ML One AI: solution developed by Xpand IT and Morais Leitão wins international innovation award

ML One AI, a generative artificial intelligence solution developed by Xpand IT in partnership with Morais Leitão, has been recognised at the FT Innovative Lawyers Europe Awards 2026, winning the Innovation in Knowledge & Data category. This international recognition, awarded by the Financial Times, highlights a project that is transforming the way legal knowledge is searched, accessed and used.

For Xpand IT and Morais Leitão, this recognition marks a milestone in a collaboration that has applied generative artificial intelligence to a specific challenge: transforming decades of legal knowledge into a more accessible source of information, without compromising the security, confidentiality and rigour requirements that define legal practice.

International Recognition for Innovation in the Legal Sector

The FT Innovative Lawyers Europe Awards recognise initiatives that contribute to transforming legal practice through new approaches to technology, processes and knowledge management. In 2026, ML One AI won the Innovation in Knowledge & Data award, standing out for the way it uses artificial intelligence to unlock and mobilise the knowledge accumulated by Morais Leitão.

The recognition took into account the solution’s originality, leadership and impact, including the levels of internal adoption achieved.

More than a technological accolade, the award demonstrates how innovation can address real organisational needs and create new ways of working with highly specialised information.

ML One AI: Making Decades of Knowledge More Accessible

In a law firm, knowledge is one of its most important assets. However, as information grows and becomes spread across different documents, systems and sources, finding the right content can become a complex task.

This was one of the challenges facing Morais Leitão.

With decades of accumulated legal documentation, including legal opinions, precedents, articles, templates and other specialised content, the firm was looking for a way to make this intellectual capital more accessible to its teams.

The answer came in the form of ML One AI, a generative artificial intelligence solution developed by Xpand IT that enables professionals to interact with internal knowledge by asking questions in natural language.

Rather than relying exclusively on traditional searches and reviewing documents individually, users can explore different sources of information through a conversational experience, receiving contextualised answers and references to relevant documentation.

The project integrates internal knowledge sources, including the iManage document management platform, and was designed to meet the specific requirements of legal practice.

Information security and governance have played a central role from the outset, ensuring that sensitive data remains within a controlled environment and that the use of artificial intelligence complies with the firm’s confidentiality principles.

From Technology to Adoption: The Real Impact of Artificial Intelligence

Developing a generative artificial intelligence solution involves much more than integrating a language model. In the case of ML One AI, it was necessary to understand how Morais Leitão’s professionals search for, interpret and use legal information, ensuring that the technology adapts to the teams’ real needs.

The collaboration between Morais Leitão and Xpand IT brought together specialist legal knowledge with expertise in artificial intelligence, software engineering and user experience.

The result is a solution that helps simplify access to information, supports the reuse of internal knowledge and creates the conditions for greater efficiency in legal work.

The ability to distinguish factual information from AI-generated suggestions, as well as to consult the sources used, was particularly important in ensuring an experience suited to a context in which accuracy and trust are fundamental.

Adoption was also part of the strategy. Rather than simply making a new tool available, the project sought to embed it into professionals’ day-to-day work, with an intuitive experience and an approach focused on effective use.

This is one of the aspects that makes the international recognition particularly significant: the innovation was assessed not only on the technology developed, but also on its impact within the organisation.

A Collaboration That Transforms Knowledge into Value

Winning the Innovation in Knowledge & Data award reflects a shared vision between Xpand IT and Morais Leitão: technology creates greater value when it addresses a specific challenge and is developed around the people who will use it.

ML One AI demonstrates how generative artificial intelligence can go beyond task automation, helping to unlock the value of knowledge assets, improve access to specialised information and support new ways of collaborating.

In a sector where information quality, confidentiality and rigour are essential, the solution provides a tangible example of how technological innovation and business expertise can be successfully combined.

For Xpand IT, this international recognition reinforces the importance of developing artificial intelligence solutions tailored to each organisation’s context, processes and objectives.

Because the true impact of artificial intelligence lies not only in what the technology can do, but in the value it enables organisations to create.