12 December 2025in Jornal Económico Hugo Marques dos Santos comments on his expectations for the legal market in 2026

The latest edition of ““Quem é Quem na Advocacia de Negócios em Portugal” (Who's Who in Business Law in Portugal), published by Jornal Económico, invited national law firms to comment on the following question: “What do you expect from the legal market in 2026?”

Hugo Marques dos Santos, senior lawyer at MG Advogados, states that:

"Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly be one of the topics that will have the greatest impact on the legal profession in 2026. It is no coincidence that the legal profession repeatedly appears in reports on the possible impacts of AI as one of the areas expected to be most affected.

It is therefore important that lawyers are able to understand in which areas it will be pointless to compete with this new reality, and are able to capitalize on the added value that the new tools can bring to the business—without falling into uncritical facilitation, which sometimes results in citations of legislation or case law of dubious content.

In a world where anyone can ask software to prepare a draft contract or letter in a matter of seconds, it is important to demonstrate to clients, and to the market in general, that the real value of good legal advice is not limited to filling in the blanks in a generic draft. We believe that this will be one of the great challenges of the future in the legal profession, and one that will separate creative, high-quality lawyering from repetitive, mere “copy-paste” activities.

This challenge will be especially important for the new generations entering the legal market to compete with these tools, and who are already beginning to be seen as superfluous by their peers, who should welcome and train them."

To read Hugo Marques dos Santos' statements, click here.