’ve brought together I think is phenomenal. You know, we are greater than me, we talk a lot about that on the show. ⁓

Again, looking forward because Legal Tech Talk is moving at pace, being very verbose in your your mission, your objectives, and you know there was a big announcement that Bradley shared at the start of the conference about expansion. Would you like to tell us more about that? Yeah, there’s ⁓ gonna be a new Legal Tech Talk event. We’re not we’re not moving, we’re there’s we’re just gonna have a bigger presence. So ⁓ in December 2027, ⁓ we are going to be launching our first WS event in Miami.

⁓ the feel’s gonna be slightly different. You know, London’s not as much of a destination place, Miami very much is. ⁓ I’m I’m hoping we might have a mascot, maybe a flamingo or a gator or something, ⁓ make it a bit more fun. and I think you know we’ll we’ll start by looking at the you know the communities that the that that we’re that we get to serve in that market. You know, we’ve got a lot of US tech companies at at the Europe event.

⁓ so expanding into those into those in house and law firms and all those all those other great communities as well. I think we’re ⁓ we’re gonna keep a little bit under our hat in terms of what what you can really expect. ⁓ it’s not gonna be exactly the same as London, I I I I would hope. Yep. but ⁓ but a very exciting time and ⁓ something that something that I’m keen to get my teeth stuck into ⁓ and hopefully a new market and you know the new challenges that comes with it.

Absolutely. And just in terms of growth of the Legal Tech Talk team, are you going to be hiring? Are you looking to take on more people who might have been starting to hear about Legal Tech Talk? Be quite interested. Other collaborations? Are people if people are interested in that? Yeah, talk us through that side of things. ⁓ we’ve hired people this week. People have started this week. Yeah, we’re

I think it would be super hypocritical of us to just go to to have an event where so many people talk about not the tech but the processes before it and you know, how do you you know think about the skills you need, hire for the right skills and then you know you buy the technology. If we just started going, Hey we’re yeah, we’re hire we’re we’re we’re hired we’re going to the US. We need people. Come one, come all. so there’s you know, there’s there’s always gonna be th there’s always gonna be things we need. ⁓ I think we

We need we need we need people who are also gonna buy into the vision and understand that, you know, how how events work, how our events work and the side of things that we ⁓ you know but we we just we just want great we just want great people who are, you know, keen to kind of jump on board when ⁓ when the time’s right. So my my read of it, Legal Tech Talk wants to be the

Go-to global legal event in the world. And do you carry on doing more of the same, or is there one unlock or two unlock or three unlocks you need to get to achieve that? I think part of it is being reactive to what’s going on. Okay. that’s a big part of my role is to not is to know not just what’s going on in legal but what’s going on in the rest of the world and then the kind of downstream impact on legal. ⁓

I think there’s a few things that we need to target a little bit better. Some of the more niche areas. Well, we I we call them more niche areas. They’re not intellectual property is not niche. No. ⁓ compliance is not niche. Real estate and convenience are not niche. ⁓ that’s where, you know, ⁓ I think perhaps on the content side we’ve made maybe been a little bit light previously. That’s something that that those are those are markets that we want to start catering for a lot better from from kind of all perspectives really. It starts with the content. ⁓

Mm. So so I think that’s kind of one of those big unlocks. I think the I think one of the tricky things as an event expands is maintaining the level of service at sc at scale. Yes. And if you think about it, you know, like Brad doesn’t have to tell me or Joe or some of the team that’s been here from the start, some of the team that’s joining now, because he’s very integrated with all of us. But what if the team ever got to like a hundred? Yeah.

He would s right now he doesn’t have to tell us like this is I want it to feel premium. If the team got to a hundred, is that passion gonna trickle down? And that’s one of the big challenges for any company expanding. For us, we would rather we would rather things were good than just big. Yeah. ⁓ and I think that we have maybe focused on this on this size and this scale issue, which is obvious which is obviously great, but we would never want it to distract from the quality and anything that we do.

It there’s there’s certain levels that we need to achieve, otherwise we we get s other other people might think, it’s really good that you did that. We would go we would we would be kinda kicking ourselves ⁓ if we didn’t reach the levels that we wanted to. And I’m sure you will and you know everyone has the the belief, you have the quality and I think the last three years have have proved that and you know congratulations to you so for vendors, people in the legal community looking for speaking opportunities.

Collaborations partners, if they want to get involved with legal tech talk, what is the best way for them to do that? That’s a good question. ⁓ there’s a quote that I saw on social media recently. It was absolutely it was it was Tom Hanks when he was a ⁓ originally when he one of the first films that he worked on, one of the first features. And it was a director who who basically stopped everything and went, everybody everybody stop, everybody stop. Here’s what you gotta do. You gotta show up on time.

You gotta know the text, you gotta have idea. I gotta have an idea. and I think that that’s sort of he then goes to explaining. So basically this is your life advice. So show up on time, I mean show up early. You gotta know the text, you gotta know what you’re doing, and you gotta have an idea. So like you gotta you gotta have your own spin, you gotta have your own take on it. I think for for speaking opportunities, well we like I I look at people who are excited to share, I look at people who are excited to share authentically. Yep. ⁓

I I look at people who don’t mind going off the beaten track. I d I I’m looking for people who want to share their hot take and they don’t mind people disagreeing with that in the crowd. I love to hear a murmur in a crowd. If I’m if I’m watching the few times I actually get to watch the content I’ve spent twelve months staring hard and fast into the eyes of. I mean the best way is honestly with any event I would just say is get stuck in and if you haven’t gotten stuck in so far, just start. Yeah. So

Look look on the website. Look at look at who you need to reach out to. If it’s if it’s speaking that you need to reach out to, then you know, it’s gonna be someone like me. We’ve got Hannah on the team who’s great. We’ve got Susie who’s leading our our US team. There’s you know, we’re we’re we’ve got Joe and Lise on the sales team. There’s loads of there’s loads of others. I won’t name them all because it’ll take too long. shout out, Sonia. ⁓ but I think it’s just you know, it’s reach reach out to someone on the team, they’ll direct you to the right person. I don’t think there’s a single

person on the team who wouldn’t be happy initially having a conversation to figure it out. No one’s gonna complain about putting half an hour in your diary and go ⁓ and you know, asking you some questions, finding out what makes you tick and what you do and what you know what what value you think that we could give you and and what you could give us. And ⁓ and and and you know if that’s half an hour is if that half an hour with me is actually you should speak to our marketing team or you should speak to our partnerships team or you know or whoever.

or maybe you should speak to Brad, because it’s a really big ticket item that he’s gonna need to get sign off from ⁓ from from from Mikkel, who’s the sort of CFO as well as the COO. He wears a lot of hats. Yeah. No one’s gonna view that as as wasted time. ⁓ we are network builders professionally pro professional network builders at heart. And you know, I mainly work with in-house counsel and law firms, primarily. I don’t mind having a chat with ⁓ I wanna have a half an hour chat with you know, with a tech CEO or someone who’s got a

a new idea, they got they got a new take. If someone’s got a new idea, it’s a new idea about where the industry might be going, which I’m just gonna incorrigible weapons grade nerd, as I said earlier. I’m always gonna like that. it’s it’s it’s we’re we’re we’re pretty open in terms of the things that we can is terms of the things that we want to do. And we like people to be open, but you know if it’s if you’re working with us, it’s you know, show up on time, know what you’re doing, have an idea.

⁓ and if you hit those three marks then usually we’re gonna be pretty happy working with anyone. There we go. There we have it. Just go out there and shoot your shot. Merlin, it’s been absolute pleasure having you on the League of Speaking Podcast. Thanks from all of us on the team here for having us as your media partner for the third year in the row, wishing you and all the team lots of continued success and for the head looking ahead for USA and Miami. ⁓ any final words before I let you go? Here’s to year four.

Here’s the year for absolutely. Everyone knows where to go and find Legal Tech Talk. Check them out on LinkedIn, all the various socials. It’s been an absolute pleasure. For now, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration hub, the Legally Speaking Club, over on Discord? Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com. There’s a link to join our community there. Over and out.