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

0:00What 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.

0:37Across 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.

0:58Welcome 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.

1:11Merlin Beyts:Hi everyone, my name is Merlin Bates. 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 6pm tomorrow, I reckon. Pretty much full robot mode for the past day and a half. But no, it's starting to sink in a little bit. Feels good. Lots of compliments. Lots of sessions going on. Lots of movement. I'm hearing people talking about great meetings. Can't ask for more than that. 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.

1:59Has that helped from outside the legal industry, people coming in, or is it sort of just a strategy you knew all the way along?

2:06Merlin Beyts:I think we always had it in our minds that we wanted, we knew what we could achieve, and so the idea was essentially just why not. at least from my perspective we knew that we had the capacity to go big very early on and there's a lot of people that ask us why don't you do smaller events here and there and actually it's for us, it works better for our kind of MO to focus on big ticket items thinking about how do we expand, how do we just keep on providing the same service 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 mickle 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 um 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 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.

3:41And 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?

3:55Merlin Beyts:In terms of the feeling so if I can give you from a content perspective 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 extra growth is great but it's not for growth sake there is always a purpose behind everything that we do and yeah you know like the going oh 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 um so so everything is quite carefully curated and we honestly we disagree about things that no one in their right minds should feel like they should be disagreeing about you know like the color of something or um 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 in 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 that that's that's that's a lot of thought that goes into that yeah and like you say about colors but those little touches have big impacts overall right so it's absolutely you know you really fascinate over the sweat the small stuff sometimes because it can have an overarching impact and like everyone today's got smiles on their faces they have the whole week really um 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 um 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'm never going to be an expert uh 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 um i rely a lot on speaking to people you know i've probably spoke just in terms of getting people on stage i've probably spoken to about 400 people over the past sort of nine to 12 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 in-house what's happening to law firms what's happening in the tech space but also what's happening in the in the world of academia um what are the associations saying uh 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 what team they're in they'll give you very different answers if you ask them about something like the billable hour yeah um so really it in terms of putting the putting the content strategy together um the information is key the we we standardize the formats uh we get pushback we push back on that pushback because that's because it's how we want to deliver it um 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 want to that's not where we want to 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 i want that amplified um and what I've been so impressed by, I don't know, over the past couple of years is how willing people are to share.

8:28Merlin Beyts:And in a way that's usually pretty giving. They're not necessarily expecting anything in return. If I say to someone, hey, can I pick your brain about anthropics mythos or something? Can I have a chat to you about it? They're just like, yeah, that's fine. and I'll have a chat, 45 minutes, half an hour, an hour, whatever it is. And, you know, they'll just go, that's great. If you need anything, just let me know. And then, you know, the Zoom call dies down. And so, yeah, 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.

9:03I think that's a spirit of community, isn't it, as well? And, you know, also the team that you've brought together, I think, is phenomenal. You know, Weir's 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 mission, your objectives. And 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?

9:24Merlin Beyts:Yeah, there's going to be a new Legal Tech Talk event. We're not moving. We're just going to have a bigger presence. So in December 2027, we are going to be launching our first ever US event in Miami. The feel's going to be slightly different. You know, London's not as much of a destination place. Miami very much is. 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 we'll start by looking at the communities that we're yet to serve in that market. We've got a lot of U.S. tech companies at the Europe event, so expanding into those in-house and law firms and all those other great communities as well.

10:12Merlin Beyts:I think we're going to keep a little bit under our hat in terms of what you can really expect it's not going to be exactly the same as London I would hope but a very exciting time and something that I'm keen to get my teeth stuck into and hopefully a new market and 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 be starting to hear about Legal Tech Talk, be quite interested, other collaborations, if people are interested in that? Yeah, talk us through that side of things.

10:49Merlin Beyts:We've hired people this week. People have started this week. Yeah, with the hiring process, again, it's always with a purpose. I think it would be super hypocritical of us to just go, to have an event where so many people talk about not the tech, but the processes before it. How do you think about the skills you need, hire for the right skills? and then you buy the technology. If we just started going, hey, yeah, we're going to the US. We need people. Come one, come all. So there's always going to be things we need. I think we need people who are also going to buy into the vision and understand how events work, how our events work.

11:32Merlin Beyts:and the side of things that we, you know, but we just want great people who are, you know, keen to kind of jump on board when the time's right. So 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 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.

12:15Merlin Beyts:Some of the more niche areas, well, we call them more niche areas. Intellectual property is not niche. No. Compliance is not niche. Real estate and conveyancing are not niche. That's where, you know, I think perhaps on the content side, we've maybe been a little bit light previously. That's something that those are markets that we want to start catering for a lot better from kind of all perspectives, really. It starts with the content. So I think that's kind of one of those big unlocks. I think one of the tricky things as an event expands is maintaining the level of service at scale. 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.

13:06Merlin Beyts:But if the team ever got to like 100, he would, right now he doesn't have to tell us like, I want it to feel premium. If the team got to 100, is that passion going to trickle down? And that's one of the big challenges for any company expanding. But us, we would rather things were good than just big. And I think that we have maybe focused on this size and the scale issue, which is obviously great, but we would never want it to distract from the quality. And anything that we do, there's certain levels that we need to achieve. Otherwise, other people might think, oh, it's really good that you did that.

13:46Merlin Beyts:we would be kind of kicking ourselves if we didn't reach the levels that we wanted to. And I'm sure you will. And everyone has the belief, you have the quality, and I think the last three years have proved that. And 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 Tom Hanks when he was originally... One of the first films that he worked in, one of the first features.

14:23Merlin Beyts:And it was a director who basically stopped everything. He went, everybody stop, everybody stop. Here's what you've got to do. You've got to show up on time. You've got to know the text. You've got to have an idea. And I think that sort of... He then goes to explain, basically, this is your life advice. So sharp on time, that means sharp burning. You've got to know the text, you've got to know what you're doing, and you've got to have an idea. You've got to have your own spin, you've got to have your own take on it. I think for speaking opportunities, I look at people who are excited to share, I look at people who are excited to share authentically.

15:03Merlin Beyts:I look at people who don't mind going off the beaten track. 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 watching, the few times I actually get to watch the content, I've spent 12 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. So look on the website. Look at who you need to reach out to. If it's speaking that you need to reach out to, then it's going to be someone like me.

15:40Merlin Beyts:We've got Hannah on the team, who's great. we've got Susie who's leading our US team we've got Joe and Lise on the sales team, 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, 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 going to 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 value you think that we could give you and what you could give us.

16:22Merlin Beyts:And, you know, if that half an hour with me is actually, oh, 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 going to need to get sign-off from Mikkel, who's the sort of CFO as well as the COO. He wears a lot of hats. No one's going to view that as wasted time. We are network builders, professional network builders at heart. And I mainly work with in-house counsel and law firms primarily. I don't mind having a chat. I want to have a half an hour chat with a tech CEO or someone who's got a new idea.

17:00Merlin Beyts:They've 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 going to... Incorrigible weapons grade nerd, as I said earlier. I'm always going to like that. Um, it's, it's, it's, we're, we're, we're pretty open in terms of the things that we can, in 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 going to be pretty happy working with anyone.

17:32Merlin Beyts:There we go. There we have it. Just go out there and shoot your shot. Merlin, it's been an 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 a row. Wishing you and all the team lots of continued success and looking ahead for USA and Miami. Any final words before I let you go? Here's to year four. Here's to year four. 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.

17:58Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world-leading content and collaboration of 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.