LegalTechTalk 2026: How In-House Teams are Adopting Legal Tech Globally – Manuel Mesquita – E12

You can hear Rob and Manuel discussing:

Connect with Manuel Mesquita here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/manuel-mesquita-93635314/

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 from Legal Tech Talk 2026 in London. Joining me now, a very special guest. Please kindly introduce yourself, name, title, and organization. Well, thank you so much for receiving me, Rob. So my name is Manuel Mesquita. I’m the CEO of a consultant company called MM Legal. Well, MM stands for Manwomskite. So I created this company.

Because I think that today when we look at the legal law tech reality, we see a true gap between the softwares themselves and the implementation that needs to be done in organizations, either legal departments or law firms. And that goes much more than just making the implementation of the software and telling who should be using it, workflows, procedures. It’s much more about how to

Make these software the more efficient possible and to have the hex, the professionalism regarding the use of these software to be there present. I’ve been participating in lots of conferences as a speaker, and in all of them I always have a clear message that is forget AI. This is a mode, this is a vibe, this will go on. What’s really important is to have your teams on a mindset open to change.

And that they can not only participate on the change but be true partners of this change. So do not impose this software to them, but but ask them to participate in what is the priority, what will make the change of that legal department all offer. And so that’s why I for me the focus should be really on the mindset of the teams.

And that’s why I’m also a member of ELTA and now I’m on the board of the consultancy of the Portuguese Legal Tech Association. And I think that we the the person we here, our peers that are present here on Legal Tech Talks, that are persons that are more motivated to what’s going on, to the implementation of softwares using artificial intelligence, we should have a priority role on.

How do we want legal departments, how do we want organizations to be involved on this change that as I mean meant it’s not artificial intelligence, is this change for the future, how to prepare the teams for this present revolution with artificial intelligence, but for future revolutions to come and how can we stay true to our core values regarding law?

As justice, access to justice, ethics, responsibility, and how can we have a true presence of these values on what’s going on and prepare these teams to be focused that we are not just there to implement software, we are there to be true to ourselves and to these values.

And it’s it’s it’s great work that you’re doing and obviously we’ve been connected through the Eltor Association and Maritza who’s a previous guest alumni on the show. just a couple of questions, you know, there’s a big shift, isn’t there, and everyone’s talking about transformation this year. In your view, what’s the single biggest shift that’s happening in the legal industry that people can no longer afford to ignore? For me, and this is my professional experience, is that we have today a gap that is going to have very, very bad consequences.

We have in one side legal departments that know that law firms are reducing the costs, they are reducing the teams because they are becoming more and more efficient, because they are using very efficient softwares, notably using AI. So legal departments are saying, Okay, so our costs are going to reduce with external lawyers because the invoices are going to be reduced. It’s not happening. And on the other side, we have law firms.

That are making investments on these softwares using financial methods like ROI return on investments, but the assumption is that the revenues will be the same. So for law firms, it’s reducing costs but having the same revenues. And for legal departments, whoa. But so the the profits is staying all in legal departments. So today legal departments are more and more saying, so if is that the case.

That law firms are not reducing the invoices that they are sending to us. So we will reduce the services that we’re asking to external lawyers and we will have those softwares for ourselves. Not only softwares that we need, like CLMs, but legal research, generative AI to produce drafts of agreements, so all kinds of legal text.

legal departments today they are taking the decision saying if l l law the law firms are not reducing their invoices so we are reducing the services that are required for them. And this we is going to have consequences, serious ones. Yeah no absolutely and I think it’s important that we highlight these points and I guess while we have the attention then before I let you go

Imagine every law firm leader, managing partner, general counsel, legal operations professional is watching and listening to this podcast. What’s one action they should take in the next ninety days to better prepare for the future? One action. I would say talk to your clients and share deficiency that you are having today with them. Otherwise you will lose them.

Thank you very much. If people want to know more about yourself, your organizations, work that you’re doing, where’s the best place for them to go? Feel free to share any social media handles. At LinkedIn, so Manuel Mskita, my profile. I’m based in France, but I’m present in France, Belgium, Portugal, but so the best entrance is LinkedIn, Manuel Mskita, and that’s my profile. Just needs me to say thank you so much for joining me live here at Legal Tech Talk twenty twenty six. from all of us on the Leeds Bean podcast, sponsored by Clio.

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.