A legal mind shaped at the dinner table

Maria grew up surrounded by a family of lawyers, where dinnertime meant structured airtime, counter-arguments, and a shared commitment to reaching a logical conclusion, if not a unanimous agreement. It’s where she learned to love rules, predictability, and gained the satisfaction of “putting things in boxes that make sense.”

Staying in Lisbon to study law, Maria made her own mark through hard work and academic achievements. She’s candid about imposter syndrome, “I’m acutely aware of my weaknesses, but, through self-reflection, equally clear that merit, not chance, is what’s carried me to where I am today.”

Creativity sits inside the boxes

Today, Maria has been working with Morais Leitão for more than 12 years, currently a Principal Associate in the firm's Corporate and M&A and Capital Markets team

“Public law, with its open-ended questions, didn’t appeal,” Maria says. She wanted, “Closed circuits, clear consequences, rules that shape society and dictate where we have to go”. Early on, she imagined a life in litigation, as writing, rhetoric, and persuasive craft all beckoned. But once she started out, the energy of transactional practice won out: applying doctrine to a moving target in real life; negotiating, sequencing, and closing.

That’s where the project manager in her flourished. Big deals often have dedicated PMs, she notes, “but between you and me, it’s the lawyers who are often the driving force behind the organisation.” The best transactional lawyers, in her view, have three muscles: people, tasks, and priority. Knowing what matters, when, and who should do it.

Maria is quick to challenge the myth that contracts are dry. Within the legal “boxes,” she finds room for creativity and freedom: inventive structures, layered risk trade-offs, and multiple pathways to the client’s goal. “Clients don’t just come to execute instructions,” she says, “they come to discover what they really want and what’s actually possible.”

That creativity has only expanded as the technological legal toolkit has evolved.

Tech as leverage, not replacement

According to Maria, the legal profession has accelerated its shift to speed, responsiveness, and tool-driven workflows. Today’s clients expect lawyers to be expert service partners, as fast and co-ordinated as every other player on a deal. For Maria, modern AI tools finally feel like they “truly integrate your day-to-day as a lawyer, compressing hours into seconds and unlocking more sophisticated judgement.”

“The point isn’t to parrot AI machine output,” she says, “it’s to use the time saved to add finesse, smarter risk quantification, different scenario clauses, sharper assessment contingencies, and more tailored advice. AI won’t replace lawyers, but a lawyer who knows how to use AI will replace one who doesn’t.”

Crucially, that mindset requires curiosity, rigour, and courage. Maria adds: “Only critical AI users make good users. You have to know the material well enough to question results, iterate prompts, and push tools beyond the obvious. Creativity matters here too, by asking more imaginative questions to extract more value.”

The craft still matters

As automation expands, Maria worries about losing the apprenticeship of detail, and organizational discipline. “Without deep familiarity with the parts of law that can be automated, you can’t excel at the higher-order work that automation frees you to do.”

Throughout her career Maria has been a big believer in breaking big problems into tiny ones, then mastering each problem. “If I didn’t know something, I would study it until I did. It’s not brilliance, it’s organisation.”

“Great lawyers,” she believes, “must be equally comfortable perfecting a power-of-attorney line as they are inventing a market-shaping clause.” Adding that “regardless of technology, lawyers need to have pride, interest, curiosity, and a relentless desire to learn. Apply those to new tools and realities, and the fundamentals still win. Technology amplifies great lawyers; it doesn’t create them.”

Stability in a volatile sector

While deals can be inherently unpredictable, Maria’s anchor is Morais Leitão. In a market where many lawyers hop firms every two years, she’s stayed put – by choice. “The work changes daily,” she says, “but the backbone stays constant.” She runs an annual self-review, “Am I still enthusiastic? Do I admire the people I work with? Thankfully, the answers keep coming back as yes.” Admiration, for her, is built on two things: ethics and extraordinary technical intelligence.

Mentorship in the firm has been a team effort. She cites the late Morais Leitão co-founder, Dr. João Soares da Silva, who rewrote minutes with surgical attention to commas, synonyms, and clarity, until they were perfect. That filigree mindset still shapes her bar for quality. She learns from seniors, peers, and juniors alike; “Loving the team is one of the main reasons I stay.”

Juggling commitments

When she became a mother, it reframed things for Maria. “Time has to be used intelligently: fewer corridor chats, more focused bursts, and smarter tooling.” She borrows a metaphor she now lives by each day: “Some balls are glass and some are rubber. You can drop the rubber ones.”

“The glass ones change daily, sometimes it’s being home to put your child to sleep, other days, it’s finishing a contract at midnight. The trick is prioritising daily.”

Perspective helps, Maria reflects. “Family is the non-negotiable centre of gravity; work is the most important ‘baby’ after that. With experience comes the ability to let go of needless drama and focus on what truly matters, in life and in deals.”

Closing the loop

Maria’s journey has taken her from debate to logic, logic to deals, deals to leadership, and now, with motherhood and modern tooling, a wider arc of focus and prioritization. She thrives in volatility because she’s built a system for it: ethics, team, deconstruction, and the humility to keep learning.

In a profession obsessed with precedent, that feels like a precedent worth following.